By JOSEPH MUCHIRI
Residents of Kerugoya town were bemused to discover that a rich businessman from the area gave a woman with a ‘red thigh’ a plot valued at Sh500,000 and Sh20,000 to induce her to abort his child to stop his ‘imminent’ death.
The 51-year-old father of four (name withheld) owns a string of bars throughout the county and is known to fool around with his bar maids and female patrons.
Early last year, he employed a single mother of three at one of his pubs in a busy village located along a major road in the county.
Barely knowing her well, he soon did what he was notorious for and started spending nights at the house he had rented for her.
When he discovered that she was pregnant with his child, he promised to support her as long as she kept his identity secret.
But a few weeks later, he claimed she had stolen from him and sacked her.
He also stopped paying her rent and giving her money.
It later emerged that the woman had ulterior motives. She ensnared him to impregnate her then blackmail him with text messages that his last days were nearing unless he sought her assistance.
The man first dismissed her threats, but he was later frightened when a patron who knew the woman well and happened to realise the man had impregnated her disclosed to him a heart-shattering secret.
Rumours
"My friend, this woman was born with a ‘red thigh’, which means any man who impregnates her and she gives birth to his child dies," the customer told him.
Despite hearing rumours in the past about women born with such a condition and dismissing them as mere myths, he became frightened. Traversing every part of the county and neighbouring ones, he sought more information about the ‘red thigh’.
But worst was when his investigations revealed that the three men who fathered her children were all dead!
Fear gripped him such that he even contemplated hiring thugs to kill the woman.
But he changed his mind when a concerned friend advised him to bribe the woman to abort. Though he was against killing an innocent unborn life, he thought deeply about it and decided to try to save his life.
Abortion
He approached her with Sh20,000 so that she could procure an abortion but she declined the amount terming it too little and said she would not take anything less than Sh1million.
After a lot of bargaining, they agreed that he would give her a piece of land and the Sh20,000. She aborted and promised not to tell anyone what had happened.
However, someone in the know must have leaked the secret because soon the incident became the talk of the area.
A local religious leader has admonished the woman’s behaviour of getting pregnant when she knows about her condition and blackmailing the men responsible to pay her through the nose to abort.
He has also urged men to desist from being unfaithful in their marriages.
