British woman who came to Kenya to search for love detained in hospital

Tinu Collins from Manchester State at Nairobi Women Hospital; owes the facility over 3 million (Jenipher Wachie)

NAIROBI, KENYA: A love adventure trip by a British woman to Kenya has turned into a nightmare as she is currently stranded in Kenya and detained in hospital over a Sh3 million bill.

Tinu Collins, 25, from Manchester quit her three cleaning jobs in April and came to Kenya to stay with her fiancée on what was to be a three-month trip. Instead she ended up at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital with a bruised spine, broken pelvic bone, left leg and a fractured right ankle.

“It is depressing. Sometimes I feel like giving up but I tell myself there is a reason I did not die on that day,” she told Sunday Standard.

In June, she fell off the fifth floor balcony of her boyfriend’s apartment in Lavington under controversial circumstances after a night of drinking and fighting.

She was in a comma for three days and then in the Intensive Care Unit for over a month.

She has since healed to a point she can be discharged but the hospital will not do it.

Now desperate, lonely, broke and without a passport which was taken by the police after the incident, Collins is praying the Kenyan government deports her back home since her visa expired in July.

Her family back home has failed to raise the bill since her mother is sick and jobless. She says the British High Commission has not been helpful either.

Her ex-lover Braddley, a rapper, has since dumped her.

He was arrested on the night of the incident but no charges were brought against him.

Assault case

He is however facing a different assault case in court over an altercation with one neighbour in March. He divides his time between the UK and Kenya. A call made to his local agent was not answered.

“He said he is going to contribute to the bill that is the only communication we have had ever since. But right now I only want to go home. I am wondering why Kenya has not deported me yet,” said Collins during the interview.

“Everyone has abandoned me including my country. My last hope was the Nairobi Governor after someone told me he helps such cases but it seems my messages have never reached him,” she told Sunday Standard as tears rolled down her face.

The hospital has declined to be drawn into the saga saying it only wants its money.

Met in London

“We cannot comment on this right now unless you come back on Monday. The issues surrounding that girl are not the way they look on the surface,” Johnson Mwithi, the Chief Officer Business Development said.

“You know it is both a police matter and a diplomatic one too because officials from the British Embassy have been here a number of times so let us leave it at that,” he said when we pushed.

The two met in London in 2005 and they got into a relationship for a couple of months but it did not work out.  

They did not communicate for the next 11 years until he sent him a friend request on Facebook.

After months of communicating he invited her to Kenya.

She landed in the country in February 3 and the eve of Valentine’s Day he proposed.

“He was a very nice guy and so romantic when not drunk. When I went back to the UK after two weeks in Kenya I saved all the money I could from the three jobs I had and came back in April,” she recalled.

In total she had saved with £2,800 (Sh392,000) which she says she spent on spoiling him. Trouble started in the relationship just a day after she arrived in the country on her second visit.

“It was his birthday party and at some point his mum offered me water but I declined.  All of a sudden he with punches in front of his mother,” she said.

Valentine’s Day

“After that incident we were fighting a lot especially when he was drunk then he would apologise and we moved on,” she said.

The fights continued until June 12 when everything came crushing down. There are conflicting reports about what exactly happened. The police told the press at that time that she was pushed off the balcony which she now denies.

“We had come from drinking at a neighbours when we got into an argument because I had found out she was flirting with girls on his phone,” she recalled.

“As we were arguing he pushed me to the ground and I became very angry and went to the balcony. Things happened so fast, I slipped and fell with my feet first,” she said.

In hospital she underwent three operations and had screws inserted to her legs in order to help her heal.

“The pain was unbearable. What is more hurting is that I have healed but it is like I am now in a prison because I can’t even move freely within the premises,” she said.

People flying to foreign countries have an option of taking up a travel insurance but Collins did not since she did not expect to find herself in the circumstances she is in.