58-year-old Mombasa man marries relative he had been secretly admiring for 4 decades

A 58-year-old man has left tongues wagging in Likoni, Mombasa County after he married a 64-year-old relative he has secretly been admiring for close to four decades.

In what looks like a real life enactment of a soap opera script, Mzee Selemia Ayeko Wandago has finally settled down with Phyllis Okisa, a woman with whom they have been refereeing to each other as ‘shemeji’ (in-law) for over three decades, as his wife.

Whoever coined the phrase ‘true love waits’ might as well have had Ayeko and Okisa in mind, if the period of time it has taken them to settle down is anything to go by.

“Finding true love has not been easy, especially after I parted ways with my first wife with whom we bore two sons (now grown ups) and my second wife who passed away, leaving me with three young children,” says Ayeko whose wife from his second marriage died last year while giving birth at Coast General Province Hospital.

Ayeko says they knew each other decades ago when Okisa regularly came visiting her sister, who was married to the former’s uncle. The two love birds confess that at some point they got attracted to each other, but could not date for fear of stigma associated with relative (however distant) who fall in love.

“We knew one another when we were both young. We liked each other, but we were never romantically involved,” says Okisa.

The duo banished the thought of dating and the then 17-year-old Okisa got married elsewhere in 1969, months after they knew each other, and gave birth to a baby boy who died a year later. Ayeko, on the other hand, got married and even had a family.

“I developed complications during my second pregnancy while in my 20’s. Things got bad and my uterus had to be removed due ectopic pregnancy related complications,” says Okisa whose fate was later sealed after her then husband’s relatives got him a second wife whom she couldn’t get along with, leading to a nasty separation that condemned her to cold nights until Ayeko married her recently.

Coincidentally and as fate would have it, decades later the two found themselves living in the same neighborhood at Maweni in Likoni, with Okisa making regular visits as a relative.

“She (okisa) used to regularly visit and we continued to refer and treat each other as shemeji. My second wife was very kind and welcoming and always welcomed Okisa in our home and treated her like the relative she was,” says Ayeko who confesses that much as he still was attracted to Okisa, he suppressed the affection without knowing that the feeling was mutual.

Tragedy struck

Tragedy, however, struck in 2011 when Ayeko’s second wife died while giving birth at Coast General Provincial Hospital due to high blood pressure. With children from his second marriage too young to nurse him and run the house, Ayeko had no one to take care of him other than Okisa, whom he insists they still had not had any romantic involvement whatsoever at that point.

“She would come, wash clothes and cook for me and return to her home. I will never forget 2015 when my hand hurt with mdudu (a painful infection on fingers common at the Coast). No neighbour came to assist me and the three small children but her,” says Ayeko, a security guard at a godown in Mombasa.

He says he was touched when she told him she would continue taking care of him and the kids even after his hand healed.

“I told her to come and live with me so that she she would take care of the children since she was chased away by her husband for lack of children,” says Ayeko, who comes from Gem, Siaya County.

“I had given up on finding love. Ayeko is a blessing to me,” says Okisa, a vendor who originally hailed from Luanda in Vihiga County. The two love birds got married at Christ Evangelical Church in Shimanzi with the blessings of Bishop John Oketch Olwande who presided over their nuptials in May 1 this year.

“I used to go to African Devine Church, but since we are now husband and wife, I have changed and now will be attending Ayeko’s church,” says an all smiles Okisa, adding: “I love my husband since he does not drink alcohol.” Ayeko says he intends to take Okisa to meet his relatives in Gem, Siaya County now that they are an item.