Man who lost 4 children to kidney failure risks losing fifth

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,” Somali-British poet Warsan Shire writes in her poem ‘Home’.

But by the time 50-year-old Samuel Muigai decided to move his family from their ancestral land in October 2013, home had become more frightening and horrifying than the mouth of a shark.

Since Muigai’s marriage to his wife in 1994, and over the years, as their family grew to include five sons and a daughter, life had never been better.

Muigai was able to offer his family a relatively comfortable life in Gatamaiyo, Lari, working as a middleman supplying farm produce to market traders.

But the recent past has been devoid of the enormous levels of kindness the earlier years had advanced the family. Instead, it has brought them untold pain and horror.

Their decision to leave their Kiambu County home, and everything in it, from the land to house, clothes and family pictures, was made out of both hope and despair.

The parents hoped to leave behind the “bad omen” that had brought the deaths of three of their children. Moving away was also an act of desperation and cowardice.

The couple felt it had run out of options to protect their children, and worried day and night that they would lose their remaining three if they remained in Gatamaiyo.

The streak of death started in July 2010, when the first born Harrison Muraya, a healthy 15-year-old, developed a minor flu accompanied by a slight fever.

Muigai tells The Standard: “We took Muraya to a health centre in Gatamaiyo and he was given medicine, but he deteriorated after taking it.

“He stayed home for three days, but his condition worsened. He died on a motorbike on the way to the hospital.”

The family buried Harrison, unaware that this was only the beginning of other deaths to come.

In December 2011, just as Muigai’s family was beginning to heal from Harrison’s death, Dickson Njoroge, the third-born, fell ill.

“He just woke up one day with one side of his face swollen. Soon after he complained that he could not see properly, then he said he had trouble hearing and that his feet were becoming heavy,” Muigai recalls, his eyes moistening.

He has told the story a thousand times; to friends, relatives and well-wishers who occasionally visit him, but from his red eyes and constantly fidgeting hands, one can easily tell the narrations have not eased the pain in his heart.

In January 2012, Muigai and his wife took Dickson to a medical camp organised by Kijabe Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a heart disease and referred to Kijabe Hospital.

Kijabe Hospital then referred him to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where fresh tests revealed he suffered from a kidney disease.

The next month Dickson was admitted to KNH, where he stayed until April and accumulated a bill of Sh290,000. Muigai was well-off then, and had no problem paying off the bill.

But Dickson’s discharge from KNH turned out to be the beginning of the end of his short life. Dickson was placed on dialysis, visiting KNH twice a week and paying Sh7,500 a session.

Dialysis

By then, Muigai had exhausted his savings and could not afford the Sh15,000 required for Dickson’s dialysis each week.

A fundraiser held by family and friends raised Sh300,000, which was enough to carry the boy through a few more weeks of dialysis.

When the money was depleted in June, Muigai once again found himself unable to sustain Dickson’s dialysis. Dickson died later that month, only three weeks after he stopped going for dialysis.

It was a loss that still burdens Muigai, more than six years later. He puts his hands across his eyes as they redden, trying his best to hold himself together as he confesses that Dickson may have still been alive had he afforded his dialysis.

He blames his only daughter Winnie Njoki’s death in June 2013 on Dickson’s death.

His face lights up a little and voice eases when he talks about her. It is easy to tell he loved her.

“Njoki developed a minor flu and was given medicine. A little later she developed a boil on her leg, causing it to swell until she couldn’t walk. We took her to Kiambu District Hospital, which referred us to KNH, but my brother in Naivasha referred us to his friend, who worked at Rift Valley General Hospital. It was at the hospital that the doctor diagnosed Njoki with kidney failure”.

Njoki travelled back to Gatamaiyo the same day she learnt of her condition, accompanied by her uncle. She died in her sleep later that night.

Muigai has struggled to find an explanation for Njoki’s sudden death at 17. He suspects she died of shock.

“She had witnessed our struggle with her brother Njoroge. I think she developed shock because she remembered how her brother died because we could not afford to treat him,” Muigai said.

Njoki died in July and they buried her in August. It was that October, after losing three children, that Muigai and Wanjiku decided they had experienced enough loss and tragedy and abandoned Gatamaiyo for Dagoretti.

Everything was well in their new-found rented home in Dagoretti, and for five years, the family was convinced they had outwitted the bad omen. Their children were strong, healthy and doing well in school.

Sat quietly

On Monday morning, when The Standard visited Muigai, 12-year-old Eric Mburu sat quietly hunched over an exercise book, with an examination question paper in one hand and pen in the other.

He looked up silently to see guests entering the living room, before quickly returning to his books.

“He does not attend school everyday,” Muigai was quick to say.

As they came to learn in June last year, the “bad omen” they had escaped from followed them to Dagoretti.

“Eric has not been the same since his brother Evans Waweru died in June last year. They were very close, so when Waweru died, Eric was devastated. Sometimes he could not even sleep alone, he had to sleep with his mother,” Muigai explained.

Evans was the fifth of Muigai’s six children, whereas Eric is the last born.

Evans’ death at 14 was strange. As Muigai explains, Evans did not record major symptoms when he started falling ill.

At first, he became slow and fatigued, then he developed a minor flu before his face swelled.

“I took him to a clinic here in Kirigu and he was given medication. Immediately I saw the medicine, I became worried,” Muigai says.

Muigai’s worry arose from his recognition of the medicine. It was the same that doctors had prescribed for some of his other three children, all who died.

The next day Muigai took Evans to KNH.

On June 15, last year, Evans began his two-week admission at KNH, where Muigai claims he did not receive as much care as he should have, and where he accrued Sh127,000 bill.

Evans died on June 30. He was buried next to his three older siblings.

After Evans’s burial in August last year, Eric and his older brother Dennis Gitau went to visit their grandparents, leaving Muigai and his wife in Nairobi.

So far, Dennis, a Form Two student, is the exceptional one. He has never exhibited any of the symptoms his five siblings had.

Dennis and Eric stayed with their grandparents for two weeks, returning abruptly one afternoon to find their mother packing her clothes.

Eric got worried and suspicious and interrogated his mother. According to Muigai, Wanjiku told him she was going for a ceremony near Kimende, and would return early the next week.

When Dennis woke up, he found a crying Wanjiku hugging Eric in the living room, before she left with two bags.

Inquisitive sons

On the Tuesday she was to return, Muigai came to a home without his wife, and inquisitive sons who hoped he had come with her or at least knew when she would return.

But days turned into weeks and weeks have now become months.

Ever since she left, Muigai has been unable to reach her. Each time he calls, he says, the calls go to a voicemail. He has pleaded with her thrice on Facebook to return, but she has not.

In one of the messages, he writes about Eric, asking Wanjiku to return as her sick son needs her.

After Muigai’s third plea on Facebook, he says, Wanjiku called his brother, telling him she was doing well and that Muigai should stop looking for her.

Eric fell sick when he returned home from school one day to find his mother still missing.

“He was admitted to KNH earlier this year and doctors said he is too young to be left alone.

“Once he started sleeping after school, he developed eye problems and started swelling on the face. He was found to be suffering from chronic kidney disease and was admitted from November to December last year,” said Muigai.

Doctors say the boy needs a transplant, which Muigai cannot afford. NHIF can only cover part of the cost.

Muigai is ready to donate his kidney to Eric.

Eric, a Class Seven pupil, needs money for a kidney transplant if he is to escape the fate of his four older siblings.