They came to Kenya and got trapped by gold diggers

A Germany citizen Stefan Andreas Delno, 67, has gone
through a lot of hardship since he came to Kenya in 1991.

Stefan Andreas Delno still rues the day he came to Kenya in 1991. Life was rosy . . . all play and no work. But he would become one of the growing number of foreigners who has lost their life savings to Kenyan tricksters.

“In the beginning I enjoyed life as a tourist before I got my work permit and ventured into the car import business,” says the 67-year-old. “But I was later conned of my share of the enterprise by a business partner.”

Later Delno, who is German, married a Kenyan but their marriage did not last. He says his wife left him penniless and then left for Germany.

Delno’s love life did not improve— two other girlfriends made away with his property which included a hotel.

This was done through a well-executed plot. One of the women informed authorities that Delno’s work permit had expired and that he was illegally operating businesses in Kenya.

His passport was subsequently confiscated and Delno became homeless after the woman he lived with kicked him out of the house.

“I have a case in court over my travel documents and I am stuck here. I cannot even visit my children in Germany,” says Delno, who at times depends on well-wishers to get his next meal.

But Delno is lucky to be alive. Mid last month, Cartel Paolo, an Italian tourist aged 57, jumped to his death from a four-storey building in Diani, Kwale County.

Joseph Omija, the Officer Commanding Police Division of Msambweni, said Paolo, who was living with his Kenyan wife, was penniless and most likely under stress.

“Early this year, he had been unable to support himself and his wife so he moved to a friend’s house until end of April when he moved back to his home in Forest estate,” the officer said.

Paolo had been running a number of businesses which have since collapsed. In a sentence, Paolo had become Kenya Kimbo, a phrase that locals use to refer to tourists who have squandered their money or got swindled by their lovers and now live in abject poverty.

There are several such victims in Diani, and other tourist haunts in Kwale County. These tourists are miserable, and some of them are too ashamed of their lives that they do not even want to go back to their countries.

Some have killed themselves because of misery and shame. On the day Paolo died, he had been arrested for a traffic infraction and was to appear in court the following day.

His wife speaks briefly about their life and says they used to run a gymnasium which has since closed down.

As a result, they had planned to relocate to Nairobi and try their hand at another business because life at the coast had become too hard.

“We were actually supposed to travel to Nairobi two days before he died because our business here had collapsed,” she said.

Paolo will probably not be the last new immigrant to get hit by the hard economic realities of the Third World.

Gawryszewski Boguslaw is another statistic. In December of 2012, the tourist from Poland was found dead with a rope tied round his neck, his lifeless body hanging from the roof of a room in Mzima Cottages.

Jack Ekakoro, then the Msambweni OCPD, said the deceased was aged 55 and did not have documents on him to show when he came to Kenya.

It is suspected that he had made friends with someone who later conned him of his money. Desperate and lonely in a foreign country, he opted to commit suicide, this theory goes.

Another death locals remember vividly is that of millionaire Klause Hannes, a German who had been married to a Kenyan for 35 years.

He died in September 2011. A former employee, Fedha, says Hannes had been mentally ill by the time he died. Hannes’ association with Kenya began when he married a Kenyan in Germany in 1987.

“He would often come to Kenya for visits,” says Fedha. When the German millionaire retired in 2007, he chose to settle in Kenya.

It is rumoured that his problems began when he stumbled upon charms his wife had been using, and threw them away.

LONELY MAN

The absence of the charms for witchcraft, it is rumoured, affected Hannes’ wife, who neighbours said became as deranged as her husband.

“Friends took advantage of their deranged condition and conned them of Sh12million,” says Fedha. The wife, now completely deranged, moved out of home and locked herself in her brother’s house, relying solely on neighbours to give her food through a window.

To make matters worse for the couple, their only child, a daughter, died under mysterious circumstances, says Fedha who now lives in one of the houses Hannes built. Hannes, once considered a wealthy man, became a recluse and his only contact was with members of a local church whose furniture he stored.

“One day, when the church members went for their furniture, they could not open the door, so they made a hole through the makuti roof and found his lifeless body on the floor,” says Fedha who takes care of the German’s property on behalf of his brother-in-law.

The widow lives with her brother out of town, but when she visits her old home, she says the property is cursed, says Fedha.

About 100 metres from the house where Hannes’ body was found is an abandoned home which had belonged to another German known as Swaleh, a nickname the locals had given him.

Swaleh died a year ago, but is well remembered because he used to beg his neighbours for food when he was broke. Swaleh was irresponsible and would travel to Mtwapa for fun and heavy drinking when he received any money from his son.

“He had a girlfriend who took almost everything he owned and disappeared,” says Allan Fanni, a neighbour.

“He was a very good friend and I used to give him bananas or even money. He always had all his personal documents on him.”

Fanni describes Swaleh as a womaniser. Neighbours say his son warned him against dating many women and cut down his stipend when he became too reckless.

Diani has many dependent former tourists like Swaleh. One of them, Peter, lives behind a shopping mall. The place he calls his house is a hovel made of palm fronds (makuti). Currently, he is nursing a septic wound on his leg.

He visits Diani Dispensary to have the wound dressed People who have known him for long say his lifestyle changed for the worse when he started spending his money on women and alcohol, to the point where he could not afford to buy food.

“My friend, there is no story here today. Last time I spoke to your boss and you people did not give me money for the interview,” Peter told this writer. He had previously demanded Sh5,000 to grant us an interview.

That these tourists lose their money, and property to their “wives” is no a secret. The women get married to them not because of love, but because they want to con them, after which they flee or even file for divorce and demand alimony or a part or all the property.

OWNERSHIP OF PROPERTY

Many of these tourists do not understand what Kenya’s laws say about matrimonial property. Kwale Human Rights Network Coordinator, George Jaramba says a Swiss tourist, Joseph Hess once asked him about Kenya’s matrimonial property laws because his wife took everything he owned.

Apparently, Hess signed away his property without understanding what he was getting himself into, and when we traced the former wife, she showed him the agreements they signed in relation to the ownership of the property.

“Actually both of them came to me separately asking for clarity about laws to do with matrimonial property,” says Jaramba.

The fights between tourists and their local wives sometimes end in tragedy. Some police officers in the area say that often, the fights are over such mundane matters that they do not qualify to be reported to the authorities.

“We were not there when they met and it is not easy to mediate,” says a police officer in reference to the Hess case. But in certain situations, these end up in deaths. A divisional criminal investigations officer says he is currently working on a case in which two women are alleged to have killed a tourist to acquire his property.

Many tourists facing divorce proceedings in court say they fear for their lives. They say there are far too many unexplained deaths for their comfort.