My life with a gangster

Like her husband’s three accomplices who were gunned down separately on the same day with him, Josephine Wambui was ignored when Kenya’s most wanted gangster Simon Matheri Ikere was gunned down in Athi River, two years ago.

She lost all the limelight to a woman who was cohabiting with Matheri in his Athi River house, where he was killed on the morning of February 20, 2007.

As Matheri’s family marks the second anniversary since the death of their “most unwanted son” (according to his father, Peter Ikere)  Wambui’s life has been turned upside down leaving her looking like a pale shell of her 24 years.

Interviews with relatives and villagers at Gachie and Muchatha villages in Kiambu district reveal that Wambui was the woman recognized by Matheri’s family as they had never met the other woman, Felister Wanjiru who was the woman Matheri was with in Athi River on the night he was gunned down.

She told police that she had been living with the slain gangster for one year and that she was actually expecting his child.

This week, Matheri’s father and mother, Martha Wanjiru told Saturday Magazine at their Gachie home, “We know Wambui as our daughter- in- law. We have lived and suffered with her in this compound as villagers and police bayed for Matheri’s blood.”

“The other woman (Felister) came here after the burial and asked to see her co-wife but Wambui was not here at that time. We were not amused as a family and we ignored her,” Matheri’s mother added.

But today, we piece together the intrigues that surrounded Matheri’s love for a standard eight drop out, his three children and the mystery of the second woman, who the family believed was the one who enjoyed Matheri’s last dirty money.

We also unravel the pain, the trauma and the fate that befell the young wife, who says she was trapped in an intricate web of a gangster’s love, her tribulations after his demise and her future aspirations as a young mother.

Wambui first met  Matheri in 1999  at Wangige township where he was working as a mechanic and she as a house girl. He was then 30 and Wambui only 15 and had just finished primary school and, young and innocent as she was, they fell for each other.

Within one year, they were married and had a daughter. She recollects her first moments with a man who would later top the police’s list of wanted criminals.

“He was polite. He confessed that he had fallen in love with me. I would sneak from my employer’s house and he would buy me gifts, just the small things that would impress a young girl.”

Wambui says she accepted Matheri’s proposal for marriage, more so, after she conceived. But Matheri disowned her even before the baby was born. She says, “Like many young men do, he withdrew his promise to marry me. I named our daughter after my mother.”

But Wambui says Matheri was fond of the child and the two reconnected after two years when he apologised and  took her in as wife. “I gave him the benefit of doubt especially after he took me to his parent’ home in Gachie,” she recounts.

Wambui was given a house in the village which would later be torched by irate villagers who accused Matheri of being a criminal. In 2002 Wambui conceived again and gave birth to twins.

“He became more loving. He provided for the family well like any responsible husband would,” says Wambui, whose assertion that Matheri wasn’t yet a criminal at that time, is supported by his cousin, Sarah Wairimu.

But for Wambui, things started to change in 2005 when Matheri abandoned his mechanic job and started working in construction sites. He could not explain why he had left a stable job at his cousin’s garage to work on a construction site.

“It didn’t make sense to me but I kept quiet when he asked why I was complaining yet he was providing for me and the children,” she says and adds that this is the time he started coming home late at night.

According Wambui and other close relatives, who asked not to be named, Matheri’s criminal escapades started in Kihara, Kikuyu, Kinoo,  Gachie, and surrounding villages in 2005 and  attained the magnitude of a runaway hit man in just one year.

It is in 2006, that Wambui and her children started being subjected to humiliating police searches. They soon became outcasts among the local villagers. “One day, we were ordered out of our house by angry villagers and it was razed to ashes,” she says of the beginning of the end for her husband.

Soon after the incident, Matheri relocated her and the children to Kimende, along the Nairobi-Naivasha highway. Thereafter, Wambui says she never had peace. “I felt so insecure that I would remain awake at night especially when he was away.”

She admits that she came to know about Matheri’s risky lifestyle in 2006 and when the police intensified their hunt for him in early 2007, she knew his days were numbered.

On February 12, 2007, the police commissioner declared Matheri Public Enemy Number One in a media statement. His pictures were posted on the police website and splashed on TV and as Wambui says, this was the most trying moment in her life.

“It suddenly became very scary to have him around. I came to learn that he had killed several villagers and I suddenly feared that he could also shoot me,” she says.

By this time he would occasionally bring home an AK 47 rifle. Wambui reveals that she asked him to surrender to the police but he was adamant. “He always said that it was better to live for one week with money than spend 10 years in poverty,” Wambui remembers.

So when Matheri was felled, it was a painful relief, not only for Wambui, but also for the rest of his family members. “Everyone felt unsafe with him around. It had reached a point where I was torn between whether I wanted to have my husband alive or out of our lives. For the sake of the children, I felt we would be better off without him,” she says.

After the death of her husband, Wambui went back to Matheri’s home in Gachie but she would never have peace.  Locals were suspicious of her and the in-laws had their eyes on the “household things” Matheri left behind.

During her earlier stay at the homestead, she had witnessed eight family houses burnt down and the thought of the same people coming for her never left her mind.

She says, “You see, people thought I had been left with a lot of money. This perception only eased up when people learnt of Matheri’s other woman in Athi River. They believed she is the one who inherited Matheri’s fortune.”

While Matheri’s parents recognised her as their daughter-in-law, and actually built her a house, she was astonished when one morning in December 2007, her brothers-in law stormed her house and ordered her out. Apparently they were after Matheri’s property.

“They took all the furniture, cutlery and everything in the house and shared these among them,” she says. Not even the wails of her terrified children who clung to her lesso could move them. They also took the children away from her.

“I was left with an empty house. I had to move out.” She went to her aunt’s home near Kiambu but was shocked when she, too, turned her away saying she did not have space.

The eldest in her own family, Wambui says she does not know where her widowed mother and siblings are. “ I contemplated suicide, especially after my twins were taken away by one of my sisters-in-law. They said I was not able to take care of them,” she narrates.

After several days in the cold, her church in Ndenderu came to her rescue and rented for her a single room a few kilometres from Gachie, from where we traced her last week. Two months ago, her eldest child, who wasn’t attending school, was taken in by Heritage of Faith and Hope Children Rehabilitation Centre and sponsored.

Today, Wanjiru cannot afford the Sh800 monthly rent after the church withdrew payment. “They said I should look for my rent since they were taking care of my child. I have not made it in the last three months.”

When the Saturday Magazine team visited her, she told us she had not eating the previous night. A single bed occupied almost half of the room and a  worn out blanket was testimony that the area’s cold breeze must be feasting on her at night.

Across the room, a jiko gave the impression that her kitchen isn’t a busy one. The few utensils scattered around are clean but each has its own colour. She explains, “These are donations from some locals..”

As each day passes, Wambui’s typical day entails moving from one homestead to another hoping  to wash people’s clothes at a fee or a visit zero grazing farmers to look for animal feed.

All I want is to have my children back. It pains me when someone takes away my children simply because I cannot give them two meals in a day,” she says.

“I’m only 24 and I believe that at my age, I  can overcome all these hurdles and educate my children if only I can get support from good Samaritans.”