Week in a bar as children starve
Narok county children officer Mr Julius Ngako (Left), and Siyiapei children home proprietor with with three children who were neglected by their mother for seven days. The woman was arrested for neglecting her four children forcing them to turn to feed on their own human excretion for lack of food.
What you need to know:
- A woman accused of neglecting her four children for seven days, forcing them to eat their own excrement for lack of food, has been arrested.
- Neighbours said she had escaped from her two previous husbands sometime last year and settled in Duka Moja where she all but abdicated the responsibility of feeding and educating her children.
- The four were taken to the Narok District Hospital for vaccination, de-worming, and vitamin back up after they were found frail and malnourished.
A woman accused of neglecting her four children for seven days, forcing them to eat their own excrement for lack of food, has been arrested.
Enraged residents wanted to lynch the woman, 40, after police, accompanied by Narok county children’s officer Julius Ngako, pounced on her in a bar at Duka Moja shopping centre, Narok North sub-county.
Neighbours said she had escaped from her two previous husbands sometime last year and settled in Duka Moja where she all but abdicated the responsibility of feeding and educating her children.
Mr Ngako said the four children aged between 2 and 10 years were also not immunised against polio, nor given any other vaccine, and none attends school.
“We got the information from neighbours that the children locked up the house have been screaming for help, and when we went there, we found them feeding on their own excreta,” said Mr Ngako.
The four were taken to the Narok District Hospital for vaccination, de-worming, and vitamin back up after they were found frail and malnourished.
They were also treated for pneumonia, according to the children officer, since they were sleeping on the bare floor with no blankets to cover themselves.
ABJECT NEGLECT
Narok police boss Peterson Maelo who confirmed the incident said it was not her first time to leave the children alone after locking them in the house.
“According to investigations we have conducted, she goes to enjoy with her suitors in drinking dens after locking up the children in the house with no food,” said Mr Maelo.
Two fathers of the children are still at large, but are being sought to answer similar charges of neglect.
The woman defended her actions, saying she is the sole bread winner of the family, and she was out to fend for the children.
“This is the only job I do. I look for men so that I get food for my children.
When I sit with them in the house they will not turn me into something to eat,” she argued.
She added that she earned very little from the casual job of fetching water, saying in a day she fetches thirty 20-litre containers of water and is paid Sh10 per jerrycan.
According to the children’s department such cases have escalated in the county with more than 10 cases reported weekly.
She will be arraigned in court today. The youngest child still at the hospital.
A nurse said there must have been some water in the house for the children could not have survived that long.
