Grim night as heartbreak leaves groom paralysed

Thirty-five-year-old school teacher Nathan Madaga had hoped to be away on his honeymoon at this time, enjoying the joy of marital bliss with the lady who he thought was the love of his life, Agneta Mweni Mulwa, 38.

Instead, he is now nursing his injuries in hospital. A tragic tale involving a dispute over dowry payments, misunderstandings with in-laws and the abrupt cancellation of his dream wedding means that Mr Madaga is now suffering from the painful complications resulting from the collapse of the union which he had waited for all his life and the fall he suffered after hearing the news.

The date was set for the 35-year-old teacher at Nelson Mandela School in Nairobi to walk down the aisle at St Francis Anglican Karen church hand in hand with his bride Agneta Mweni Mulwa, a 38-year-old lady he had met in the same church.

Instead of a colourful church wedding on November 21, Mr Madaga is nursing his injuries in hospital after enduring a sharp fall while recovering from the shock of the cancellation of the whole event.

The pair met in unusual circumstances but their relationship blossomed into something promising.

“It happened on a Sunday morning sometime in March this year. After the main service, she sent the church organist with her number. He came to me and said sister Agneta wants to talk to you. He handed me the number and said she had said that I should call her.”

“Yes I had been noticing her but I hadn’t picked that kind of interest in her. Anyway, I called  and she said she wanted us to talk,” he recalls. “And that’s how things kicked off.”

RECUPERATING FROM PARALYSIS

It is events that followed that telephone call nine months ago that have left him bedridden in a hospital bed, immobile and under treatment for health complications. 

Mr Madaga invested four busy months preparing and planning for a lavish wedding in which he and his wife-to-be would celebrate a joyous day surrounded by family and friends.

Instead he is confined to a hospital bed at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital in Hurlingham recuperating from paralysis that has affected his lower body from the hip downwards.

He is also ailing from urinary incontinence, which means he experiences involuntary urination and stress.

On top of his regular treatment he is also being seen by a counsellor.

“Everything was set for the big day. But on November 17, the Tuesday before the wedding in the evening my phone buzzed. It was the ringtone for an incoming message. I picked my phone eagerly. It was at around 9:30pm, about the same time that my girlfriend usually sent me sweet good night messages,” he says.

“It was a shocker,” he continues after an agonisingly long minute of reflection.

“The message said the wedding had been postponed. ‘Postponed?’ I asked myself alarmed. I am one of the principals, so who is this that has postponed my wedding? I asked myself. My body sort of just went numb.”

His feet felt like jelly, he says. It was as if someone had stabbed him right through the heart but then somehow he managed to stay strong.

“‘I’m going to get this cleared,’ I thought to myself,” he recalls rationalising.

“However when I tried to call my girlfriend’s phone, it was off. I very desperately needed to talk to her and find out what was happening. But for the next two hours that I was frantically trying to reach her it said mteja hapatikani (the subscriber cannot be reached).” 

Calls to the bride’s parents also went unanswered and he has still not heard from them in spite of his persistent calls ever since. 

BAD NEWS

To find out the identity of the bearer of bad news in the initial call, he sent some money via M-Pesa to the unfamiliar number that had sent the message so that he could get the identity of the sender. He recognised the name as that of an uncle to his bride.

An uncle of hers with whom he had developed a strong bond told him after inquiries that he had been told the woman’s side of the family had decided to postpone the wedding because they had no gifts to bring to the wedding.

“At that moment I just felt I needed to use the bathroom. But once there I got lightheaded, a sudden cold shiver swept down my spine and I fainted. The next I knew my legs from the hip down became stiff. Suddenly I was urinating and I couldn’t control the urination,” he recalls.

“When I regained consciousness at around 10pm I could not feel my legs. My spine was in unexplainable pain,” he says.

At around 12 a.m. when he regained some control over his body, he recalls dragging himself to bed, swallowing painkillers and telling himself the pain would go away eventually.

In the morning he woke up very weak. His bed was wet and that’s when he decided to check himself into hospital.

“I was taken by a Good Samaritan to Mbagathi Hospital where I became unconscious again. The next thing I recall is waking up in Nairobi Women’s Hospital,” said the heartbroken Mr Madaga. “Apart from the emotional scar that will soon fade, now I might never walk again and I don’t know what will become of the urinary incontinence. It just happens, you know. I have no control at all.”

But even in his hospital bed Madaga still recalls all the events leading to this tragedy as if it were yesterday.

“On October 11, we did the pre-wedding at ACK Christ the King Ngado, near Ngong racecourse where I reside,” he says. The theme colours were green and white same as they were going to be for the wedding.

“We went to meet my side of the family in Kamashia sub location, Mabongo in Mumias on June 9 and then her side in Mariakani, Kilifi to meet the parents for introductions on August 11. On October 17 we went to take dowry,” he reminisces.

“On November 1, we attended first banns announcement in my home church, All Saints ACK Eshikufu church, and then we proceeded to Bishop Hannington Memorial Cathedral, Mumias, where she preached. On November 8, we went for a bann service in her home church, St Peters Mariakani.” 

The final announcements were meant to be on November 15, at Christ the King where he was to represent the duo, while she did the same at St Francis ACK Church Karen.

He recites the dates as if they are etched someplace special in his memory. 

The banns had been read out in church all the three requisite times already when the postponement came.

“The last conversation we had was about us going to collect our wedding gown and suit earlier that Tuesday,” he recalls.

DOWRY AGREEMENT

“Mweni had been the one pushing all these events towards our marriage. I thought she switched off the phone to cool off until the tension had died down because I had earlier that weekend declined to sign an agreement the family had demanded I sign declaring that I would pay Sh402,000 within a year to clear dowry,” says Madaga who had already paid about Sh130,000 on previous dowry visits.   

Now he wonders why the lady and her family won’t do the honourable thing and talk things out.

“I had spent so much already in the preparations for the big day let alone the dowry,” he says.

He says that he had spent over Sh600,000 in paying service providers for the day. “I poured my heart and soul into the wedding plans to try and make it the best day it could be. It was going to be a celebration of our love and commitment to each other. So I wanted it to be absolutely wonderful.” 

“In my mind, I had already been fantasising about our lives together, and had just moved into a bigger comfortable two-bedroomed house in Ngado that was going to house my soon-to-be family of two,” he said.

Madaga says he had last dated a girl from Bungoma in 2013 and when Mweni came along, even though he had not initiated things, he fell totally in love because she seemed to have all the qualities he was looking for.

She was humble and God-fearing; one of the key qualities he was seeking in the wife he settles down with. “Although we shared a lot of other similar interests I was particularly impressed by her dedication towards Christianity.”

Now the last few days have been a blur of calling guests and canceling services from his hospital bed.

“Word has been trickling out and people have been rallying for me. I have been getting lots of visitors especially from the church who have been consoling me,” he observes. His dream has slipped away as he watched.

Madaga however says he has decided not to let this tragedy and heartbreak consume him, instead he wants people to learn from his experience.

“It is so painful. But by sharing my story I am hoping that I will be free. That all the disappointment, all the hurt will leave me. I want the world to recognise that spousal and domestic violence is not necessarily physical it is also emotional and can maim,” he says. 

The Sunday Nation attempted to contact Ms Mweni who declined to talk to this newspaper. She said it was a wrong number after she realised the call was from a media house.

A pastor at her church Rev Canon Habil Omung’u said from what the church had learnt, the wedding was called off because Mr Madaga had refuse to honour and sign the agreement that he would clear dowry within a year.

“I think her side of the family felt he had been disrespectful by walking out on the signing of the agreement. And the bride too felt disrespected from what I gathered when I talked to her and her mother,” said Rev Omung’u.