Body in a sack dumped in pond and tragedy of broken children

Mary Wambui Kamangara — believed to be the common law wife of Joseph Kori Karuwe — of Garden Estate, Nairobi, is dead.

Ms Kamangara’s body was found in a dam, wrapped in a bedsheet and stuffed in a sack, on Thika Road.

Her presumed husband and a woman said to be his mistress, Ms Judy Wangui Mungai, are in police custody over the death.

Mr Kori, 41, appears to be a very wealthy man. Ms Mungai lives at Fourways Junction, on Kiambu Road, in a two-bedroomed apartment whose rent is estimated at Sh60,000 and would have cost about Sh12 million to buy. She has lived there for two years.

Photos and videos on social media show Mr Kori and his rather extended family lived an affluent life — expensive cars, exotic holidays, good living and good food, eaten in generous portions.

DISCIPLINE

Another woman has come out of the Kayole woodwork to claim that Mr Kori is her beloved husband, with whom she has a child that he educates.

The woman claims that he walked out on them. There are four tragedies in this story.

The first is Ms Kamangara, 39, whose life has been so brutally ended and who, whatever her sins, did not deserve to end up in a sack, dumped like so much rubbish in a pond. No human being should ever have to come to such an end.

The second tragedy is the abandoned family — if, indeed, it is Mr Kori’s — eking out a living in the hardship of Kayole as he luxuriated in Garden Estate and Kiambu Road, driving expensive cars, enjoying expensive and beautiful mistresses and taking holidays whose cost could have paid rent for that family in a more secure environment for years.

The third is the story that this incident tells us about the society that we have become. Civilisation is the product of disciplined conduct.

FAMILY

Acting as you feel, to satisfy desires, seeking pleasure and gratification, to the exclusion of all else, is not the way to build anything of value.

A society of people without social, sexual, financial, professional or spiritual values is a bad, chaotic place.

What kind of love could you possibly — and humanly — feel for a spouse who abandons you in a slum, gets rich and sets up house with another person, for years and years?

The fourth, and biggest, tragedy are the three children in this disaster. The family is a factory.

It manufactures not just wealth but citizens. A defective family produces defective citizens, damaged goods who, far from being able to take over a nation and productively manage it, are themselves in need of care.

Our tragedy may well be that our society — consumed by the pursuit of money and sexual gratification — is unable to produce upright, productive citizens.

WEALTH

Of those children, the luckiest might be the one in Kayole because there is a caring adult in the child’s life.

The others, if the father is not set free, will be shopped out to relatives, fights over property will ensue and, unless someone can be found to love and care for them, their future is bleak.

When I was growing up, wealth among traders appeared cyclical. The richest folks were distributors who would have big shops and many distribution vehicles.

Every five years or so, one would go bust and another would take over, be rich for a couple of years and he, too, would be auctioned or otherwise sink back into ordinariness.

Much of the wealth being flashed around by ‘tenderpreneurs’ and traders has no roots.

When you remove their corrupt connections, it vanishes within months, if not weeks.

WELFARE

I came to understand that many traders and so-called wealthy folks have problems making a distinction between cash flow and profits.

It’s all “shop” or “business” money; it is my business, therefore, it is my money, so goes the reasoning.

But there are banks, suppliers and landlords whose claim, unfortunately, is bigger than the traders’.

God forbid, but there may be nothing for those children apart from holiday photos and a few second-hand cars.

I can only pray for them and wish them well. I also hope that a knight in shining armour, not interested in anything but their welfare, will take them in and raise them to be the upright citizens this country needs.

* * *

I can’t wait to buy Miguna Miguna’s latest book. One thing you can rely on Mr Miguna for: Out of every adventure comes a book.

I have been reading tantalising news reports boiled off the book about what was going on behind the scenes during the election and mock swearing-in of Mr Odinga as the “people’s president” — a controversial concept which, according to Mr Miguna, Mr Odinga didn’t really want to do but was talked into by his children and a vindictive tycoon.

I was particularly fascinated by an account of how a group of hackers in a “secure” location in Tanzania allegedly broke into IEBC servers and stole, or “obtained”, data showing that Mr Odinga won the election.

I am sure there is no appetite for re-opening the election but, if it were up to me, I would not leave all that unfinished business to contaminate the next one. I’d find the truth and learn from it.

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