‘Society is never kind to those not married’ moms

When Mary Nduku, a receptionist in Nairobi, learnt of her accidental pregnancy a few years ago, she didn’t know what she had gotten into.

Young, naive and barely out of her teens, she thought she would have an easy rise.

But, as soon as word reached her pastor that she was expectant, an elders’ meeting was quickly convened. By the time the meeting ended, she had been excommunicated from the Africa Inland Church.

Reason? “They said I brought shame to the church,” recalls Ms Nduku, who was then in the church’s choir.

Now a single mother of a three-year-old boy, she says she did not offer any resistance. “I just stepped aside and quit the church.”

That was not all. Her partner deserted her when she decided not to abort the baby. “I could not abort,” she says. “My parents and the entire family were very supportive and they promised to help me bring up my child.”

She says the child’s father only visited them once and in the company of other people. “After he confirmed that the boy’s face resembled his, he never returned,” she says. “He has not supported the child even with a single coin.”

Ms Nduku says that dating as a single mother has also not been easy. “When a man hears that you have a child – especially when it’s a boy – he will flee and even delete your number,” she says. However, Ms Nduku says she does not regret ever bearing the child.

“He is very well taken care of and we do not lack anything,” she adds. “I have opened my doors to my father and brothers who play the role of a father figure, which I understand is very important in the upbringing of children, especially boys.”

Ms Nduku is not alone. In 1973, Ms Angelina Nandwa’s parents forced her into a marriage with a man who was 30 years older.

At the tender age of 18, he bought into her parents’ idea that the marriage would herald stability for her. “Four years down the line, I realised that the man was only looking for a housegirl and not a wife,” she says.

She quit the marriage but discovered that she was pregnant. Ms Nandwa then embarked on the life of a single mother which lasted the next 13 years.

Like Ms Nduku, she faced rejection from the church as well as the community. “Your married female friends shun you because they see you as a threat; they think you will snatch their husbands away from them,” she adds.

The experience also taught Ms Nandwa, who has since remarried, how to tackle the biggest question that most single mothers face: mummy, what happened to my dad? “I set my son free early enough,” she offers. “I told him his father’s name and where he lives.” She says this gave her son a chance to choose which parent he would want to live with.

“Through interaction, I think he has understood why I had to walk out on his father,” she says.

Ms Nandwa, who founded the Single Mothers Association of Kenya in 1991 to help other women in a situation like hers, however, says she was once heartbroken when a certain school insisted on her writing down the name of her child’s father.

“I stormed the school, asked them if I had any fees balance for them to make such a demand, and withdrew my son from that school,” she says.