A Kenyan single father of two, Antony Ng’ang’a, has opened up on how he lived in an abusive marriage that culminated in his wife abandoning him with a three-month-old baby.
Speaking candidly on Citizen TV’s Shajara with Lulu show, Antony recalled meeting his then-wife in 2016 and they got married immediately. According to him, their marriage was troubled from the very beginning. “I would leave for work at 5 a.m. and come back around midnight. One day a neighbour called me and informed me there was a man in our house and he left immediately after I got into the house.
This was after the neighbours told me they spotted my wife with other men,” he recalled.
Anthony painfully recalled meeting his wife holding hands with other men on the streets and whenever he confronted them, they would allegedly beat him up.
“She started drinking and I would meet her holding hands with other men on the road and every time I asked, they would attack and beat me up,” he said. Antony stopped sharing his bed with his wife and moved into their children’s bedroom, until his wife, one night informed him that she was done with their marriage and left.
“She took the children with her but returned them in the morning including the one who was three months then, I begged her to stay especially for the lastborn who I believed needed her mother, but she refused,” he said.
Juggling work and raising his two children became a challenge for him, causing him to lose many job opportunities because of the children. He recalled how they could not afford food or house rent and sometimes they would end up being homeless. “I would leave my children unattended and go look for work and this used to worry me a lot, sometimes I would come home with nothing forcing me to give them water because I did not have food for them,” he said.