Heavily pregnant Mwende owns up to love triangle that led to her mutilation
Ms Jackline Mwende, the woman who burst into the limelight last year from a hospital bed while claiming that her husband chopped off her hands because she could not bear him a child, is now heavily pregnant, and proudly so.
The father of the baby, whom she is not naming, is a close friend she had been dating before she was attacked.
She conceived about three days before the alleged attack by her husband, and she has no regrets for it because she “opted for this route” out of her deep-rooted desire to bear a child.
Her marriage to Mr Stephen Ngila Nthenge had been childless, and on Tuesday she told the Nation at her Masii home in Machakos that the attack might have had something to do with the fact that, a day earlier, she had been seen in public with the man she was having an affair with.
“We had sought accommodation in Machakos town because I did not want to bring him to my matrimonial bed,” she explained on Tuesday, the pain of the memory from seven months ago squeezing the resultant sheen of pregnancy from her eyes.
“It was on the Saturday of July 23, and after spending time with the other man I went back home, where I lived alone because my husband had taken off three months earlier.”
THE ATTACK
On the night of July 24, a day after the Machakos sojourn, Mwende was attacked with a panga, sustaining deep cuts in her head and hands that forced doctors to amputate both her hands.
The enduring image from that attack is her, desolate and defeated, staring into the camera days later, what remained of her hands heavily bandaged.
“It was after the attack that I found out that my husband had asked my neighbours to spy on me. They were the ones who told him of my trip to Machakos with the man on the Saturday I fell pregnant,” she said.
She, however, refused to disclose any details regarding the man she was having an affair with, but clarified that there had not been any further contact with him as they had only agreed that he impregnates her and they both move their separate ways.
“I wanted a child. I was desperate and it is that yearning… and probably the devil too… that made me stray out of my marriage,” she said. “But I did it so as to save my marriage.”
She discovered she was expectant following days of nausea and aches last month that prompted her to go for a medical checkup. She says she is due “end of February or beginning of March”.
“It was wrong to do it and I know people will judge me harshly for it,” she confessed. “But I am remorseful because I was desperate. Knowing that am alive today, and that I will be a mother, is the silver lining in all the heartache and gloom.”
ATTEMPTED MURDER
Her husband, who has denied attacking her, has been described by his close friends as a “very cool and good guy”, and so the attack in Ilinge village of Masii came as a shock to many.
One man said Ngila was brought up in the church, was an active member of the youth group, a choir member and even held a leadership position in church.
Days after the attack last year, he was arrested and later released on a Sh200,000 bond for attempted murder. The case continues on February 27.
The Daily Nation broke her story soon after she was discharged from Machakos Level 5 Hospital on July 29 last year. Shortly after, she was transferred to the Kikuyu PCEA Hospital for specialised care.
Her hospital bills and the prosthetics she wears today were catered for by LG Electronics, who also took care of the airlift overseas.
Her confession of an extra-marital affair came just days after a German organisation, Merck, through one of its projects, More than a Mother, built her a two-bedroom house at Kathama village. The organisation also set up a shop for her to cater for her upkeep.
