BY JAMES MUNYEKI

When they left the courtroom, both sides were in tears.

While the court’s decision disappointed the couple, their adopted children were shedding tears of joy following a favourable ruling.

Mr Simon Wahiu and his wife Lucia Wachuka lost a court battle to eject their adopted 21-year-old twins from their home over claims that they were unruly.

The court ordered the man and the wife to make peace with the twins and in addition give them five acres of land each.

While it is the wish of everyone to be born and brought up in a happy family with loving parents who are always there in the time of need, this was not the case for Samuel Ngure and Mary Wambaire.

Rejection

For the twins from Ol-Kalou, Nyandarua, theirs is a case of being dumped in hospital by their biological parents only to be rejected by their foster parents.

The twins were born in Nairobi in 1991 and dumped at Pumwani Maternity Hospital by their mother. Wahiu and his wife later adopted the twins after the High Court granted them orders to do so.  Ever since their adoption, the twins have been living happily until recently when trouble started.

Turn of events

And in a rare turn of events, the foster parents filed a case in Nyahururu Law Courts seeking to disown and eject the twins from their home accusing them of being unruly.

In the case, the parents had accused Ngure of stealing various items from their home and selling them to neighbours while his twin sister had been accused of abusing her foster mother telling her she was not her biological mother.

But last Tuesday was perhaps their happiest day after Nyahururu Senior Resident Magistrate Alice Mong’are rejected their parents’ application to disown them saying it was filed in bad faith.The magistrate said it was the responsibility of the parents to take care of the adopted children and provide for them.

“You are reaping what you sowed. You cannot run away from your parental responsibility and as a court, we advise you to shun bad influence from your relatives who are very keen to inherit land from you and their only barrier is these two children,” the magistrate ruled.

The Standard caught up with the family at the Nyahururu law courts where they had been ordered to appear for further directions on seeking counselling.

Ngure said trouble started when the parents disclosed to them that they were not their biological parents. They had earlier stopped providing for them.

“They had stopped paying for our school fees forcing us to drop out of school in form three. They forced us to be tilling the land and not going to school,” Ngure said.

Stealing chicken

“There was nothing I could have done but to sell chicken to our neighbours in order to buy clothes for my sister and I. Our parents were not contributing anything for our up keep and instead told us to move away from our home,” he admitted.

“We had nowhere to move to and that is why we are glad that the court has come to our rescue. We would be street children by now,” he says. But their parents insisted the two had been troublesome since they were young. Although she said that she would comply with the court orders, she insisted that the two had to change in order for them to live happily.

“How can Wambaire abuse me telling me that I am not her mother? Is this not disrespect?” she posed.

A report produced in the courts by a children’s officer Mr Albert Wanjohi recommended that the couple be reconciled with their children blaming outsiders for their differences.

Wanjohi said the children had been heartbroken when they learnt that the couple was not their biological parents.

“At one time,” Wanjohi said, “the woman’s daughter had been hospitalised for a while and she was not able to concentrate in school.”

And as the family left the courts, they were left with no choice but to follow the law and learn to live in harmony.