It would be a dream come true for many Kenyans to travel far from home, start a new life, and make a fortune and only return periodically to the admiration of family and neighbours.
And while adventure and ambition may drive many men away from their homes, for greener pastures, few who make this decision succeed, in their prodigal quest.
Barely a fortnight ago, a frail Wilson Numbi Miatu returned home to Kirinyaga County after he went missing for 49 years.
The 83-year-old man left his home in Kiamaciri village in Mwea West Sub-county at the age of 34 after selling his father’s property at Kagio town in 1973 only to be found alive in Lamu County, 49 years later.
Miatu had two wives, Mary Numbi and Milka Numbi, and had sired 10 children when he left home.
According to his son, Paul Murimi, who was only three years old when his father went missing, they found him in Mpeketoni, Lamu County, in a local hospital after his photo was circulated on social media by health workers.
“I think my father thought he would die after spending money when he sold grandfather’s property,” said Murimi.
His story is not unique, it's as old as the biblical times of the prodigal son and it continues to repeat itself in every generation.
While Miatu was welcomed home by his son and wife, most prodigal husbands are not so lucky, like in the case of Peter Oyuka who left his Makale Village home in Malava, Kakamega County in 1974, at the ripe old age of 84.
Oyuka was disappointed when he came back home to find his two wives, whom he left behind 47 years ago, had remarried.
In his defence, he claimed he left the village for the urban centre in search of a well-paying job to look after his two wives and five children.
He made brief returns to Kakamega in 1983, 1992 and 1996, but did not visit home.
His wives, companionless and lonely, decided to remarry shortly after Oyuka deserted them in 1974.
Oyuka returned in September 2021 to a handful of relatives who recognised him.
“I wish my wives were here today to welcome me home,” he said, shifting his expression from delight to regret, almost instantly.
Oyuka’s daughter-in-law had, actually, mistaken him for a trespasser.
Tales of people leaving their homes for decades only to return poor, elderly and desolate are in plenty.
A story goes how in 2008, Mumias Police Station became a camp for displaced people, hosting Wangas who left home in the 1950s for Voi, Mombasa, and Baringo and never came back. Neither could they trace their way back home.
One Mayaka Wyckliff admitted when he first moved to the Coast, he did not visit home for seven years, but it was not intentional.
“I must say it is not intentional! Life in Kenya is so hard that without a stable income plus family in town, one keeps on postponing hoping to get something sizeable to take home and before you know it you have done 10 years,” he stated.
Wyckliff observed, “Africans believe that anyone who has left home must come back with goodies and money. This puts pressure on people who then decide to die in silence instead of going back home to be laughed at. Based on my experience, I don’t think I can judge them.”
A man nick-named Ksb Reborn shared an emotional post on social media saying he grew up in a village, deep in the then forested parts of Trans Mara district.
“In that village, my mother and I faced challenges, problems, ridicule and all sorts of mockery. It turned me into a man who can never trust anyone and anything. I became a recluse, even among many,” he recalled.
Reborn left home in 2011 and worked in most major cities. He said he goes back home once in a while, but every time he visits his childhood home, sad, nostalgic memories flood his mind.
“I end up wishing I that I’d never have to return to that village again. But I am bound by culture and norms, I will still go back,” he stated.
One Mwangi Mumero recalled how he met a man deep in Shamanek Forest near Nyahururu in 2006.
“He was about 70 years then, had left Murang’a in the 1950s. According to him, he had an elder sister who lived in Njoro, whom he last met in the 1960s. He had no wife and children. He had lost touch with his family. Life was cheap in the forest where they did the shamba system,” Mumero said.
Men always leave
So what is it, then, that pushes men away from the homes they have known all their lives, to foreign lands where they know no one?
According to Sociologist Sammy Njayakio, throughout civilisations, the behaviour is not unique to Kenya.
He noted that statistically, few people come back home after they have been gone for extended periods of time.
“Those rare cases of people who come back home are because, their relatives have been searching for them and bring them back home,” he said.
Njayakio said majority of those who leave home and return are middle-aged men and they often leave due to land feuds, family disagreements, poverty and ambition.
“They are running away from something, often conflict, or facing consequences for their actions. Alternatively, they could be seeking out wealth and jobs in the expectation it will change their lives,” he explained.
As a sociologist, he said, it was commonplace for men to do so in the past but end up in some other part of the country for decades. But even today, men still run off to different counties and wind up stranded and never return.
“In modern society when men disappear from their homes for long periods of time, they fly out of the country, and their wives claim their husbands are abroad but they genuinely do not know where or for how long they will be away,” he said.
The reason more men are more likely than women to disappear and then return is because while women can leave home and start new families, men find it difficult to settle down and start new families away from what they consider “home”.
“It is also observed that most of the men who leave their homes are doing so to escape the poverty and misery in their homesteads, under the guise that they are searching for work or a better life, unlike in wealthy families were the solutions to their problems are within reach,” he stated.
Njayakio said many of the men who come back empty-handed only return to die and find peace closer to home.
“I believe the best way to handle such elderly people who return is to listen to their stories and embrace them because, despite their mistakes, they are still hoping to be embraced and welcomed home in their sunset years,” he observed.
Counselling needed
Counselling Psychologist with the Institute of African families Emma Njeri explained that when a loved one returns after they have left for decades, this opens old wounds.
“The wife, children, siblings, already mourned the loss when their relative left, and then to see him return, they are overcome the grief and anger, sometimes confusion on how to respond to this discovery,” she explained.
She noted, often times the prodigal relative is likely have left due to trauma that they experienced and is relieved when they are settling down with their family.
“This trauma was so deep that they do not know how to verbalise it, they just feel a sense of hurt and choose to run, to escape these feelings, oftentimes it can be triggered by something so simple,” Ms Njeri said.
Njeri explained often people who abandon their families are undergoing mood disorders that contribute to the behaviour which means while they will have periods of happiness in exile, they still feel loss and disappointment of what they left behind.
She observed that many of the men rationalise they should leave before they are abandoned themselves, so they jump the gun and abandon the family to avoid the hurt, but this often backfires as it only creates a cycle of trauma in the family.
“Unfortunately, while the man may be experiencing mood disorders, he creates anxiety and panic disorders in the family which leaves the family scared for decades,” she explained.
Ms Njeri said this leads to dysfunctional families where the children have fear of abandonment and have to deal with the situation by avoiding attachments to people for fear of being abandoned like they experienced.
Leaving their families grieving the loss of their disappearance and after decades, many people will have processed the emotions and found a way to cope without this person.
And their returning home just brings confusion emotionally and socially, for the family and the individually.
“Likely the man who left comes back and has no explanation for why he left because they still cannot explain what traumatised them,” she stated.
She said the family should undergo a counselling debriefing session because they have to process the complex emotions of what this disappearance has done to them.
“Social perceptions of the family often puts pressure on the relatives to accept this person when the truth is it is not easy because, it creates a cycle of trauma in the family where the children feel they were abandoned, and will have anxiety in their relationships in future,” she said.
