When Kenyan father found it easy to murder his own daughter IN us

By Chris Wamalwa

The conversation at the dinner tables, places of work and other social gatherings within the Kenyan community in the US this week has predominantly been about Sunday’s brutal murder of a Kenyan girl in the State of Indiana by her own father.

The stabbing to death of 6-year-old Shirley Mundia, who had just graduated from kindergarten by her father, Edward Mundia Mwaura, is an incident that is sitting very heavily on the hearts of the Kenyan community in South Bend, Indiana. When the story broke out, many Kenyans living here experienced different emotions. As time passes, this Kenyan community here in South Bend would now have to contend with the dubious tag of having harboured a murderer among them.

This incident has invoked memories of two other recent cases of tragic domestic violence within the Kenyan community in the US — incidents that have raised questions as to what could be happening in the Kenyan family in the US. In October, 2010, apparently angry over a suspected affair, a 43-year-old Kenyan born Justus Ogendi Kebabe struck his wife in the head with a golf club and strangled her with an electrical cord until she died, then drugged two of his children and killed them while one struggled and begged for him to stop.

I attended the burial service in Jersey City, New Jersey and the faces of those innocent children lying in caskets dead at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect them are images I’ll carry to my grave. And of course there is the most recent infamous case of the Kenyan cannibal. Round about this time last year, the world woke up to reports that a Kenyan college student, Alexander Kinyua, had killed and eaten body parts of a man staying at his parents apartment in Joppatowne, Maryland.

Even though one can argue that such appalling acts are happening everywhere and not necessarily confined to the Diaspora, it’s clear that the frequency with which such acts are taking place in the Diaspora family is a red-spot sign that the Kenyan Diaspora house is not in order. It is an open secret that domestic violence among Kenyans in the US has escalated in the last ten years.

Experts have attributed this to stress among Kenyan men brought about by factors among them, the continued erosion of Kenyan men’s earning power and influence on family matters. Changing family roles in the US are now such that the Kenyan woman finds herself shouldering the roles of sole provider traditionally reserved for men. Nowadays, jobs are hard to come by as the effects of the recent recession bite and the country implement stricter immigration rules. Research has shown that women find it easier to adjust to life in America than men.

When a family is starting up or establishing itself in America, it common for the man and woman to work multiple jobs and long hours. Most jobs that would be available for such people are those at the lower end and the ones that pay minimum wages.

In most cases, these are what one would call ‘low esteem’ jobs that even though enable one to pay bills and start up in family life, in the long run, one loses self-confidence and esteem — the results of which is stress. Coupled with rules considered harsh to men, some Kenyan men are increasingly finding themselves jobless, frustrated at a future that holds no hope and thrown out of matrimonial homes because of domestic violence.

Unfortunately, the people who bear the brunt of these stresses and frustrations are the defenseless immediate family members. It is clear that the Diaspora should openly discuss this issue because nothing will ever justify the taking of innocent life and these acts should be condemned and perpetrators brought to justice.