Vihiga man assaults, sends wife packing for eating his white ants

Fact that food has a special place in the stomachs, sorry, hearts of many Kenyans can never be overemphasized.

In what looks like credence to this adage, a man in Munoywa village, Vihiga County shocked his kinsmen last Wednesday after he assaulted and send his wife packing for; get this, feasting on a delicacy he had hidden without his permission.

The woman, Elsie Khasoha, found herself between the hammer and the anvil after her husband, Lucas Luvai, returned home drunk, only to find his wife had wolfed a bowl of white ants he had concealed in the house.

A drunk Luvai who is a boda boda rider, is reported to have savagely attacked Khasoha in a fit of rage, before chasing her away “to go learn manners from her parents”.

The bizarre incident has left many villagers wondering what had become of the 24-year-old young man, who only got married not long ago.

When asked to explain the incident, a remorseful Luvai said he acted so because he was drunk.

“I had bought the ants for my lunch because my wife is always busy at the market during lunch time to cook for me,” said Luvai, who is regretting his reckless reaction.

“She has refused to forgive me and come back. I have been calling her, but she is not picking my phone calls,” he agonised.

Khasoha, a grocer, works at a nearby market and had a mutual agreement with her husband on lunch arrangements, seeing as they are yet to have children.

“Considering our busy schedules, we agreed to be eating lunch away from home. But because I like white ants, I had bought them so that could I use them with the previous night’s leftovers, only to find them missing,” said Luvai.

Luvai said his wife told him she returned home earlier that evening and found the aroma of the fried insects too hard to resist that she embarked on a frantic search.

When she stumbled up on them on the topmost shelf of their kitchen cupboard, she feasted on them, hoping her husband would understand her explanation.

Unfortunately, a tipsy and furious Luvai would hear none of it. He assaulted her and kicked her out. The fate of the young marriage remains unknown.

Fights over food

Meanwhile, fights over food are not new in Kenya.

It was in a village in Matungu, Kakamega County where a husband clobbered his wife late last year before frog marching her to the village head man, accusing her of ‘attrition of culture’ after she allegedly ate a gizzard meant for him.

Still in the same county, a 68-year-old woman killed her 79-year-old husband in Khayega area in March after he wolfed Githeri leftovers that were meant for supper that evening.

It was reported that the woman pounced on her husband with a kitchen knife and stabbed him to death after he found him clearing the leftovers.

Elsewhere in Machakos County early this year, villagers in Matiliku sub-location were left in shock after a drunk man only identified as Mutiso stabbed his wife to death for serving him a githeri meal that was not salted.

“The man became violent, hitting his wife with a blunt object on the head when she served him salt less food, yet an explanation he had demanded for it was not forthcoming,” the area chief, Alphonce Mueke, told journalists.