When family and friends vanish: A stroke survivor's lonely struggle

Stephen Phinehas Ndivo,54 years old diagonised with stroke and spine injuries at his residence in Tassia ,Nairobi on December 28, 2024. [David Gichuru, Standard]

As families geared up to meet and make merry during the festive season, Stephen Phinehas Ndivo was counting his sixth year without any relatives to invite or surprise him with a gift.

Ndivo, 54, resides in Nairobi's Tassia estate, not leading a normal life, but one filled with struggles after being diagnosed with a stroke and spine injuries that left him partly incapacitated in 2018.

Today, Ndivo, a former preacher, lives alone after being allegedly abandoned by both family and friends.

He lives in a tiny house, with medical records scattered around and a table on one side packed with medication to alleviate the back pain that has confined him mostly to his bed.

As he welcomes us into his bedsitter, the struggle is evident. He slowly inches towards the wall for support to stand up but uses a walking stick to help him move around when performing his daily tasks with his right hand.

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"It was on October 1, 2018, when I was eating supper with my family when suddenly I started having trouble speaking," Ndivo recalls.

He adds: "I couldn't understand what my children and wife were saying. I felt confused, my speech became slurred, and I suddenly lost my balance and fell."

He was rushed to hospital, where a check-up was carried out in the emergency room, revealing that his blood pressure was abnormal.

After all the tests, Ndivo’s doctors concluded that he had suffered an ischemic stroke, which also caused paralysis on the left side of his body. The doctors identified high blood pressure as the main cause.

Ndivo says the news hit him hard, especially since he had never had a history of high blood pressure or related conditions in his family.

He began the difficult journey of living each day with medication.

"I have taken all sorts of painkillers, but the pain just keeps getting worse. I cannot sit for more than 30 minutes because of the back pain," he shares.

He continues: "It’s really hard, especially at night. I only sleep for a few minutes, then wake up and start moving around the house with my walking stick until the pain subsides."

Ndivo says he worked in Kisumu until misfortune struck. After treatment, he returned to work until 2019, when his condition worsened.

"When I came back to Nairobi in 2019, I discovered that my wife and two children had left the house," he says.

To make matters worse, he claims, they took most of the household items with them, leaving him to start life afresh.

Due to his condition, he has become heavily dependent on others. Unfortunately, he says, many have grown tired and abandoned him.

"I have lost 99.9 per cent of my friends. I don’t know where they are; many of them have blocked my phone number. I have even been neglected by the church I was serving in," he says, adding that whenever he reaches out, people treat him like a beggar.

Thankfully, some relatives sent him Sh2,600 for Christmas, but he says his biggest wish is for someone to offer a helping hand.

Ndivo says his attempts to reunite with his family have been unsuccessful, but he hopes that it will happen one day soon. The loneliness, he adds, is weighing him down.

"Living alone in this condition, without your children to cheer me up, is the worst experience one can go through. I don’t know where they are after six years," he says, wiping away tears.

"Some of my relatives live just a kilometre away, but I keep pleading with them to come and wash clothes for me. I got tired of asking, so I asked God to show me a way to do it on my own," he shares.

However, he remains optimistic that his prayers will one day be answered and that he will regain his strength to continue nourishing the souls of others, as a preacher, as he did before he became ill.