A Kenyan man has opened up about a deeply painful experience involving his absent father, describing how the man he spent years longing to meet ultimately left him broke, hungry and heartbroken while he was still a university student.
Writing online, the man recalled turning 18 and quietly searching for his father without telling his mother, who had already warned him against it.
“Mother had already warned me about it, so I did it without telling her,” he wrote.
The reunion initially seemed promising. The two began spending time together, and his father even introduced him to his other children.
When Hope Turned Into Betrayal
Everything changed after the man joined campus. His father began requesting money, promising each time to pay it back. Desperate for a father’s approval, the young man kept giving in.
The situation reached its lowest point when his father asked for his entire first HELB loan disbursement, swearing to return it within two days. He never did. He stopped picking up calls entirely, leaving his son stranded on campus with no money for food.
“I was in campus starving because my supposed dad had conned me,” he wrote.
Swallowing his pride, he returned to his mother, who, he says, still laughs about it to this day. He eventually blocked his father, processed the hurt and focused on moving forward with his life.
The story did not end there. After graduating and securing his first job, his father reappeared. The reason? He claimed to be suffering from kidney failure and needed financial assistance.
The man’s response was blunt and unapologetic. “I told him I don’t do charity to strangers,” he wrote.
Reflecting on why young people, particularly boys, seek out absent parents in the first place, he was candid about the deeper pull behind such decisions.
“Sometimes you just want to know your roots and where you come from, and it’s even worse when you are a boy,” he wrote, describing the search as one driven by identity rather than naivety.
He closed with a personal vow, saying he would never abandon his own children, and attributed the painful pattern of father-seeking to the identity crisis it creates in those left behind.
