Ramadhan Ibrahim Nderitu, a Kenyan man who once worked as a driver and heavy equipment operator, is today visually impaired, broke and dependent on the goodwill of strangers, a fall he traces directly to his second marriage.
His first marriage to Grace Wanjiru Patel began as a school romance in 1992. The two met as classmates, started dating in Form 2, and never parted.
They wed in 2001 and went on to have two sons, Jake Ibrahim and Raji Patel. When Grace passed away in 2013, Ramadhan was left to raise the boys alone, the eldest aged about six and the younger just four.
“I did everything a mother would do for them and I didn’t remarry because I was scared that they would be mistreated,” he said.
How the Second Marriage Began
The remarriage was not something Ramadhan sought. In 2015, an unusually high electricity bill of KSh 15,000 sent him to Kenya Power to lodge a complaint.
A technician arrived to inspect the meter, and that encounter led him to the woman who would become his second wife. His own mother encouraged the union after the woman charmed her way into the family, buying groceries and calling her “mum.”
“Honestly, I didn’t marry her because I loved her or anything or that I wanted to get married,” Ramadhan said. It was his sons who kept asking to visit her, and she was consistently kind to them.
By April 2015, the losses had begun. His new wife allegedly emptied their home while he was away, loading a lorry with furniture and disappearing. She returned four days later with nothing. What followed was years of elaborate fraud.
She told Ramadhan she had connections to secure contracts worth KSh 270,000. He deposited money into a Cooperative Bank account in Nakuru, sometimes KSh 10,000 or KSh 20,000 at a time, believing the funds were building their future.
Sadly, there were no real contracts. The devastated man claimed his second wife said they had purchased a matatu registered with a popular SACCO.
When she called to say the vehicle had been involved in an accident near the Vineyard Hotel and needed KSh 20,000, he paid. The matatu did not exist. It was her boyfriend who had caused the accident, and the money went to cover his costs.
A man she introduced as the SACCO chairman was also part of the scheme. She accompanied him to Nyeri for five days on the pretence of year-end SACCO accounting, with Ramadhan funding the trip.
He later realised his wife was dating the man.
The marriage collapsed in April 2017 after he discovered a hospital document showing she had a 10-year contraceptive coil fitted, contradicting her claim of pregnancy, alongside a receipt indicating she had been treated for a sexually transmitted infection.
Ramadhan says that shortly after he ended the marriage, the woman served him a drink, and his health deteriorated from that point. He now lives with severe constipation, persistent ear ringing, joint stiffness and deteriorating vision, conditions he cannot afford to treat.
