Kenya Widow Dealt Second Blow at the Funeral Home

The family of Vincent Kamau Nyoike, a longtime worker at the U.S. Embassy here who was killed in the Aug. 7 terrorist bombing, has gone to great pains to prepare his final resting place.

His death notice and photograph have been published. Grieving friends and relatives have gathered night after night for prayers and refreshments. His grave has even been dug beside his father’s in the clan’s ancestral village.

But more than two weeks after the bombings here and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Nyoike’s body still has not budged from the funeral home. U.S. officials, who are footing the burial expenses of the 34 Kenyan employees killed at the embassy, have been barred by a court order from releasing Nyoike or paying his death benefits.

To the surprise of almost everyone involved, the unassuming 53-year-old shipping clerk was living a double life. It seems Nyoike had two wives, two sets of five children each and two homes about 40 miles apart.

Few people realized it until he turned up dead--and two sobbing widows came forward to lay claim to him and his worldly possessions. The newfound relations have been feuding ever since.

“We never dreamed something like this could happen to our family,” said Stanley Ngugi Kamau, 32, the eldest of Nyoike’s children from his marriage to Hannah Ngendo Kamau, the first of his wives. “You can imagine the great stress it is creating.”

Caught in the family cross-fire are U.S. Embassy officials, who are hard pressed to determine which wife has the legal right to Nyoike’s benefits, including his final paycheck and a sizable pension accrued during 20 years of employment.

An embassy spokesman said it is unclear if Nyoike’s personnel records even survived the blast. In an indication of the embassy’s bewilderment, U.S. officials paid out $800 in funeral costs to Nyoike’s first wife but released his Mazda sedan to his second wife. A court order issued last week has put a stop to any further disbursements until the tangled family relations can be sorted out.

“There is no question that this is being made more difficult by the fact that our personnel office suffered considerable damage because it was located in the most severely damaged part of the building,” embassy spokesman Chris Scharf said. “It is a tremendous task dealing with the many mundane issues coming up, much less a difficult and complex issue like this.”

It is not unusual for a man in Kenya to have more than one wife; polygamy is an accepted practice among most ethnic groups here, including Nyoike’s Kikuyu, the country’s largest. But the multiple marriages usually are celebrated openly; under Kikuyu custom, the first wife participates in the wedding ceremonies of subsequent wives.

Nyoike’s second bride, Josinda Katumba Kamau, 40, says she knew all about her husband’s other family of 32 years, but his first wife and her children insist that they never heard of Katumba Kamau, let alone consented to her nuptials. Ngendo Kamau, 53, even questions the validity of her husband’s second wedding, which Katumba Kamau insists was performed according to the same Kikuyu customs as his first one--just 14 years later.

“He paid a dowry of 10,000 shillings [$170], one cow and five goats, one of which was slaughtered,” said James Mumo Mutisya, Katumba Kamau’s uncle, who negotiated the 1980 wedding.

Both families met with their lawyers in court Tuesday, trying to sort out their differences before a scheduled session with a judge today.

Katumba Kamau, the second wife, makes no secret of her interest in holding up her husband’s burial. With five children, she says she needs his pension to survive. She is insisting that Nyoike be buried at their home in the Machakos area of Nairobi, even though his clan has already prepared a grave in Gichungo. Katumba Kamau said Tuesday that she would relent only if her husband’s first wife agrees to share his death benefits.

Ngendo Kamau and her family say they are still flabbergasted by the sudden revelation of her husband’s double life, but they are mulling over Katumba Kamau’s demands so that Nyoike can be laid to rest. The two families, meeting with lawyers in a courthouse hallway, refused to even make eye contact, but both sides held out hope that a compromise can be reached.

“We don’t want to get into this tug-of-war,” said Simon Ngugi Kamau, 30, one of Nyoike’s three sons by his first wife. “We are supposed to give our dad the respect that he deserves.”