Daniel Ngugi is no deadbeat father.
The banana hawker in Nairobi carries his five- month old baby to work.
His wife died in March this year in a tragic road accident leaving him with three children below the age of five “Bananas, bananas for Sh10…”
He shouts as he goes about his business. Lying peacefully on his chest is a baby suspended on a carrier and a bag slings off his other shoulder.
Meet Daniel Ngugi, 36, a single father of three — twins Michael and Jane Ngugi aged four and Baby Joyce Nyokabi, who is five months.
While runaway fathers are being roasted on Facebook group, Dead Beat Kenyans, baby Joyce’s mother Chebet Ngugi, must be looking from above smiling, knowing that her children are in safe hands. Ngugi and Chebet lived in Kapsabet where he ran a shoe business until April this year when his life suddenly changed.
Chebet had travelled to Ngugi’s rural home in Loitoktok to check on the family land. She was heavily pregnant. Baby Joyce arrived before she could go back to Kapsabet to her husband in March this year.
Two weeks later, they agreed that she joins her husband at Kapsabet. However, that was never to be. Chebet died after a tragic road accident at the infamous Salgaa black spot along Nakuru- Eldoret highway.
Luckily, baby Joyce escaped unhurt. “My wife succumbed to head injuries at Nakuru District Hospital,” says Ngugi. He was left with three children to take care of. Then, baby Joyce was barely two weeks old. “There was nobody from both our families who could help me take care of the children.
Chebet’s mother is sickly while her sisters are still young. Her mother had also remarried after the death of Chebet’s father, so they were living with a step- dad. I come from a single mum family. We are seven of us, but one sibling died. We are all from different fathers.
I was introduced to my father who lives in Lang’ata, but he wanted nothing to do with me. He said he had a family and if his sons got to know about me, they would kill me. My brothers are drunkards and my sisters are not well off,” he says.
He decided he would be a mother and a father to his kids. He moved from Kapsabet to Nairobi to start afresh. “I arrived in Nairobi, late one evening and decided to look for a lodging or a guest house for me to rest hoping to get a house we could rent the following day.
Shock on me, one look at me and my baby, and I was turned away. Finally I spent the night at a friend’s house,” he says. He decided to start selling bananas to earn a living, but, he had no one to babysit.
He decided he would be carrying the baby to work and enroll the twins in a nearby kindergarten. It was a hard role to take on as he had to monitor everything the children did. He had also to learn the basics of childcare.
Ngugi wakes up three to four times at night to feed baby Joyce. “My day starts at 5am. I wake up and prepare breakfast. I then wake the twins, wash them, serve them breakfast and escort them to school. Then I come back to the house and attend to the household chores.
I also cook porridge and take it to the twins by 10am, then take them lunch by 11.30 am. I leave the house with baby Joyce at around noon,” he says. Baby Joyce has been on formula milk ever since her mum died.
Recently Ngugi weaned her. “I prepare mashed bananas and potatoes with spinach. I feed her before we leave and in the evening,” says Ngugi. In baby Joyce’s bag, which he carries every day, is formula milk, hot water in a thermos flask, a feeding bottle, and pacifier.
He also carries extra clothes, diapers and a baby shawl to shield her from wind and dust. He gets his bananas at Marikiti retail market in Nairobi then sells them. “I buy bananas worth Sh300 then sell them to people at malls, offices and exhibitions.
I avoid selling by the roadside to shield baby Joyce from dust, wind and sun. Within two to three hours, they are usually finished and I often go back home at 3pm with a profit of Sh300,” he says. His job has not been without challenges. Some people who see him carrying the baby laugh at him, saying he is being ‘ruled’ by his wife. #SOURCE#
Daniel
Ngugi is no deadbeat father. The banana hawker in Nairobi carries his
five- month old baby to work. - See more at:
http://africaonthespot.com/2014/09/touching-meet-daniel-ngugi-kenyan-hawker-carries-5-month-old-daughter-work/.html#sthash.Uw11XRA9.dpuf
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