A secondary school teacher in Ol Kalou is camping outside a hospital demanding the immediate release of his wife, who was forced into quarantine on Thursday.
Meru Mathenge, who also writes for the teachers’ publication Education News, has since Friday been camping at JM Memorial Hospital in sackcloth, demanding answers from medics who recommended quarantine for his wife. The couple claims the move was maliciously orchestrated.
Jane Njeri, a trader at Ol Kalou fresh produce market, was taken into quarantine on allegations that she had travelled to Tanzania. But they say she had returned from Migori county where she had gone to get sweet potatoes and arrowroots.
Njeri has been confined at Nyandarua High school in Ol Kalou since Thursday evening. On Sunday, she went on a hunger strike, demanding justice.
Senior security bosses in Nyandarua are distancing themselves from the matter while the medics, who allegedly examined Njeri and recommended quarantine, have refused to speak.
Speaking to the Star on the phone, Njeri said she left for Migori on Friday, April 17. While at Shivoko, Migori, the following day, a fellow trader at Ol Kalou market, Piera Muthoni, allegedly called to warn her that she would be quarantined for 14 days if she did not bring her and some other women some stock.
Njeri said she told Muthoni that she would not oblige “because the women owe her Sh105,000 which they declined to pay last year”. The matter is in court.
She said upon her return last week on Thursday, she got a phone call from Ol Kalou police station even before she settled in the house. Her husband accompanied her to the station where they were kept waiting for three hours for “some doctors who were to examine and test me for coronavirus”.
“I was later whisked to Nyandarua High without any medical examination which up not happened yet,” she said on Sunday.
Njeri says the business rivals who called to warn her boast of having police lovers who will help them.
Her husband, Mathenge, said there are women cartels in Ol Kalou market who have vowed to persecute his wife and are using authorities in Nyandarua to break up his family.
He said that on Wednesday, he happened to pass at the market and Muthoni told him, “We are aware that your wife will be quarantined once she steps back in Ol Kalou from Migori.”
He asked how she knew that yet she is not a police officer, but she did not explain, only for it to happen, Mathenge said.
Mathenge has been left to take care of their two daughters aged four and a half, and three.
On Friday, an officer from the children’s department and some officials from JM Memorial took the minors to their maternal great grandmother who lives in Ol Kalou alleging that Mathenge is mentally challenged, he said. He went for the children.
He has vowed to press for justice for his wife “even if it means dying on the case”.
“A soldier dies only once. I don’t know why quarantine is being taken as a joke, that someone would use it to break families. Mine is now an example of a broken family. What kind of a government is this?” He asked.
Contacted for comment, Muthoni confirmed to the Star that she indeed called Njeri while at Migori and advised her to present herself to the police upon her return and negotiate for self-quarantine.
Muthoni told the Star that after calling Njeri, she told the area chief that Njeri “had travelled to Tanzania and will come to kill us with coronavirus”. “The chief notified the OCS. I also went to the police station later and spoke with the OCS,” she said.
Contacted for comment, county commissioner Boaz Cherutich referred the Star to Nyandarua Central deputy county commissioner Gideon Oyagi saying he was not briefed on the matter.
“I don’t have the details since I was at Njabini when it happened. Please with Oyagi, he is the one who coordinated the matter,” he said.
Oyagi too said he did not have details saying he only spoke with the doctor in charge of disease surveillance after the media started asking questions. He referred the Star to Dr Richard Chege who allegedly examined Njeri and found it fit to confine her.
“Some of these matters are technical and I may not comment about them. Please call that doctor, and get back if you find gaps in what he tells you,” he said
Chege, however, declined to comment and referred the Star to Dr Martha Mwathi, the county director of medical services – who would not take calls or respond to a text message.
Nyandarua North Knut branch has also joined to express solidarity with their own. Assistant executive secretary Richard Wambugu said it is laughable and makes a mockery of the government efforts to defeat Covid- 19 that business rivalry is being used to punish innocent people.
Wambugu said if Njeri’s confinement was legitimate, she came into contact with her husband and daughters who should have been quarantined as well. “The driver who transported her luggage from Migori and other traders who were in contact with her and the driver should have been quarantined as well.”
“If she must be quarantined, it should have been self-quarantine with her family,” he said.
Edited by R.Wamochie