Married to a thief at 12, Mother of 10 by 30: Joyce Waruru narrates her painful journey to redemption

Joyce Waruru Mumbi, a mother of 10, shares her harrowing journey from childhood domestic work through an abusive marriage to finding redemption.

Speaking on Citizen TV’s Shajara na Lulu show, Joyce shares her testimony, raw and unfiltered, from where she began domestic servitude at the tender age of 7, revealing a life shaped by abandonment, exploitation, and ultimately the fierce determination to break the cycles of abuse.

Joyce began her first job as a housemaid in 1985 when she was just seven years old, in Ridgeways earning just Ksh.150, her responsibilities being beyond her years, caring for two children her own age.

“I started working as a maid in 1985 when I was seven years old and started with Ksh. 150 here in Ridgeways. I was looking after two little ones like me,” Joyce recalls.

Joyce narrated how her own mother, who was an alcoholic, neglected their family, painting a picture of a household where a child was forced to become the breadwinner while her mother battled addiction.

“My mother was an alcoholic, and she couldn’t raise us properly,” Joyce explains.

The exploitation went deeper than just labour. Joyce’s mother would take her entire salary to fund her drinking habit.

"My mother used to come and take all my salary without wanting to know the challenges I was going through with that job and she would spend that money on drinking, she didn't care about me," she says, the pain still evident in her voice decades later.

By 1992, Joyce had reached her breaking point. At twelve years old, an age when most children are learning multiplication tables, she made a life-altering decision.

"Yes, I turned down the maid job and that's how I got married," she stated.

Her reasoning was heartbreakingly mature for a child. The reason she got married is because she wanted to give her future children the stable home she never had.

"I got married because I didn't want to raise my children the way I was raised. I wanted a home," Joyce revealed.

Joyce explained how circumstance had forced premature adulthood upon her as early as a twelve.

"At the age of 12, I knew I was an adult, I started working for myself at the age of seven," Joyce reflects.

Joyce married Kevin, a man she met in their village where they were living, believing she was building the family foundation she had always craved.

At thirteen, she became pregnant with the first of their five children together. She reflected the way her mother was happy when she told her that she was pregnant, not because she was looking forward to a grandchild but because she felt a burden had been lifted from her.

"Mom was very happy because she felt the burden had been lifted from her," Joyce recalls her mother’s reaction.

What Joyce didn't know was that she had married into a life of crime.

"I didn't know I was married to a thief," she says.

Kevin was a thief who would later be arrested multiple times, and his criminal lifestyle would drag Joyce into dangerous territory.

"I don't want ten lives of hardship, I want five lives of happiness," he would tell her, preferring a short, reckless life to a long, struggling one.

As Kevin's true nature emerged, Joyce found herself trapped.

"Now he's not hiding anything from me, he's showing me his true colors and I wouldn't do anything because we have children together," she explains.

Desperate and struggling, Joyce turned to selling alcohol and eventually began using drugs.

"I started taking those anti-anxiety drugs. And those drugs are amazing. If you take one today, it will make you take five tomorrow and then ten," Joyce describes the progressive grip of addiction.

The criminal lifestyle caught up with them when Kevin and his associates robbed a supermarket.

Joyce found herself imprisoned for 14 days with her children, eventually being helped by a driver from Kawangware. Upon release, she attempted various survival strategies like selling chang'aa (illegal brew) and later clothes, after seeing the chang’aa business isn’t prospering her.

The family eventually moved to Marurui, Kasarani, where Joyce tried to establish stability. However, Kevin's abandonment was imminent.

"At that time, he left me with the burden of a fifth child," she recalls, pregnant and alone.

The relationship continued in cycles of separation and reunion, bound together by family ties and Joyce's hope for change.

"This reconciliation is because of my family and because I loved him as the father of my children," she explains.

The final betrayal came in September 2002, when Joyce discovered Kevin had another wife in Kibera, and both women were pregnant simultaneously.

“In September 2002, I was shocked to hear that he was seeing another woman in Kibera and we were pregnant at the same time,” Joyce narrates.

On discovering this, Joyce confronted Kevin but to no success.

"If I die, go and say I won't be buried at home, I will be buried in Kibera," Kevin told her coldly, revealing not only his bigamy but also his Muslim identity, he was actually named Mohammed.

Joyce reflected how her efforts to reform Kevin were futile in as much as she put effort.

"I felt really bad because I tried so hard to change him, Kevin was born as an only child," Joyce said.

Kevin died on September 13, 2002, leaving Joyce a single mother of 10 children. The grief and pressure led her deeper into alcoholism and promiscuous behavior as survival mechanisms.

"It's like I was going to find someone, and then in the process get a child. Sleeping with anyone. Thank God I didn't get sick," she admits.

"My life turned around and I got saved and that when I really saw that I need to work extra hard because I was, and still am, struggling to change the lives of my ten children," Joyce said.

Her final wisdom is simple but profound: "A life of theft is not good, trust God with your life."