Son accuses mother of infidelity

By Kenan Miruka A man shocked an elders meeting in Kenyenya District when he asked his mother to declare the paternity of his siblings including himself.
The woman had called the elders to arbitrate in a dispute pitting her against her two sons after one of them threatened to assault her with a panga at Randani village.
The brothers accused their mother of disparaging them by claiming their children were sired by outsiders in connivance with their wives.
She had further alleged that her daughters-in-law had hatched plans to poison her sons.
The seven elders arrived at the home in the morning and their leader put the parties in the dispute through the motions of resolving the dispute.
First to air grievances was the complainant, the mother, who narrated before the elders in detail how her eldest son had threatened to kill her.
"My son turned against me and attempted to finish me with a panga when I went to greet my grandsons," the woman in her 50’s told the gathered elders.
When the elder son’s turn to speak came, he stood up hastily.
"This woman has accused me of threatening her but has not explained how it all started. How will you feel if your mother said before your wives that you are not the father of your own children?" he posed.
He continued: "Now that she has cast doubt over who fathered our own children, I want her to tell each of us who our real father is, whether it is this old man or the three men with whom she has affairs with yet our father is alive," bellowed the man.
Big shameThe elders, some of them wizened with age, stooped their heads in a bid to hide from the shame of the man’s words as he went on to chide his mother.
He turned to his father and asked if he was really in charge of the home yet his mother moved around with known men without a shame.
"Are you really in control of what happens in this home? I am sure this woman fed you with ‘poesha’ (a love potion) to silence you. I want to be shown my real father," he shouted.
Efforts by his younger brother and one elder to calm him down were futile as the exasperated man went on with his tirade.
The man’s 80-year-old father, an elder at a local church, cursed as he moved away from the gathering to his bedroom.
"This woman hates us so much and I sometimes doubt if she is my mother. It is a shame she pretends to be a devoted Christian singing in church every weekend," he added.
Table evidenceHe told the elders to ask his mother to table evidence indicating his two children had been sired by somebody else.
Too ashamed to speak, the mother sat pensively, occasionally indicating to one elder that her son had gone berserk.
When the meeting degenerated into a shouting match between the son and his mother, the chairman of the elders’ council called it off.
"This is the problem with the youth. Respect for elders is alien to them unlike in our days when you did not expose your parent in public like that," muttered an elder as they walked out.
They resolved to make a second attempt at resolving the dispute and uniting the family.