How PHILLIP MOI screwed me up - PLUDA

The Kenyan DAILY POSTEditor's Choice01:34

Part 1

It was supposed to be a marriage made in heaven. Being married into the first family is the stuff of dreams for many women worldwide. Yet Rossana Pluda, a charming and straight-talking Italian lady, achieved what millions of women can’t achieve in a lifetime: she stole the heart of a president’s son.

Philip Moi, the second last born in a family of six, had everything going for him. First he had the looks, an athletic body toned in the military and an innocent face that melts into a smile when he sees good things. But most importantly he had money and the Moi name. His father, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, was the President of Kenya, and so his children enjoyed the trappings of state resources and the best life could offer.

So when Rossana Pluda fell in love with Philip, they hit off big time, their passion fuelled by lavish trips in the parks, rendezvous in expensive hotels and the luxury that comes with unlimited supply of liquid cash. That was in 1984, a year or so after they chanced on each other in a land-buying deal. Nine years later, they tied the knot at a low-key event at the AG’s office witnessed by only five people. 

Like most couples, they were primed to live happily ever after.

But nearly 20 years later, when the couple should be raising their children and enjoying the thrills of parenthood, Rossana cuts a very sorry figure of a victim of a failed marriage to one of Kenya’s richest families. “It’s the most gruesome journey of my life,” she said recently in an interview

The marriage lasted only 14 years, as love turned into a disdainful affair that has now become drama for the courts and TV news. Rossana, now in her 40s, struggles to avoid harsh words and swear phrases while talking about Philip, a man she accuses of screwing up her marriage, ruining her career in architecture and interior design and consigning her to a depression therapist’s watch list. 

“The marriage was wrong from the start,” she says. “There was no communication from his side. He never asked me anything about my past or about who I was, my family or friends. I later discovered I had made a mistake but already with two little kids, a resigned to hoping Philip would change.”

Rossana Mara Pluda is a pale shadow of the voluptuous university student who visited Kenya in 1983 in her late teenage with her lover only to return a year later and elope with Philip. She is frail, talks with a shaky voice and wears teary eyes with protruding cheekbones, perhaps the result of constant sobbing and fighting a man she once loved but now loves to hate. 

If marriage was frustrating, life outside the Moi family has been hellish. She moved out four years ago, two years after Philip “abandoned me and I was living alone in the cottage.” 

She was given custody of the two children, she says, but getting Philip to cough up cash to support them has been hard.

The Nairobi Law Monthly