By Eric Ayiro,
KAKAMEGA, Kenya, May 25- Truphena Ndonga Aswani cannot access her 3-acre piece of land in Linao village in Siaya which she bought and stayed on with her late husband whom she admitted killing in self-defense during a quarrel.
The court ruled that Truphena was provoked to kill James Oyengo Obochi on December 14, 2021, and sentenced her to a day in prison.
The mother of one is happy she escaped the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for the capital offence she faced but from her talk, it’s apparent she has yet another hurdle which looks even tougher: coming to closure with the killing.
After serving the short and unexpected sentence, Aswani spent months at her brother’s home in Kakamega before going to Turbo where she works as a house girl as she waits for a buyer for the land in Siaya.
“I cannot set foot in it for cultural and other reasons like the bad memories of killing my lover and the bit that not everyone has accepted the circumstances of the killing. Not everyone appreciates that it happened in self-defense,” she said during an interview with Shahidi News.
“I want to come to closure with what happened yet the biggest step in achieving this is finding a new home, the reason why I want to sell the land is so that I can get money to settle elsewhere, but I am yet to find a buyer.”
The former Linao village elder is using her network of friends who empathize with her in trying to find a buyer.
She has also, among other things, asked for forgiveness even from the family and friends of her husband whom she still labels “the best man I knew just that he was extremely violent”.
This labelling emanates from the fact that Aswani’s previous marriage collapsed since she couldn’t bear a child. She thought she was impotent until she met Obochi.
“He made me to be called a mother and that was enough to make me bear with his violence,” she said of her husband whom she married in 2008.
On the day of the killing, the husband walked home drunk and picked up a machete demanding to sell their family land.
He threatened to chop off her head if she failed to hand over the land’s title which was in her custody.
“He had in the past beaten me until I almost passed on and was hospitalized, I understood his words and when he trained the machete on me I snatched it from him and hit back … he sadly passed on,” she told the High Court in Siaya.
Justice Roselyne Aburiri noted that Aswani was a victim of perpetual domestic violence from her husband evidenced by scars on her head-backside and the body.
“There are only two things to remember Aswani for, one is that she was a butchered, battered, dehumanized, and violated woman with no voice. She persevered through the domestic violence meted on her by her late husband described as irresponsible and violent,” she said.
She went on: “Secondly, she will be remembered as a person who killed her husband in the process of defending her own life.”
The Justice said Aswani was never willing to leave her matrimonial home because she loved her husband.
“She was ready to die under his cruel hand because she had borne him an only child and son and she thought that he would change for the better. This was even after Obochi’s two other wives parted ways with him because of the violence meted out on them.”
As Aswani remains thankful for the judgment, she regrets that no one has come out to help her get her life back in order.
“All I need is a parcel of land and a house so that I can raise my son and my sister’s child who I used to stay within Siaya. The Lord made me be let go, I know he will make me get a Good Samaritan who can help me move to a new home now that a buyer for the land has not been found,” she said.
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