[VIDEO] Kenyan women mulika ‘dead beat’ dads on social media

There are websites where you can go and rate the facilities you visited on holiday, Trip Advisor being a case in point. You can also post your reviews on a purchase you made on Amazon.com.

The idea of ranking products, sharing experiences on the internet so that other consumers don’t make the same mistake you did or benefit from your recommendation is not a novel idea.

But in a new form of “buyer beware,” Kenyan women have taken to social media to out ‘dead beat’ parents. “This is a descriptive term that refers to parents of either gender who have freely choosen (sp) not to be supportive parents or who do not pay Child support,” the administrators of Dead beat Kenya Updates explain.

Either gender, they state, but as fate may have it, only men appear on the page created on Monday.

And not some random men you’ve probably never heard about or will hear about but men in the public eye.

The most notable perhaps being a prominent music personality of whom Daisy Kiplagat wrote:
“I wanted to have this space to let you all know that this guy instead chooses to go around with women and lie to them how rich he is and yet he doesn’t have anything and stays at his mum’s house. So when you all hear how he does and loves his daughter please don’t be fooled.”

Daisy and the other women who posted photos, phone numbers and even employment details of their ‘dead beats’ explain that they had tried dialogue and the courts but remained frustrated.

Also on the list of ‘outed’ men is a Member of the Kiambu County Assembly, a rugby player of whose looks Josephine Githaiga says, “are deceiving,” and even a television personality.

Photographer and friend Anthony Njoroge didn’t take the accusation lying down; proceeding to post receipts of school fees paid and screen shots of M-Pesa transactions.

The question of child support emerging to being one on which the gender lines are clearly drawn and not only on social media, as Capital FM News established with a few interviews on Nairobi streets.

Peter, a shoe shiner, confessed to a child borne out of wedlock but one he did not support.

“I only support those children under my roof,” he said.

And the idea that the other woman would shame him on social media out of frustration was one he couldn’t bear to imagine. “I would hate for my wife of five years to discover I had an affair,” he explained.

Michael, a cab driver, on his part said he would never support a child who resulted from an affair as he would never be entirely certain it was his but he denied understanding why such attitudes might drive women to cause a public spectacle if only to draw a reaction, any reaction.

“It is a form of disrespect,” he said of the posts on Dead beat Kenya Updates.

But respect, Lilian, a waitress, explained has little to do with anything if you cannot feed your child. “What do you do when you have no family to support you and he deliberately ignores a court order?” she posed.

Adhiambo, a student, couldn’t agree more, “embarrass them,” she urged.

“Why should they get to enjoy their lives free of responsibility and guilt-free while you struggle? besides, it’s worth it if you can keep another woman from falling for his lies,” she reasoned.

Waithira, a single mom, told Capital FM News that she had fallen prey to a serial dead beat and might have made better choices had she known. “Some men are such smooth liars. Now I don’t even have an address where I can drop off a court summons,” she testified.

Odhiambo – the self-appointed caretaker of the Tom Mboya monument – opined that Dead beat Kenya updates is a symptom of a breakdown in family values.

“The civil society needs to get involved,” he prescribed, “Kenyan women need to know what alternatives are open to them because it seems court ordered support is not even worth the paper it’s written on.”

-CAPITAL FM