Sad: Kenyan Widow Resorts to Boiling Stones for Her Starving Children

A Kenyan woman has baffled many after she was found boiling stones for her children as she had no food to feed them.

Peninah Kitao, a widow from Kisauni in Mombasa county said she has been struggling to provide food to her eight children following the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country.

After going hungry for days, Peninah says she was forced to boil stones to give her children hope that food was cooking and eventually fall asleep before they are ‘served.’

Prisca Nyakaragio, a neighbor, said she found Peninah ‘cooking’ stones when she went to check on her after she heard cries emanating from her house.

"After hearing cries, I rushed to my neighbor’s house and found her seated. I found a cooking pot on the ground covered but it had no food and asked them if they had eaten, to which she answered no and told me that her children are crying due to hunger.”

“She informed me that on Tuesday, April 28th, she was forced to boil stones to try and trick her children that food was cooking in order for them to fall asleep," Prisca said.

Opening up on her story, Peninah said she became a widow last year after armed thugs attacked and killed her husband. She was two months pregnant at the time. 

She says has been earning a living through washing clothes for other people, but that her clients stopped offering her the job following the outbreak of Covid-19.

“I have had nothing to feed my children on and so I decided to put the stones in the sufuria and boil them so that my children would think that I am cooking something for them,” she says.

Peninah says that she initially used to trick her children into going to bed on empty stomachs and was forced to invent a new way after the kids discovered the trick. “They started telling me that they know I am lying to them, but I could do nothing because I have nothing,” she says.