Maria Fernandes, a former hockey player, is a fighter - both for the right to marry the man she loves and for the rights of people with disabilities.
Despite misconceptions that she is from an affluent Mombasa family because of her Indian roots, she has constantly had to go against the grain to get what she wants in life.
While in Form 4 at Kilindini high, she fell in love with Nicodemus Kimanthi, a fellow hockey player with a club in Ganjoni called the Mombasa Youngsters.
“We were not well off and I had no shin guards yet we were in a tournament in which you could not play without them.
“Then I saw Kimanthi. We had been running into each other for a while at hockey games but we had never talked. So this day, I had to approach him and borrow his shin guards,” Fernandes told the Star.
It was the start of a love journey that would be a constant struggle through thick and thin.
Her family was against the match because Kimanthi, a Kamba man, was not what they had in mind for their daughter.
But Fernandes refused to let go of the love of her life.
Then an opportunity came and she grabbed it with both hands. In 1998, she flew to Texas, in the US.
“When I left I was already pregnant with my daughter, so I had to stay there until I gave birth in September that year. My husband was still in Kenya,” Fernandes said.
In December 1999, she started getting sick.
“Then, I just woke up one morning in 2,000 and I could not walk. Just like that. My legs refused. I went to the doctors and they told me I had rheumatoid arthritis.
“I really didn’t know what that was. It had started deforming my legs, elbows, fingers, shoulders. I was really sick to the point that I could not walk.”
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disorder that causes inflammation around the body and commonly causes joint pain and other problems.
In some people, the condition can damage many body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart and blood vessels.
A specialist doctor put her on a new drug, which she said worked okay for some time but did not cure the condition. She had to be on painkillers.
While in the US, she tried three times to get Kimanthi to join them, but all attempts failed. He wanted to stay in Kenya and wanted her to be with him.
“The reason I tried to bring him to the US was because of my family. My husband is Kamba and I am Indian, so they didn’t want him to marry me.
“That’s why I fled to the US so I could later bring him over and we could be together happily ever after,” Fernandes revealed.
Kimanthi still wanted to get married and they were in touch.
Despite her condition, she got a job at Wells Fargo Bank as a banker in the customer service department; two years later, she was promoted to opening deposit accounts.
After another two years, she was again promoted to Human Resources where she was taking care of more than 200 employees.
“I was getting worse. The medication was not working for me. So for over eight years, I was just on painkillers. When my daughter was nine, I saw myself going downhill. I called my husband and told him I had to come home,” she recalled.
She quit her bank job, gave away all her belongings, including furniture and a car. She and her daughter returned to Kenya in 2007.
Her condition got so much worse that she was bedridden for five years.
“My husband, whom I wed at the Attorney General’s office upon returning to Kenya, used to carry me everywhere. It was really difficult for me to get in and out of the car, the toilet, anywhere really.
“One time my legs pained constantly from about 4pm until the next day at 6am. We used to live in Mshomoroni by that time,” Fernandes recalled.
Her family slowly accepted her decision and they became more supportive of the couple
After five years of being bedridden, just as she had suddenly stopped walking, she suddenly could walk again.
“I usually say my faith healed me. I really believed in God and that someday I would walk again without anybody holding my hand,” Fernandes said.
During her time bedridden, a prophetess approached her and told her she would have a baby boy.
“I looked at her thinking, ‘I can’t even walk, and you are telling me I am going to have a baby boy?’. That was the second time someone told me that. The first was in the US,” she said.
Five years after she regained the use of her legs, she got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy in 2012.
In 2016, Kimanthi informed her of the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities.
“My husband came home one day and told me the government allows people with disability to have companies under Agpo."
They formed a company under Agpo (disability category) and she started doing sales, which is her educational background.
She deals with heavy equipment machinery, such as generators, welding machines, forklifts and ship building plates.
This exposed her to other PWDs, which she had not given much thought about.
“I came to find out there are so many people out there living like me. I said if God can get me out of this situation, he can do the same for these people, maybe through me,” she says.
“I feel it when I see a PWD struggling. I remember where I came from. That is why I have accepted that if God is going to use me to help these people, then I will.”
One day she saw the UDA party advertise their grassroots elections in Mombasa. There was a PWD representative position that could be contested. Fernandes registered herself under the PWD category.
“I felt I would be the Moses God has sent to deliver my people. That’s why I want to fight for their rights.
“I want them to establish businesses that can thrive. I find myself going out of my way to help these people because I remember the five years I could not walk,” Fernandes says.
Having worn that shoe, she knows how tight it is.
“I understand the government is giving us, PWDS, Sh2,000 a month for our needs. But what is Sh2,000 for a mother who has a PWD son?”
The new affordable housing units must have units set aside for PWDs.
“I thank President Ruto for including us, PWD, in party elections. I would make sure we have special units for PWDs in all affordable housing programmes,” she said.
“I am also grateful to UDA vice chairman Hassan Omar who has been helpful to me and my people. He has inspired me and made it happen for me.”
She said there are better strategies to use to improve the lives of PWDs.
“I want to make sure they get free medication. I want to eradicate poverty for them,” she said.
Fernandes holds sessions with PWDs to encourage them and help the few that she can materially, emotionally and financially.
She has so far donated 100 tricycles to PWDs in Mombasa. Two weeks ago, she donated the latest 21 tricycles for the PWD community at Makupa.
Society shunned PWDs, Fernandes adds, labelling them as burdens, forgetting that they have families and other people who depend on them.
She urged mothers not to hide children with special needs, saying many such parents feel ashamed of their children.
Families have shunned their own blood because of disability. Discrimination against PWDs is real, she says, having experienced it herself.
“One time my cousin sent me money from Germany. I went into a bank here in Kenya to receive it but a lady saw me with this disability and she refused to attend to me,” Fernandes said.
She was forced to go back home to get a marriage certificate because the cousin had included her husband’s name in the transfer slip.
“She said she thought I was a con because I am Indian but had a Kamba name. She said she thought I was faking my disability and that she had had a similar incident where it turned out the lady had faked her disability to get sympathy.”
Fernandes pledged this would never happen under her watch. The activism bug, she said, bit her then.
“That is why I would dig deep in my pocket to help my people because I remember the five years in bed. I want to take these people to some place new and do something that no one in Mombasa has ever done for them.”
She is the secretary in the Pwani Yetu CBO.
