Mercy Jepkemei Gbv Victim Starves To Unite Her Parents.
BY Cornelias Keter | ELDORET,
Mercy Jepkemei is not just hugging the tree, but telling her story. A story that resonates and familiar to many families, and particularly those who suffered in abusive marriages and toxic relationship.
As she endures the scorching sun in her 72-hour’s challenge, hundreds of the residents milled around her at the Nandi Garden kapsabet, listening her voice of reason and resolute passion in the fight against Gender Based Violence in the community.
Mercy gave a glimpse of her life shrouded in mysteries of solitude, suffering and lack of parental love. She grew up under unstable family, where her parents engaged in frequent fights, and the mother abandoned her with other four siblings at home.
Things were not rosy at home. They were left on the mercies of their father. Mercy stated that alcoholism had taken toll of him and he abdicated his parental duties including providing upkeep and school fees for them.
Fortunately, she completed her secondary school education in 2019 and fully shouldered parental tasks to take of her siblings. Finding food was a critical problem, and Mercy went an extra mile to work as tea picker in the neighbourhoods, spend nights as a watchdog and hotels to earn little money to sustain the family.
Mercy, 24, said to have bore the brunt of broken marriage, toxic families and drug abuse. She graciously shares her story, to create awareness against gender based violence, and demonstrated by spending chilling nights and blistering sun in a tree-hugging challenge for 72 hours.
She said that no one should sympathise with her, but she is doing the lord’s work in bringing to alive that GBV is real and detrimental to not only the children, but also the family, a basic institution that forms a society.
