This archive report was first published on 12 July 2020.
On March 30, 2020, Eunice Auma Awino, a 48-year-old widow and peasant farmer from East Kamagak Village in Homa Bay County, Kenya, made a life-changing discovery. While heading home in the evening, she heard the voices of screaming kids from a thicket and found two newborn twins, a boy and a girl, wrapped in a blanket.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic-induced curfew, Eunice immediately reported the matter to the local administrative chief, who advised her to stay with the twins for the night and report to the police the following morning.
However, when Eunice and the twins arrived at the Oyugis Police station, they were advised to take the kids to a children's home in Kadongo, 15 kilometers away. Unfortunately, the home turned them away, citing the pandemic as the reason.
After being discharged from the hospital, Eunice has been struggling to provide for the twins and her other seven children. She has had to rely on cow's milk, which retails at Sh100 a liter, but even that is a luxury she cannot afford.
Eunice's story is a testament to the struggles faced by many widows in rural Kenya. She lost her husband in 1998 and has been taking care of her children, including two from her co-wife who passed away four years earlier, and three orphaned children from her late brother-in-law.
Now, Eunice is appealing for any kind of support from well-wishers to help her raise the twins. She works on people's farms to fend for her family, but it's a struggle to make ends meet.
