CATEGORY: CHILD MAINTENANCE

Challenge: 

Suzan John Petro, 35, of Magu District in Mwanza went through an extremely difficult situation that exacted upon her both mental and physical pain after being deserted by every one of the fathers of her seven children. For reasons not exactly known every single one of these men abandoned her right after having a child and with that set of circumstances she found herself with the massive burden of taking care of seven children.

Feeding all the seven children and taking care of all their everyday needs was overwhelming for a single mother with no job or any other source of reliable income. All she could manage to do was doing casual work on other people’s fields to earn herself anything she could take home.

“Some of my children were stealing even the little money I kept in the house for their upkeep. The fact that I was the only adult in the home meant that keeping the children’s behaviours in check was always a hefty challenge,” said Suzan with tears welling in her eyes.

“Going an entire day without food was a regular occurrence; my children had no school uniforms, in fact it we couldn’t even rely on the support of relatives or indeed anyone else for that matter,” she added.

Solution:

A friend advised her to seek whatever assistance there was from the ward executive officer which she consequently did and in response the officer engaged a paralegal from the district with whose organization the local authorities frequently worked on such cases. These two succeeded to locate the men in question and arranged separate and specific consultative meetings, discussed the matter at length and after much hard work and wrangling got the men to claim six of the children.

Results:

Suzan remained with her youngest child, a 10-month-old baby girl, giving much desired relief and time and room to engage extensively in small businesses and generate income and improve her living standard.

“I have since been able to build a sizeable house with aluminium sheet roofing, something that was impossible for me when I had that burden of taking care of seven children all by myself,” she said.