The love story of Maureen Atieno and the late Kikuyu benga artiste George Wanjaro alias “Mwalimu Goerge Wanjaro” was one full of inspiration.
Not many people knew about the late musician’s love life but with his death everything came to the fore.
Wanjaro, a sharp mathematics teacher had married Atieno after years of meeting her. He was her class teacher and their love blossomed when she completed her secondary school.
Soon after, he would marry her in 2001 and took her home. Wanjaro who was a teacher at Gaicanjiru Secondary School took her to a beauty college to earn skills in hairdressing and opened for her a salon in Thika town. But Atieno was also a musician just like her late husband.
However, Atieno has opened up on the hard times she has gone through t the hands of her husband’s family members.
In a YouTube interview with Ala C, Atieno who was born in Migori County said that she was disinherited if everything her husband owned.
She painfully narrated that the land where her husband was buried was sold off and was left with nothing.
She recalled the plan to disinherit her on the basis that she was not legally wedded to the singer with some of Wanjaro’s family members accusing her of killing their kin who had developed an acute bout of headaches and eventually died while receiving treatment in hospital.
“Some even said he died of HIV/Aids… I was not allowed to see George’s body in the morgue. They also omitted my name from the eulogy, but artistes intervened and it was included,” she said.
Wanjaro’s widow said that she all contributions made were taken away by her husband’s family after the burial.
“They sold everything, including the land where George was buried. Today I can’t visit where he was buried,” she recalled.
She sank into depression and closed her salon business in Thika town that Wanjaro had opened for her because she couldn’t get the energy to work.
With time, she decided to take the battle to court and sued the family for disinheriting her and luckily, she won but is yet to get anything back.
Her son who is now a teenager is still very bitter about the whole incident.
Atieno followed her passion in music and has a band which she sings along with.
Though she was born in Migori, her mastery of Kikuyu language is very sharp and it’s hard for one to notice that she is from the lakeside and not the mountain.
