BBC News
By Joel Gunter
image captionAdama has returned to live in her village. Life has been so hard, she said.
Last month, BBC Africa Eye exposed a thriving black-market trade in babies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Police arrested seven people on trafficking charges in response to the story, but what about the women on the other side of these illegal deals? What drives a mother to sell her child?
Adama s life was easy when she had her parents, she said. Money was tight, and her options were already narrow, but there was an order to things that made sense. She attended school and cherished it. She had few worries. Then her father died when she was 12, and her mother died a few years later.
Adama’s life was easy when she had her parents, she said. Money was tight, and her options were already narrow, but there was an order to things that made sense. She attended school and cherished it. She had few worries. But then her father died when she was 12, and her mother a few years later. As the eldest of three, Adama had a duty to provide for her two siblings.
“Life became so hard then,” she said, in a conversation from her village in a rural part of western Kenya. “I had to drop out of school and fend for myself.”