Ten years after losing her arms, Jackline Mwende still carries the scars of intimate partner violence

Ten years have passed since Jackline Mwende's life changed forever.

 Her story shocked Kenya in 2016 after her then husband chopped off both her arms in a brutal act of intimate partner violence.

 Today, the mother of one has learnt to live with a permanent disability, but says the physical and emotional wounds remain as fresh as ever.

 She says accepting her new reality was the first step towards rebuilding her life.

 Although she underwent several corrective surgeries and later travelled to South Korea, where donors fitted her with custom-made electronic prosthetic arms, the devices never became part of her daily life.

 "They helped me for a short time, but they were too heavy," she says.

 Each prosthetic arm weighed about five kilogrammes, making even simple movements exhausting. Sometimes they slipped off unexpectedly, forcing her to rely on other people to pick them up.

 Because they were electrically powered, she also could not use them when handling water, and keeping them charged became another challenge.

 Eventually, she made the painful decision to stop using them.

 "I asked God to give me the strength to live without arms," she says.

 At first, walking without the prosthetics affected her balance, but she gradually adapted. She says she informed her donors when the artificial limbs were damaged, and they understood why she could no longer use them.

 Despite her resilience, she still depends on others for many daily tasks.

 Mwende says one of the hardest parts of her life is watching her elderly mother do things many adults take for granted, including bathing her, dressing her and helping her change sanitary pads during her menstrual cycle.

 The attack also left lasting injuries beyond the loss of her arms. One of her eyes was damaged and occasionally becomes painful, while the areas where her arms were amputated often become numb during cold weather.

 "Sometimes I feel as though all my fingers are still there, but they itch terribly," she says, describing the phantom limb sensations she continues to experience.

 The trauma also affected her family.

 She says her father developed high blood pressure after witnessing what happened to his daughter and continues to receive treatment.

 In 2018, the Merck Foundation built her a house and helped her establish a business to support her independence.

 However, the business lasted only three years.

 When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, business slowed significantly. Combined with high operating costs and a monthly rent of Sh12,000, the venture became unsustainable.

 "There were times I couldn't even raise the rent because the business wasn't making enough profit," she recalls.

 Even so, Mwende remains grateful to the organisation.

 "They gave me a net to fish, not the fish itself," she says, adding that she believes the business would still be running if circumstances had been different.

 Today, she survives mainly through support from well-wishers.

 She also says despite living with a permanent disability, she does not receive support under the government's cash transfer programme for persons with severe disabilities.

 "They told me only people with severe disabilities qualify. I wondered, if this isn't severe disability, then what is?" she asks.

 For Mwende, marriage is a chapter she has permanently closed. "No. Until the day I die, I never want to get married again," she says firmly.

She believes her life would have been very different had she never entered that marriage. "I would not have become disabled if not for marriage. I've put a permanent X on it."

 Although a decade has passed, she remembers crying until she had no tears left. "Being cut with a machete is extremely painful," she says.

 Counselling, she says, became one of the few lifelines that helped her survive emotionally. "I would look at myself in the mirror and cry, wondering what my life would become."

Even today, certain memories trigger overwhelming emotions. Sometimes she cries so much that her son asks why she is crying.

 Asked whether she has forgiven her former husband, Mwende pauses.

 She says she has left the matter to God but cannot honestly say she has forgiven him.

 "If it had been an accident, I would understand. But he intended to kill me. If he had any mercy, wouldn't he have left me with at least one hand?" she asks.

 Her former husband, Stephen Ngila, has been serving a 30-year prison sentence since 2021 after being convicted of attempted murder.

 Today, Mwende has turned her experience into advocacy.

 In Kathama village, Machakos county, she counsels women in abusive relationships, urging them to leave before the violence becomes worse.

 "When I see a woman staying in a marriage where she is constantly beaten, I ask her, 'Are you waiting to die? Were you born into that marriage?'"

 She says many women confide in her after suffering physical abuse but remain in violent relationships because they have invested years in the marriage or fear leaving with their children.

 Her message is simple. "If your partner threatens to kill you, that alone is enough reason to leave."

 She also discourages women from returning to abusive partners after separation.

 "Sometimes they don't want you back because they love you. They want another opportunity to finish what they started."

 While not everyone follows her advice, she says many women have listened and rebuilt safer lives.

 She insists that children should never be a reason to remain in a dangerous relationship.

 Instead, she urges couples who can no longer live together peacefully to separate without resorting to violence.

 Relationship expert Wanjiku Waititu says intimate partner violence is often driven by several factors, including alcohol and drug abuse, poor anger management, unresolved conflict and growing up in homes where violence was normalised.

 "Some people learn from childhood that violence is an acceptable way of resolving conflict," she says.

 She adds that some perpetrators may also be living with untreated depression or other mental health conditions, making it difficult for them to regulate their emotions.

 Waititu says the effects of intimate partner violence go far beyond physical injuries.

 Survivors often struggle with trauma, stigma, low self-esteem and long-term psychological distress, while their families also experience lasting emotional effects.

 She recommends immediate and ongoing counselling to help survivors develop healthy ways of coping.

 Although forgiveness is deeply personal and often takes time, she believes it can become an important part of healing.

 "It doesn't erase what happened," she says. "But forgiveness helps free the survivor from remaining emotionally imprisoned by the offender."

 Mwende's story reflects a wider crisis.

 According to the 2024 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), 41.1 per cent of women of reproductive age have experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence—physical, sexual or emotional. This is slightly higher than the 40.7 per cent recorded in the 2022 survey.

 Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that about 27 per cent of ever-partnered women aged between 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime.

 For Mwende, those statistics are more than numbers.

 They are a reminder that many women continue to live with the same fear she once ignored—and that leaving an abusive relationship can mean the difference between life and death.

 INSTANT ANALYSIS

 Jackline Mwende's story highlights the lifelong impact of intimate partner violence, showing that survival does not always mean full recovery. A decade after the attack, she continues to live with physical disability, emotional trauma and financial hardship despite undergoing surgeries and receiving support. Her experience also reveals the burden placed on families, gaps in government support for people with disabilities and the difficult journey towards healing. By using her experience to counsel women in abusive relationships, Mwende transforms personal tragedy into advocacy. Her story reinforces the importance of early intervention, counselling and leaving abusive relationships before violence escalates into life-threatening attacks.