For Kenyan gospel artist and TV host Kambua Manundu, motherhood is not limited to the children she tucks into bed each night. It also includes her son, Malachi, who “lives with Jesus.”
“I am a mom of three, two are in my house, and one is with Jesus,” she told Nigerian host Chude Jideonwo. “We are co-parenting.”
That line, spoken with grace and conviction, captures Kambua’s quiet rebellion against cultural silence around infant and child loss.
“Across Africa, we don’t acknowledge babies who passed either through stillbirth or early infant loss,” she said in the interview monitored by MyNewsGh. “But these children were real. They had names. They existed.”
Her second child, Malachi, was born at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after a challenging pregnancy.
Despite every medical effort, he lived only two days. Kambua vividly recalled the moment she held his tiny body as it grew cold, a pain that words can hardly contain.
“I never thought I’d be the woman who walks out of a maternity ward empty-handed,” she confessed.
Rather than hiding her grief, Kambua has turned it into purpose, using her story to open up safe spaces for women who have suffered similar losses.
“Even my owning the three children has brought healing to other people,” she said. “Families are now able to say, ‘We have four children, two are here, two are with Jesus.’”
Her courage to speak about Malachi has helped many find words for their pain. “He was my special boy,” she said softly. “He came, he existed, and he mattered.”
