A 32-year old Gambian woman has travelled to Kenya to find her mother, whom she has never met.
Fanta Jallow arrived in Kenya on 24 June, and says she is ready to stay in the country for at least two months until she meets her birth mother.
She says her parents – her Gambian father and Kenyan mother – met in Germany decades ago and they got married.
However, when her mother got pregnant, she was convinced to go to The Gambia to her in-laws so that they “would not lose their daughter”.
Ms Jallow told Kenya’s private television company NTV that their parents soon afterwards left for The Gambia.
However, her father left for work in the US leaving her mother behind. She then gave birth to Ms Jallow but because of some hardships she moved back to Kenya.
Ms Jallow was raised by her grandmother and an uncle in The Gambia. Her father remarried in the US.
“My father never wanted to talk about it and he always gave an excuse… because he doesn’t feel happy talking about it,” she told NTV.
However, she says her father told her that her mother was in Kenya and that her name was Mariah Swaleh from Mombasa, in Kenya’s coast region.
She is now longing to meet her mother and is asking for help to be able to locate her.
“When I see people with their mothers, it is a bit emotional for me. We all know the love of a mother… to grow up with without all that affection, it’s hard..It is the hardest thing in the word,” she says, as she wipes away her tears.
Here’s her interview with NTV: