Mzungu who lost Sh15m to Kenyan 'lover' gets help

 

Rodrick Lodge finally flies back home 

Lady luck has smiled on a Briton who wired all his life savings to a supposed Kenyan woman in hopes of love, only to be stranded in Nairobi. Fortunately, well-wishers have secured him a flight back home.

Rodrick Lodge, a former UN official, had hoped his Sh15 million savings would buy him love, but it turned into a frustrating wild goose chase.

He had worked for an airline before joining the UN as a humanitarian official for decades in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya.

The 69-year-old received a flight back to London from Nairobi on Tuesday morning, thanks to some of his former colleagues at a major airline who pooled funds to secure his ticket.

Lodge had been stranded in Kitengela, Nairobi, where a friend was hosting him. His former colleagues learned of his plight when it was highlighted in this paper, prompting them to come together and secure his ticket back to Europe.

At home, Lodge has arranged with a media outlet to extensively highlight his plight, solicit help from well-wishers, and find a path back to normal life.

“Here in Kenya, I doubt if someone could help me because probably, they think that a mzungu is monied. But I have spoken to a media outlet in London that is willing to help me once I'm there,” he told the Star.

Lodge was widowed in 2019 when his wife of 25 years passed away. A few years later, he thought he found new love in a Kenyan woman.

Last summer, a Kenyan woman, whom he described as a close friend, introduced him to a 39-year-old woman who vowed to fulfill all his emotional needs and give him a settled life. However, it turned out that this woman, named Anita, never existed.

Anita was said to be a mother of two sons who were supposedly studying in universities abroad. She claimed to live in Karen but was constructing a retirement home in Voi, Taita Taveta county.

The love-struck widower volunteered to take over the construction of the house to completion. “I offered to finish the job and get it furnished so that when I come to Kenya, we just do the wedding and move in,” he said.

Whenever he spoke to the Star, asking for his plight to be highlighted so well-wishers could help him, Lodge often repeated, “I can’t feel stupid enough.” “I believed that I found love and was so blinded that I didn’t do my due diligence before breaking my bank. What kind of a man was I,” he lamented.

His tourist visa was due to expire this month. In December, he came to Kenya ready for a wedding and a happily ever after.

However, not having a single picture of Anita, not knowing even how her voice sounded, and not having her phone contact, no one received him.

He had only been communicating with her through another woman named Mary. Once in Nairobi, Anita claimed to be in Mombasa and resisted a sustained push to return to Nairobi to meet him.

After giving excuses not to meet him, the man’s money ran out, and Anita stopped communicating with him.

BY  GORDON OSEN