Anxiety as DNA results for Kakamega ‘twins’ ready

By Bosco Marita Sharon Mathias and Melon Lutenyo

SUMMARY According to Ms Onyango, they have received information from their family lawyer that the results are ready for release
The two girls’ grabbed headlines on the local dailies and TV’s for weeks following their resemblance that made many conclude they are identical twins

The riddle of the two look-alike girls of Kakamega, Mathias Sharon and Melon Lutenyo who are most likely twins, is set to be unravelled amidst the growing anxiety and uneasiness.
According to Ms Onyango, the woman who has been living with Melon Lutenyo at furfural village in Kakamega County, they have received information from their family lawyer that the results are ready for release. ​
 “We have received communication from the doctors in Nairobi to travel and receive the results for the DNA tests. The girls are excited about the news and have travelled to Eldoret town to do shopping before we set off to Nairobi,” said Ms Onyango on Monday.

The two girls’ grabbed headlines on the local dailies and TV’s for weeks following their resemblance that made many, pending a definitive DNA test to the contrary, conclude they are identical twins. The identity of the two girls did not only make news within the walls of their country but also across the border.
Having both born on August 1999 in the same hospital, Kakamega County Referral, and raised in different regions, Sharon in Nairobi and Melon in Kakamega, the events that reunited the two girls 19 years later is a classical case of a well-scripted movie intertwining destiny and coincidence.

It is after Sharon, who was raised in Nairobi, joined Shikoti Girls Secondary school in Kakamega that the journey of the two-meeting began.
For Melon joining Kongoni Secondary School, after failing to adapt to a boarding school life, marked the journey of meeting her very possible twin sister.
After academic outings classmates and teachers who met any of them could not understand how their student and classmate belonged to the other school.
Even though melon was brought with a twin sister she has known for life, she never envisaged that they were so identical that it would attract the attention of his classmates and teachers.
The news of her resembling someone became soo persistence to them that one time when Melon received a picture of Sharon and her teachers, taken during an academic outing, that it dawned on her that time was nigh to unravel the puzzle that his classmates and teachers had presented.
“When the teacher brought the picture to me, she placed it before me and asked me do you know this person? I told her, how can I fail to know myself? The teacher asked again, are you sure this is you?,” Melon told KTN on April 18.
“I told him this is not my uniform but it is me. After insisting it was me, the teacher opened up and said the person in the picture was not me but Sharon Mathias from Shikoti Girls. I could not believe it. It dawned on me that I have heard of this confusion before and began searching for answers,” she added.
During the holiday the two girls made efforts to look for each other. After several interactions, a determined and curious Sharon took a journey to Nairobi where they first met in Kangemi in an emotional reunion, amidst tear of joy that any long-separated identical twins can have.

When it dawned to both families that their appearance had hallmarks of resemblance, the DNA test came calling.
And even as the world is waiting to confirm their pre-DNA conclusion, the two families that raised the two girls differently are plunged in a dilemma as the make-or-break news is set to come.
To the two girls, who became inseparable since they met, the DNA results may not mean much to them since they vowed never to be apart from each other.