A former hairdresser who left her husband and three children for a Masai warrior has revealed that she is haunted by regret and felt used as ‘meal ticket’ by him so that he could escape poverty for a better life in the UK.
Cheryl Thomasgood made headlines around the world when she swapped her comfortable home on the Isle of Wight for a mud hut in a remote region of Kenya after falling in love with Daniel Lekimencho.
Cheryl who was aged 34 at the time was on holiday in the East African country in March 1994 when Daniel came to her hotel as part of a group that performed traditional Masai dancing for tourists.
Within weeks of becoming besotted by him, she dumped her husband Mike Mason and her three children, two of them from her first marriage to pursue a new life with the 6ft 2-inch-tall dashing warrior who was ten years her junior.
Her bizarre relationship with Daniel was widely featured in talk shows and newspapers at the time with the nation perplexed and shocked at how Chery could abandon her family and their middle-class life for one gruelling poverty with a Masai warrior she barely knew.
After her three-week holiday when she first met him, she briefly returned to the UK to tell her second husband Mike that their marriage was over and then went to live with Daniel and his tribe in the Samburu region of Kenya.
Her life involved helping them to hunt and cook while she slept on goatskin and survived on a diet of cow’s blood and cabbage. She and Daniel eventually returned to England in 1995 and married on Valentine’s Day of that year at Newport Registry Office on the Isle of Wight with both wearing traditional Masai clothing.
Now, more than 30 years later Cheryl revealed that she has chosen to speak for the first time in honest detail about her relationship with Daniel because she remains tormented by it and is at an age where she is reflecting on her life.
Cheryl Thomasgood made headlines around the world when she swapped her comfortable home on the Isle of Wight for a mud hut in a remote region of Kenya after falling in love with Daniel Lekimencho
Within weeks of becoming besotted by him, Cheryl dumped her husband Mike Mason and her three children, two of them from her first marriage to pursue a new life with the 6ft 2-inch-tall dashing warrior who was ten years her junior
Daniel and Cheryl pose with Misti, who was born in 1998. A year later, she and Daniel had split
Old photographs of Daniel and Cheryl from a newspaper article when their relationship went public
Cheryl has now said she made a huge mistake and she has a lots of regrets, especially about how it damaged her children
Speaking to MailOnline, she cried: ‘I made a huge mistake, it was very wrong of me, and I have a lot of regrets, especially about how it damaged my children. Now I just want to make peace with it all.
‘My relationship with Daniel was crazy, it became a media circus, the whole country was fascinated by us and I’m now trying to make sense of it. Would I do it all again? No, I wouldn’t. I paid a very high price for being with him.’
Cheryl is now aged 65 and lives alone in a seaside town in Somerset after splitting from Daniel in 1999, a year after their daughter Misti was born.
She is well known in her local community, where she has been living for the past decade but revealed that none of her friends know about her controversial past and the notoriety she acquired.
She said: ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I did, all the hurt I have suffered and caused and all the things that happened. It’s quite a lot to take on and talking honestly about it now helps me. But I’m sure that a lot of people who’ve got to know me over recent years will be very shocked to find out about it all.’
Cheryl revealed that what attracted her most to Daniel when she met him at the Bamburi Beach Hotel in Mombasa was that he was the first man who she felt truly listened to her and that he was not obsessed by money and material things.
Cheryl is now aged 65 and lives alone in a seaside town in Somerset
She said: ‘We became inseparable soon after meeting. He would speak about the Masai way of life, their culture and how they weren’t obsessed by materialism, and he was also a very sincere. Something very deep changed in me, and I fell in love not just with him but all that the Masai stood for.’
But what still shocks her to this day is how quickly Daniel changed after arriving in the UK as he became obsessed with money and material things and constantly complained about life.
Speaking from her neatly maintained semi-detached home, Cheryl broke into laughter as she described him as a Masai version of Victor Meldrew-the perpetually miserable and sullen character from BBC comedy One Foot In The Grave.
The couple lived in Newport with Cheryl and her three children at the time; two boys called Steve and Tommy, who she had with her first husband Robert; and her daughter Chloe, who was born during her second marriage to Mike.
Cheryl recalled: ‘He came to the UK and became a different person. I thought I had a met a spiritual Masai warrior, but I ended up with a miserable old sod who became more like Victor Meldrew.
‘He was always moody and complained a lot and we started fighting all the time. All his spiritualism quickly went out of the window. He became obsessed by money, so that he could send it to his relatives in Kenya, designer clothes and wanting a bigger home.’
As a smile spread across her face, she recalled: ‘The only time when he was really happy was when he was jumping up and down in the garden doing his traditional Masai warrior dance. He would say that he was getting ready for battle and wanted to jump as high as an elephant. The kids loved it, but it got on my nerves after a while.’
Cheryl revealed that Daniel’s transformation and obsession with money caused her to question his motives as to why he wanted to be with her.
She said: ‘I doubted if he loved me and felt that he just used me as a meal ticket to escape his life in Kenya. Once he was in the UK it all became about him and what he wanted, and he just wanted more and more.
‘He didn’t seem to care about me. He started driving me nuts and I realised that this was just a marriage of convenience for him. I moved a mountain for him, but I knew that he wouldn’t move a molehill for me.’
Cheryl said that she started feeling these doubts soon after the couple married but felt compelled to stay in the relationship because she wanted to prove that they could be happy, despite public opinion that they could not and that she was a bad wife and mother.
She said: ‘Things became very toxic between us, I realised that I had made a big mistake, but I had to continue putting the effort into the relationship.’
In recent years she said she has been thinking more and more about what went wrong in her relationship with Daniel.
Cheryl recalled: ‘The only time when he was really happy was when he was jumping up and down in the garden doing his traditional Masai warrior dance’
Cheryl in Kenya with Daniel and his two brothers Lmakayo and Taloni
Cheryl has now revealed recalled that in her childhood she suffered years of sexual abuse and was raised in a dysfunctional household in London by parents who were alcoholics
Cheryl posing happily with baby Misti Lekimenju, who is now 27
Cheryl and Daniel with her child Chloe (who was born during her second marriage to Mike) and their daughter Misti
Cheryl said: ‘Misti reminds me that not everything with Daniel was negative’
Half-sisters Misti and Chloe pose for a cute photo while they were growing up
On the day of Chloe’s wedding, Misti served as a bridesmaid for her half-sister
She added: ‘There was just too much pressure on both of us and too many cultural differences. I think it was all too much for him in particular. Combine that with the doubts that I had over why he wanted to marry me and if he really loved me and things were never going to end well between us.’
Cheryl broke into tears as she recalled her childhood revealing that she suffered years of sexual abuse and was raised in a dysfunctional household in London by parents who were alcoholics.
At the time she met Daniel she was contemplating suicide and battling depression and was urged to go on holiday to Kenya by a friend who was in the same church choir as her. The two went on the break that changed Cheryl’s life together.
Cheryl said: ‘I suffered a lot of trauma in my childhood and that’s something I’m still dealing with. When I went to Kenya I was at a really low point in my life; trapped in an unhappy marriage and suffering from mental health problems.
‘In Daniel, I was looking for healing, inner peace and spirituality and thought that I had found all of that in him because in Kenya, he had all of those qualities. But sadly, that didn’t last.
‘I thought I was in love with him but really I was just trying to escape my unhappy life and cope with my trauma.’
Cheryl is still undergoing therapy for her childhood trauma and has also been diagnosed with PTSD. She does not have any contact with Daniel, who remained on the Isle of Wight after they split and works in a supermarket.
Asked about what she regrets the most about her time with him, Cheryl is quick to point out: ‘The impact all this had on my children. Having a Masai warrior as a father was not easy for them. Daniel was trying his best, but he could never understand the Western ways and couldn’t be the dad that they needed.
‘The children missed out on having a proper father, not just with Daniel but also my other two husbands. All of them were useless, bad fathers and I was too mentally unwell to be a good mother and made a lot of bad life decisions because of this.
‘My children deserved stability and love, but I was not able to provide them that, not with any of my marriages. That is my biggest regret, but we all have them and that’s just life.’
Cheryl claims Daniel (pictured with Misti) could never understand the Western ways and couldn’t be the dad that the children needed
Daniel and a smiling Misti pose for a photo in the 1990s
Daniel and Misti pictured together recently. Cheryl says she does not have any contact with her ex-husband, who remained on the Isle of Wight after they split and works in a supermarket
Cheryl said Misti (pictured today) has grown up to be a very intelligent and articulate woman
Cheryl added: ‘Any parent wants their children to have a loving, stable home but all I gave them was chaos and uncertainty and that still hurts. I went from one disastrous marriage to another.’
Despite her regrets over her children, Cheryl maintained that she has good relations with them all and regularly sees them. She refers to her youngest daughter Misti, 27 as the ‘one good thing’ to have come out of her marriage to Daniel.
Her eldest son Steve is now aged 43 while his brother Tommy is 41. Her daughter Chloe is aged 34.
She added: ‘I love Misti and all my other children to bits. I’m very proud of them all and they’ve grown up to be fantastic adults. Misti reminds me that not everything with Daniel was negative. She’s grown up to be a very intelligent and articulate woman.’
Cheryl insisted that she now loves the quiet life and has no intention of every marrying again following a hattrick of ‘disasters.’
Asked what advice she would give any woman who goes on a break and finds a ‘holiday husband’ she warned: ‘Be careful what you wish for and be aware of what you’re getting into, or you could up regretting it for the rest of your life.’
