Seated on a hewn stone outside her semipermanent house in Weithaga village, Murang'a County, Purity Wangui says she intends to travel by foot to Vietnam to see her 37-year-old daughter, Margaret Nduta sentenced to death for drug trafficking.

Vietnam is known as a major hub for drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle, a region where China, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet.

The region is the second-largest drug-producing area in the world.

The country’s 2,300km border with neighbouring states making it a convenient route for gangs to smuggle drugs.

Smugglers find Ho Chi Minh City an attractive transit point because of its proximity to Cambodia.

It is such a pregnant drug zone that risks to swallow alive the life of Nduta who got entangled in a thriving international drug syndicate to the chagrin of her elderly and ailing mother.

“I'm waiting for some family members to volunteer to accompany me there. It does not matter how long it takes… Must see her before they hang her,” she says.

Made aware by one neighbour that the distance from Murang'a to Vietnam is about 8,100 kilometres, she retorts: “What is the distance from my womb to the world all this long I have been her mother?”

The pain, anguish and desperation of a mother as she tries to come to terms with the terror of getting breaking news from neighbours that her daughter has been condemned to die in a foreign land.

She says her daughter was born again, dutiful and God-fearing.

"May be she was framed...or she got into bad company. I have brought her up in strict Christian values...I'm sorry on her behalf. I urge President William Ruto through my MP Ndindi Nyoro to take up her case as seriously as they did about Raila Odinga's African Union Chair bid and bring my daughter home," she said.

Saying both the AUC and her daughter's incarceration are related to foreign policy, at worst, she prayed "let my daughter be brought back home and jailed here in Kenya".

Mr Alex Murumba, who introduced herself as the family's relative, urged foreign affairs minister Mr Musalia Mudavadi to invoke bilateral diplomacy to have Ms Nduta back home.

"We are devastated as a family. We're not sure that Ms Nduta, who we know as straightforward daughter, who only was venturing out of the country in 2023 to seek a fortune, became a drug peddler," he said.

He said the family is frustrated that she was sentenced on March 6, 2025, and given a week to lodge an appeal, after which if not appealed, she faces the hangman.

Vietnam has the world’s toughest drug laws, and anyone found guilty of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or cocaine or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamine faces the death penalty.

"We learnt of the sentencing on March 8. Today (yesterday) is March 11. It means we have to help her appeal but we don't know where to start. The government should help us do so as urgently," Mr Murumba said.

Murang'a Senator Joe Nyutu on Wednesday March 12, 2025, accused the government of being insensitive to Kenyans plight while on foreign land.

"While we are good at meddling in affairs that should not be concerning us in other countries, we are very careless on those issues that directly threaten our very own citizens," he said.

He said Kenya is fighting in a dozen countries that include Haiti as well as throwing around presidential voices in wars in Ukraine, DR Congo and even in Palestine.

"But when we have cases of Kenyans getting murdered in the Arab world, getting sentenced to death all over foreign lands and getting transformed into slaves as they seek solution to dead dreams while here in Kenya, this government remains dumb," he said.

Mr Nyutu said "the government should know that it's duty to serve Kenyans spreads in the four parameter walls of the globe and it should help Ms Nduta appeal, win the case and be reunited with her family in Murang'a".

Ms Nduta was sentenced in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, after she was convicted of the charge of trafficking into the country more than 2 kilos of cocaine.

She was recorded as arrested in July 2023 while on transit to Laos.

In her defence to the authorities, Ms Nduta said she had been hired by a man known only as John from Kenya.

"I was briefed to deliver a suitcase to a woman who was to meet me at the airport and in turn, receive a parcel that I was to deliver back to my assignee," she said.

She was also to “bring back other goods from the woman”.

She revealed that she had received Sh167,000 as advance pay besides having her flight tickets fully paid.

It was noted that she got clearance from authorities in Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi as well as Ethiopia and Qatar's international airports.

She said she was surprised to be arrested at the Ho Chi Minh and profiled as a drug trafficker.

The arrest was made after her luggage was screened and the briefcase was discovered to had been modified with a false bottom that was used to conceal the drug.

All along her trial, she maintained both innocence against the charge that she deliberately got herself to knowingly deal in the crime of shipping drugs.

But prosecutors said Nduta’s claim was an attempt to cover up her crime and that she must take responsibility for the amount of drugs she was found to possess.