Kenyan Tribe Continues Tradition of Wife Inheritance Despite Criticism

Family is the tie that binds. For Kenya’s ethnic Luos, it binds just a little tighter.

Take John Olonde. The aging night watchman already was struggling to feed and clothe two wives and eight children when his brother died seven years ago and left him an inheritance--another wife and two more children.

The Luo, the third largest of Kenya’s 42 ethnic groups, believe that a woman marries a family, not just a man. When a husband dies, elders decide which brother inherits the widow.

“It is the tradition of the Luo. We are all supposed to do it,” Olonde said. “Church leaders don’t like it. The president doesn’t like it. But it is a Luo tradition.”

Many Kenyan women consider the practice humiliating and degrading. Church leaders condemn it as outside moral teachings. Many politicians, including President Daniel Arap Moi, say it has no place in a modern society. Some members of Parliament want it outlawed.

But Luos stoutly defend their tradition, which they alone practice in this East African nation.

“We would be fools to say that everything practiced by Africans must remain so. But we are totally against abandoning our culture,” said Dennis Akumu, a Luo member of Parliament.

“If we today abandon it, what do we have then? If we suddenly banned polygamy, we would disrupt society,” he said.

Bishop Kenry Okullu, a Luo and the retired Anglican prelate in the Luo stronghold of Kisumu, disagrees.

“Cultures do die. When they become irrelevant as social changes take place, they must be allowed to die out,” he said.

Still, the practice endures, especially in the Luo heartland of western Kenya.

There are no statistics. Such marriages are performed without marriage licenses and without benefit of clergy, according to time-honored rituals recognized only by the clan and Luo society.

Olonde did not inherit his second wife. It was a straightforward polygamous union, another practice frowned on by the church.

To inherit his third wife, Olonde said Luo ritual required him to spend the first night sleeping outside the door of the new wife’s hut. The next night he slept with her, consummating the marriage.

An inherited wife shaves her head, one of numerous “cleansing” gestures required to break the bonds with the dead husband.

Even if the widow wants to marry someone else, Luo culture dictates that she first be inherited. Once the inheritance is consummated, the woman can leave and marry outside the family.

“Luos treat widows like dirty people who must be cleansed before remarrying. This is very degrading treatment of women,” said High Court Justice Effie Owuor, who refused to go along with wife inheritance rituals after her Luo husband died.

The judge, who heads a task force seeking to repeal laws that discriminate against women, recently told the newspaper Nation that she had been harassed by men while still mourning her husband.

Wife inheritors are only “interested in plundering the wealth of the deceased husband,” she said.

The practice evolved as a way to safeguard the clan, its members, wealth and alliances. When a husband died, the wife and children were not left alone. They were absorbed into the family. The land was cultivated and stayed in the clan.

“In the Luo vernacular, the wife is called ‘our wife.’ She belongs to the clan,” said Okullu, the retired bishop.

Okullu argues that because of social and economic changes, Luos should discard wife inheritance as a relic of a bygone era. Many Luo women are educated and live in urban areas. They can take care of themselves and their children, he said.

In the countryside, more children mean more hands to till the family farm. In the city, more children mean more mouths to feed. And if a family cannot afford school fees, another generation is doomed to menial labor and poverty.

Kenya already has one of the highest population growth rates on the planet at 3.4% annually.

Olonde was 61 when he inherited his brother’s wife and two children. And although he already had eight children of his own, he fathered two more with her. He makes less than $100 a month as a night watchman.

“We preach against it,” Okullu said. “We go to seminars. We talk about it. We try to show why there is no cause to be inherited. There is not much open resistance. They listen, then quietly go and practice it. It is not accepted by the church, so they do it quietly, outside the church.”

Akumu, who has one wife, defends wife inheritance passionately, partly for sentimental reasons. His grandmother was inherited and his father was a product of that union. “I would not be here without it.”

But, for the most part, Akumu and other educated Luos defend the practice as an integral part of their culture.

“It is a good thing,” Akumu said. “They marry into a home, a clan and into a society.

“Luo culture has been our strength. Anything that breaks it without devolving something to replace it will destroy the Luos.”