Widows suffering for saying No

It’s lunch time, but in the desperate faces of two widows underline their struggle to fend for their families.

Cultural chains have blocked their efforts, as community members give them tough conditions: they can only be set free after they are inherited.

Their grass-thatched house lets in water every time it rains, and at this time of the year, it rains in Homa Bay District throughout the day.

The co-wives, 24-year-old Winnie Atieno Wachara and Judith Akinyi Wachara, 23, are surrounded by their five children aged between six years and four months. All are pondering where their next meal will come from.

The women lost their husband Samwel Owino Chara early this year at the Homa Bay District Hospital.

They are among a group of 120 widows drawn from North Kanyamwa Location, who are starring at starvation in their faces owing to their stand against wife inheritance. Despite a lot of pressure from relatives among them, their brother in laws, the widows have remained defiant and vowed to die rather than be inherited. On diverse dates, they have opposed the machinations by their relatives.

“We have always been told in no uncertain terms that so long as we are not ready to be inherited, we should find our own ways of tilling our plots,” they said.

Tradition decrees that widow does not start cultivating her farm until she is inherited. That also applies to house repairs, and building a new house. Yet the widows have large tracts of land that they were left behind by their husbands.

“Because we are poor, we are unable to raise funds to hire outsiders to plough our farms,” one of them said

Talking of their predicament during their regular meetings under the auspices of Kanyamwa Aids Support, a community organisation that has continued to fight for their rights, the widows appealed to the Government and other well-wishers for help.

“We sincerely appeal to our district commissioner to offer us relief help alongside the internal refugees and other poor persons”, they said, adding that besides food, they lacked shelter.

Seek accommodation

“Most of us stay in leaking huts that force us to seek accommodation in nearby homes whenever rains intensify,” said Judith.

The problem, said Judith, is that since tradition barred women from climbing roofs of houses for repair, there was nothing they could do.

But the Chairman of Luo Council of Elders Ker Riaga Ogalo asserted that nobody had the right to demand to inherit a widow. Ker Ogalo said in an interview that those who wanted wives inherited before they could help them were a major threat to the community.

One widow said the refusal by their relatives to repair their houses was but a strategy to entice them into succumbing to wife inheritance.

Most of them said they can not comprehend why their relatives who are aware of the circumstances under which most of their husbands died should insist on inheriting them.

“The cause of most of these deaths is Aids. Why should they insist on staying with us?” asked another widow.

Mama Perese Owino, 45, said if the relatives could adopt the olden traditional ways of inheritance that men only hanged their clothes as a sign of having taken over the house, it would have been understandable. “Unfortunately, most of these men are eager to inherit us to become their wives.”

A pastor with Trinity Fellowship James Kambona said he recently built a food store, dero, for a widow after the in-laws insisted she had to be inherited first.

Pastor Kambona said as a church, they went to the home and built the store since church leaders did subscribe to the cultural belief.

Giving the background of the widows in Kanyamwa, the coordinator of Kanyamwa Widows support Group Mzee Abiud Asowa and his secretary Paul Okendo said they were proud of the stand by the widows.

Mzee Asowa said they were heavily indebted to some organisations and individuals that have helped the widows.