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Widows suffering for saying No
Widow Winnie Wachara and co-wife Judith Wachara with their children at home. Photo/ MAURICE K’ALUOCH
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.
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