Child of two worlds

What does it feel like to give birth to two children in your own country but they have to live with you on an immigration permit? Once the permit expires, you have to renew it as fast as possible, lest they be deported to “their country”.

Your husband is not spared either. He lives in your country on a similar permit. This is the dilemma Kenyan women who have a foreign spouse have had to contend with — They have had to live with their families in their own countries at the mercy of immigration conditions.

With more and more Kenyan women marrying foreigners, it had become a daunting task to manage this kind of arrangement when the relationship reached the level of settling down and starting a family.

But the new law on citizenship has swept all this agony under the carpet.  Kenyan women are now able to pass their citizenship to their children thus discarding the tag that the children are “foreigners”.

We talked to a few women who are married to non-Kenyans and discovered why they are still in a celebratory mood, a week after the new laws were promulgated.

Koki Mulli

For this charismatic women’s rights crusader, the new laws were long overdue. For 14 years, Koki has been married to Dr Francois Grignon, a Frenchman she met while both were studying at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Together they have two children aged 10 and 8, both born  in  Kenya.
According to the old constitution, her children could only be French as she could not pass her citizenship to them.

Her husband, in the same vein, could not acquire Kenyan citizenship even though they are legally married.
But the situation could have been different had husband been the one who was Kenyan and she French.

The just discarded law allowed children of a Kenyan father and a foreign mother be recognised as Kenyans but not the other way round.
The new constitution has, therefore, come as a major reprieve.

Now, her children and husband will acquire Kenyan citizenships, meaning all the hustles she had to undergo for living and travelling with them outside the country are now over.

“It is a great relief to me. It pained me that the law was treating my children as outsiders. Sometimes I felt very bitter about it, “ says Koki, a renown women’s rights advocate.

Koki’s nightmare as “a mother of foreign children” would start immediately  she was set to travel outside the country. “The children and their father would queue in the queue reserved for Europeans while she had to line up on the “All Others” queue.

“They would be sorted out faster than I and had to wait for me for even an hour and they would be very fatigued by the time I finished the screening,” she says.

Every time the family travelled, the children asked her why she was never with them when the documents are checked. “It was traumatising as it was difficult to explain to them about the constitutional provisions,” she says.

“The French government itself invited me to apply for citizenship which would have meant me relinquishing my Kenyan identity,” she says. Had she yielded, her travel and lifestyle would have been smoother but only if she relocated to France. 

But Koki was not willing to drop her Kenyan citizenship. “There is that something that makes one proud to belong to your country of birth. I could not let it go,” she says.

And when she was involved in extensive civic education in seven districts in her native lower Eastern Kenya, Koki falls short of admitting that she was very keen for the Yes vote to carry the day.

“I was not supposed to be partisan but on many occasions, 98 per cent of my time was spent on enumerating all the reasons why the proposed law was good.  

“We are human, and faced by such situation which touches you personally, many people would do the same,” she adds. The citizenship clauses that start on Article 14, she says, will fundamentally change her life and that of the entire family.

When Saturday Magazine interviewed her early this week, she was very optimistic of a New Kenya.
“ I now feel I belong to the world. It is a breakthrough for women.

They can now relate freely with people from across borders,” she says. She also expresses her optimism about investing in both countries without worrying about legal hurdles.

“It was like there were two families – The French one and the Kenyan one. Now we are one and we shall move fast in that direction,” she says.

Saida Ali

Equally elated by the citizenship clauses is this young mother of one.  Only married for a couple of years to a Briton, Saida’s brush with the law came as soon as she gave birth early last year.

It took three months of unnerving visits to Sheria House in the company of her husband for the little baby to get a birth certificate. “There was a lot of comments that bordered on racism from the staff and I think everyone wanted to make each step more difficult,” she says of her experience under the old law.

“It took quite some defiance from me to make things happen. I needed the birth certificate for other documentations and  we had to explain our case to very senior officers,” she reveals.

The problem was that the baby’s third name was not local. Although the father’s name was finally accepted on the certificate, Saida’s pain mainly emanated from having to explain that the child was Kenyan and deserved be treated like other Kenyan children.

Another of Saida’s challenge would arise in April this year when she had to go to Canada to attend a board meeting of the Association of Women Rights in Development where she is an elected member.

“My husband had to give me a letter to allow me to travel with the child. It is demeaning for women to be subjected to this. It has a lot to do with gender discrimination that our old law inherited from colonialists,” she charges.

For her, the new reprieve the law gives her family is “very personal and emotive”. “I am passionate about this new law. It  will change life for many women,`” says the founder and chairperson of the board of trustees of the Young Women Leadership Institute.

Due to the old law, the couple had to set up to two homes, one on Kenya and another in Britain, because as it were, “We could not really have one home in either country and be home and dry”, she says.

As a country opening up to the world, Saida says it was archaic for the old law to restrict citizens from engaging in whatever productive manner with people from any nationality. “It is a big score for women in relationships with non-Kenyans, “ she says.

Different game for state officers

ODM Nominated MP Millie Odhiambo-Mabona is in her fifth year of marriage to Magugu Mabona, a Zimbabwean. 

Although she can pass the Kenyan citizenship to a child out of this marriage, she herself cannot acquire Zimbabwean citizenship even if the country allows it — She is a state officer.

The same case applies to Kathiani MP Wavinya Ndeti who is married to a Nigerian. Both husbands being non Kenyans, they can now acquire Kenyan citizenship on application. But like Millie, Wavinya, an Assistant Minister, cannot acquire the citizenship of her husband.

But that is not stealing the thunder of the gains Millie says are bestowed on women in the new constitution. The new law bars state officers from having dual citizenship. In addition to MPs and Ministers, state officers according to Article 260 include judges and magistrates, governors and senators, heads of security arms, President and his deputy, head of public service and cabinet secretary.

Her immediate reprieve is that her days of being married to a “tourist husband” are over. “It is not funny that you can only have the man in your life for a restricted period of time. An ideal couple should be together as  much as possible,” says the MP.

Her husband, a hotelier in Harare, often makes journeys to the country and as Millie puts it, it has cost implications. With the new law, Mr Mabona will quickly apply for Kenyan citizenship. We shall now be able to stay longer together and plan our lives,” she says.

Although the couple does not have children, Millie says her five-year marriage just got an instant boost. “It can only get better for me and other women in similar relationships,” she quips.

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