The changing face of marriage in Kenya

One man, one wife. This is the accepted model of marriage for many Kenyans. It has been deeply entrenched in the country’s social fibre, such that declaring one is polygamous or in a polygamous relationship is more likely to invite snide remarks than admiration.

While monogamy may be an indicator of the supposedly conservative lot Kenyans are, things are, as Kenyans are wont to say, very different on the ground. The fact is that the modern institution of marriage is evolving rapidly, an evolution that has gone way beyond polygamy.

It now includes arrangements such as spouse-swapping, polyandry and no-strings-attached sexual transactions in which married men and women pay for sex outside their marriages.

SWAPPED WIVES

In September this year, Kevin Barasa and Christopher Abwire from Busia County casually swapped their wives, Lillian Weta and Millicent Auma.

They also signed a joint parental responsibility agreement before the Busia County Director of Child Services Esther Wasige to ensure that the five children they had between them continued to get proper parental care in the midst of their parents’ bizarre agreement.

While this case of wife-swapping predictably got Kenyans talking, it is not an isolated incident.

In June 2016, Patrick Mangala swapped his wife Susan Juma with Ernest Anjeche’s wife Dorine Mukhonja.

The two couples hail from Shitirira village, Kakamega County. At the time, the two men were 25 and 42 years respectively. Incidentally, these two cases were triggered by infidelity.

Joseph Orinde, a sociologist and psychologist, says that the two cases of spouse-swapping are a pointer of how the concept of marriage and marital commitment in the society has evolved.

MARITAL MODELS

“Social behaviour is evolving, and this evolution is challenging sexual interactions and marital models that were previously considered taboo,” explains Orinde.

Worth noting is that incidents such as spouse-swapping are enabled by significant facilitators such as cultural practices. In cultures and traditions that practise wife inheritance, swapping wives may not seem so strange or out of place, explains Christina Lenjou, a consultant sociologist based in Nairobi.
“This culture makes it easy for the general community to accept such incidents inasmuch as they might be frowned on or discouraged by the law,” says Ms Lenjou.

For example, in Barasa and Abwire’s case, village elder Hector Osuru announced that the community would not attempt to separate the new couples.
“We shall not go against their decision. It is their lives after all. They are mature and know what they are doing,” he said.

Orinde adds that this resonates with an emerging trend of grudgingly accepting practices that would not have been tolerated a few years ago.

“Although the country could be generally described as conservative, there is a rising sense of permissiveness where certain sexual practices such as swinging, swapping of sexual partners within a group, are taking place under a veil,” he says.

SUSTAIN MARRIAGE

Love is also not enough to sustain a marriage, though. The ability to enter into a marriage and sustain it and the trajectory that the marriage takes thereafter largely depends on the financial situation of the partners involved.

Money, though it has since the beginning of time taken a central role when it comes to romantic relationships, today seems to be the only aspect that matters when negotiating relationships.

According to a study on materialism in marriage that was conducted by Brigham Young University in the US, the elevated importance of materialism that characterises modern marriages is directly linked to a decreased sense of importance of marriage and less satisfaction in marriage.

“The degree to which marriage is being used as a bridge to monetary gain has crowded out other marital priorities such as communication, conflict resolution, and intimacy,” the study says.

In Kenya, the sponsor syndrome has entrenched itself as an alternative to attaining financial freedom through relationships purely founded on material gain. For example, a 2016 study, #SEXMONEYFUN, on the sponsor phenomenon that was conducted by Kenyan communications firm A Well Told Story found that over half of all Kenyan youth believe that having an on-the-side relationship with richer partners is okay — 65 per cent of Kenyan youth said there was nothing wrong with having a sponsor, while 35 per cent admitted to having one.

SPONSORS
In most cases, sponsors are either older married men seeking sexual pleasure from younger girls or older women looking for sexual satisfaction from younger men, who are popularly known as Ben 10s.

What brought us here?
“Low socio-economic status carries a lot of weight in such cases. The sponsee usually has limited financial ability and may lack essential life skills that would enable them to have themselves quality relationships,” says Ms Lenjou.

The advent of modernity and sexual liberation is also changing the format of marriage. Take polyandry, for example, which involves one woman marrying or living under one roof with two men — 36-year-old Rael Mukeku from Kathekakai, Makueni County, is one of the few Kenyan women who have publicly declared being in a polyandrous marriage.

She is married to two men, both of whom are aware of, and contented with the arrangement. Ms Mukeku married her first husband, Muema Nguu, in 1992. She then married her second husband, Mutuku Muia, years later. At the time, she had seven children.

POLYANDRY

Sailing in the same boat is Ms Maurine Atieno from Rongo, Migori County. Ms Atieno first married Robert Ochieng, with whom she had two children. She later left him and married John Ochola.

A few years later, she and Ochola returned to Ochieng’s home, where the three of them started living together, with the two men sharing Ms Atieno.
Polyandry is not recognised by the law.

Murigi Kamande, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, points out that the law defines marriage as either a monogamous union of man and woman, or polygamous union of man and women. It has no provision of a union between woman and men.

An online survey on the nature of marriages in Kenya conducted by the Nation last year revealed that though the law frowns on such relationships, a majority of Kenyans are not averse to them — 64 per cent of the respondents quizzed said they embrace polygamy and polyandry in secret but publicly claim to be monogamous. Two of the major reasons that were cited on why marriage is no longer sacred are promiscuity and infidelity.

The changing face of marriage has not escaped single people, and is, in fact, putting off quite a chunk of them. According to the survey, 36 per cent of Kenyans are not very keen to get into long-term unions such as marriages.

Worth noting is that the days when women had to get married to get a ‘decent’ life are fast fading away. Today’s woman is more economically empowered (and sexually liberated) because she is opting to put her career ahead of marriage.

FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

“With such financial independence, she not only has more freedom, she also feels empowered to determine which man or men she wants to be with,” says Orinde.

A 2016 study by Consumer Insight revealed that 52 per cent of Kenyan women would choose a better-paying job over marriage.

There is also the fact that the modern, younger generation is less tolerant of marriage. This generation, explains Orinde, is more individualistic and egocentric and therefore less likely to commit. This, he says, triggers escapism.

“Escapism seems more appealing than, for instance, jumping into the actual struggle of resolving acts of infidelity that plague many marriages today,” says Orinde.

Changes to the law have now granted women the right to decide who their co-wives will be in polygamous settings.

In October 2015, the High Court ruled that men must not be allowed to register a polygamous marriage without the express consent of their wives.

“The practice of polygamy and registration of polygamous marriages without the consent of the previous wife or wives is inconsistent with provisions of equality in the Constitution,” Justice Mumbi Ngugi ruled.

This ruling also made reference to polyandry.

“Can men and women ever be equal, within the meaning contemplated in the Constitution, within a polygamous marriage? In my view, to talk of equality of men and women within a polygamous situation is a bit of an oxymoronic phrase, if one may coin the term.

Equality would presuppose a woman has the same right as the man to take on a second spouse during the subsistence of the marriage, the practice defined as polyandry. This is not recognised in any of the cultures of Kenya, so it must be accepted that polygamy precludes equality between men and women,” Justice Mumbi ruled.

CONSERVATIVE

Prof Catherine Gachutha, a psychologist and the director of the Kenya Institute of Business and Counselling Studies, says that the changing face of marriage might leave the institution at a weakened and less desirable position in the future.

“Kenyans are moving away from the conservative, mainly due to certain influences that are being ingrained that allow for these liberal marital freedoms,” she says. “Undefined contemporary values for marriages, family, communities and nation have led us to the place we are in now.

Article 10 of the Kenyan Constitution speaks of mainstreaming national values, which ought to start from the basic social unit, that is, family. This, though, is not the case.”

These changes are not self-driven either. The professor singles out individualism as opposed to communalism and globalisation of social practices and behaviours as some of the key things causing the concept of marriage to change in Kenya. “We seem to be losing our sense of family, marital values and their enforcement. The trend is to copy or generally accept what is happening in the rest of the world,” she says.

The globalisation of marriage through technology has further given rise to lifestyles such as open relationships that promote swinging within marriage.

“Conservatively, we had boundaries not only in marriage, but in dating as well. There were borders you couldn’t go beyond,” observes Prof Gachutha.

“These boundaries have been opened, which has resulted in poor personal and sexual discipline. It is now more acceptable to step out of your marriage than it previously was.”

LOOPHOLES
This is echoed by Ms Lenjou, who points out that how marriage is formulated from the beginning determines whether there will be loopholes that encourage infidelity, which may or may not be driven by material gain.

“There are dating, courtship and relationship protocols such as compatibility, needs and wants, which couples must observe,” she says.

These emerging deviant marital tentacles, the psychologist explains, could be motivated by short-term convenience, social pressure or as a last line of defence. “They are either formed out of convenience, adventure or are purely vindictive,” she says.

This could explain why the controversial “marriages” of Mangala and Anjeche, the men who first swapped wives, did not last. Worth noting is that the two men’s first and second unions had not been formalised traditionally or legally, meaning no bride prize had been paid.

“This explains their lack of solidity and why the partners could casually walk out of their marriages,” Ms Lenjou explains.

The old order of men heading their marriages through provision has also changed. More women are now breadwinners as their men take the back seat.

“Programmes aimed at empowering women economically are paying off, and the result is more women getting an income. Since women are naturally nurturers, they are redirecting their income to raising their homes economically,” explains Orinde.