In Western Kenya a number of girls marry as early as 16 or even 18. Usually these are school drop outs who leave school due to early pregnancies, orphan hood or lack of school fees to enable them continue with education. The girls are lured into sexual activity with simple gifts like cheap body oil or small monies to buy sugarcane or sometimes money to buy necessities like ladies panties which their parents or guardians are unable to afford given their meager earnings and their limited knowledge on good parenting skills.
These girls get married to the equally young men of between 16 and 21. The men also have basic education of primary school. Their limited education does not allow them to get good jobs and they end up doing manual labour on peoples farms, operate bicycle taxi commonly known as “boda boda” while others after acquiring the family men status move to cities like Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu or Eldoret where they find work as night guards. For those who end up working in far a way town their salaries are usually too small to enable them to make fortnightly trips up country to be with their young wives. For that reason they end up coming home in a span of between 3 and 12 months. The little salary earned is usually saved to be sent home to their wives on a monthly basis to allow them to buy a few necessities like cooking fat, paraffin, match boxes and clothes for the family once in a while. Thus the young wives are starved of love from their husbands.
The young wives up country are left in the care of their mothers’ in-law whom they do house hold chores for since in Western Kenya it is widely accepted that once a woman has a married son, she takes leave from performing house hold chores like fetching water, from the river, fetching firewood, cooking or even visiting the posho mill. It is therefore common to hear elderly women openly wishing for the day their sons will marry so they can be relieved from the otherwise tiring house hold chores.
Unfortunately despite working so hard for their mothers in laws while remaining very faithful to their absentee husbands, their husbands on the other end are never able to be faithful. These young men having been away from their wives for several months start finding other lovers in their towns of work. Once this has happened the now way word husbands reduce their frequency up country from about four times in a year to only once a year. This leaves the young wives feeling frustrated and abandoned. Some usually gather courage and make unannounced visits to their husbands residing in towns only for them to be disappointed to find them leaving with other women. Worse still since these men are not very financially stable and therefore unable to rent separate houses for the women they let the two women share a small house. In most cases it is the official wife from up country who gets tired of the awkward arrangement and opts to move back up country where she forlornly condemns herself to playing servant to her mother in law because even if she went back to her parents or guardians home they would never accept her back as divorce or separation from one’s husband would bring shame to the family.
Bye, Evelyn Mukanda
