Greedy individuals have devised a new way to propagate the age-old tradition that was almost phased out. CLIFFORD AKUMU highlights how it usually pans out and how young women are affected. 

When her husband died in 2016, Lydiah Nyawanga* was only 24 .The tall, slender woman had been married at age 20 and had given birth to a baby girl in her second year of marriage before a grisly road accident took away the love of her life.

She was dejected and lost for words. She was at her prime age. Her dark, rich complexion and a characteristic headscarf, her signature attire, sold her out to the world. She attracted many suitors. 

What worried her most was the number of both young and old men who frequented her home in the name of “mourning and celebrating the life and times of her husband”, then a respected fisherman with numerous boats and fishing nets to his name.

Soon after her husband’s burial, a plethora of men started hovering around her compound. Some went as far as offering her help around the homestead.

“They used to come into the compound, clean it, split firewood and even fetch water for us. I innocently didn’t realise their mission, until they started seducing me,” she recalls.

She had heard tales of such men and their loads of trickery. At first, she refused-but later gave in after it emerged failure to get remarried would make her an outcast in the family!

Ugly head

Nyawanga’s predicament represents what women go through whenever they lose their husbands.

Wife or widow inheritance, social experts agree, has become one of the difficult battles to win.

While in some cultures communities consider being inherited a natural thing, others loathe the mention of the word. 

The advent of HIV/Aids threw a new dimension to the practice, with advocates and stakeholders working around HIV prevention programmes up in arms against it. 

However, in some communities, especially in Western Kenya, the practice still rears its ugly head even though it is considered both taboo and retrogressive. 

The tradition has taken a new face, with the emergence of  “professional inheritors”, a group of men on the lookout for newly widowed women.

They have gone ahead of technology to form inheritance groups, albeit, not on social media.

These groups are said to be raiding funerals, churches and funeral fundraising events to cast their net wider.

They have even gone to an extent of apportioning widows to specific individuals based on the experience as an inheritor!

In the 19th Century, when wife inheritance was considered a consensual remarriage of a widow, there were elaborate steps to follow.

Several factors compelled such occasions, including age and number of children if any, and age of these children.

In the Luo community, a council of elders and revered clansmen met and vetted the would-be suitors first using different criteria including, behaviour and wealth.

They would then involve the widow and the suitor, where they read the riot act on how he should take care of her, among others things.

If the widow was young, like the case of Nyamanga, she had the option of remarrying  any of her husband’s younger brothers, or paternal cousins.

It was consensual and the new husband had to pay bride price again. In many cases, they went on to have children. 

Other inheritors were just ceremonial head of families. Their role was to give security to the widow and act as pillar to lean on. Things are, however, different today.

Professional inheritors are an eyesore in the community today. Contrary to the norm, this group is known to harbour sinister motive, especially when they know the widow’s husband was a rich man.

Nyamwanga’s roller coaster life with the inheritor is still etched on her mind.

After two years into her ‘new marriage’, she lost all the wealth she had accumulated with her first husband after disputes arose between her and her new spouse.

Rights violation

“My inheritor secretly sold boats and nets my husband had left behind. Life became tough and I parted ways with him,” she says.

Although the government has already recognised the need to improve women’s economic rights, its 1997-2001 National Development Plan noted lack of property rights is a major factor of poverty in Kenya.

“Dispossessing widows of their inheritance violates their right to equal rights in marriage and adequate living conditions under international and regional law”, says Empowering Women with Rights to Inheritance report by Federation of Women Lawyers, Kenya.

Nyamanga supports the ongoing campaign to kick out “professional” inheritors from the region to curb the spread of HIV/Aids. She no longer wants to see any woman go through what she experienced in the hands of inheritor.

“I loathe at the idea. It is backward thinking. Period!” she says. *Not her real name