By Lilian Kauri
Mary Achieng was happily married to George Ochieng together with who they had been blessed with two boys. Her marriage was the best, the husband loving and God fearing.
Her husband was a truck driver and spent most of his time on the road transporting goods. But he would still find time to be home with his family over the weekends – until one Saturday morning that tragedy struck.
On March 14, 2027, Mary received a phone call from an unknown number that delivered the bad news – her husband had died as a result of a car accident.
“The caller asked me whether I knew a man by the name of George Ochieng. My voice was shaken, I started sweating and I felt tense and had a rapid heartbeat. My instincts could tell me that all was not well,” Mary recalls.
Her husband was involved in an accident while he was on his way to Awendo along Kendu bay road. He died on the spot.
Mary tearfully remembers the day news of her husband’s death was broken to her.
“My children were already asleep and I would have been a bad mother if I had waked them up to inform them of the cruelty incidence that had happened to their father,” she notes.
“I heard a loud scream and footsteps approaching my house. I rushed out only to see my daughter-in-law in tears and lying on the ground screaming,” she added.
With the family coming to terms with the tragic end of the family’s head and breadwinner, burial was planned and everything went as planned. Her husband would later be laid to rest as he had wished.
Beginning of trouble
But with the laying to rest of her husband, life would later turn out tougher for Mary than she would have thought.
Firstly, she discovered that she was two weeks pregnant.
“I knew this was going to be hard since my husband was the breadwinner of our family,” the widow noted.
Two weeks later, her mother-in-law came to her with a suggestion. She was concerned about how the widow would take care of the family and this is the reason she suggested that she agrees to accept help from her brother-in-law.
But it was not just help; to Mary, she understood it as ‘being inherited’. To be the wife of his late husband’s brother – Ogutu.
‘’All my in-laws and relatives suggested that Ogutu would help me take care of my family and protect me. Desperate and left with no option, I accepted to be inherited by my brother-in-law,” said Mary.
Ogutu says his intention was to help Mary so that she does not feel the weight of handling family issues alone in absence of her wife. However, when he suggested this to her wife, she was not happy about the idea.
“I explained this to my wife but her facial expression changed. I knew this was going to be hard,” he noted.
For Mary, it was difficult trying to fit into the new family set-up. Her children kept complaining about how they did not like their stepmother – Lavender.
“I remember one afternoon I was rushing to the market and I left my children with Lavender only to come back find them starving and crying,” Mary recalls.
“Lavender would actually refer to my children as rats,” she adds.
Health complications
Despite the challenges she was facing in the new family, Mary successfully welcomed a third-born – baby girl. Doctors advised that she take a one-month rest but her co-wife never cared – she ended up doing the tough home chores like a normal, healthy mother.
Efforts to get help from the man of the house hit a snag – he kept saying there was nothing he could do.
“After two years, I realized that I had started having health complications. Some signs and symptoms I experienced really scared me. I decided to go medical facility checkup. What Doctor Owago told me still lingers in my mind. He told me that I was HIV positive,” Mary narrates.
The doctor also told her that she was one-month pregnant.
“I was confused whether to celebrate the fact that I was expectant or cry myself to death since I was infected with HIV,” she added, tears flowing down her cheeks.
News of her being infected broke her heart. She was left traumatized and felt worthless.
She regretted being involved with her brother-in-law.
“Ogutu brutally beat me when I approached him and asked him about the disease. It was so shameful and disrespectful since my kids were standing behind the door watching,” she recalls.
At that time, he was not aware that Mary was expectant. Later in the night, he beat her up until she had a miscarriage.
“She called me that night crying and she told me that she was going to die. I was shocked,” says Mary’s friend, Auma.
Made her stronger
The incident left a big scar on Mary’s heart. She would later start VCT visitations and be also given medication.
Her children were left traumatized, having witnessed her being beaten up.
Attempts to get help from her mother-in-law never bore fruits as she kept telling her the need to endure in marriage.
With life getting tough by the day, Mary would eventually be forced to sell vegetables to enable her to get money for her upkeep and those of her children.
“My mother would help me pay for their school fees and other expenses I could not afford,” Mary recalls while smiling.
Having to endure such a difficult life, the widow said the experience made her stronger. She had learnt life’s lessons – albeit the hard way.
“Relatives should not push the widowed into wife inheritance to avoid risks of contracting HIV and AIDS,” Mary says.
Learning from Mary’s experience, it is time wife inheritance is totally abolished – for those that still practice it. This culture belittles our women.
Wife inheritance is still practised in Nyanza and Western regions. Women are usually forced to remarry to the family of the deceased.
In many cases, as seen in Mary’s experience, it is the brother of the deceased who inherits the widow and provides for her.
Prohibit wife inheritance
It is so sad that still in this 21st century women’s position in society is greatly understated. How can they be passed from one man to another just like a sack of potatoes in the market in the name of culture? Have we no humanity left for our ladies? Have we forgotten that man was made equal to the woman in the image of God?
Marriage is sacred and should not be forced. Everyone has the right to make their own decision on whether to get remarried or not.
Drafters of the law should ensure that the law prohibits and punishes all forms of wife inheritance and forced marriages. The law should also guarantee women equal rights to freely choose a spouse, the same right to enter into a marriage and equal rights at the termination of the marriage.
Once we end cases of wife inheritance we will help reduce the rate of HIV infection.
