KENYA: Teenage Widow Inheritors Expose themsleves to HIV/AIDS

Editor's Choice

Most...

Viewed
Commented


1.	KENYA ELECTIONS: Concern as Aspirants Retreat to their Ethnic Roots
2.	KENYA: Luhya Community Rejects Politics of Ethnicity
3.	KENYA: New Constitution Restores Foreign Investors' Confidence
4.	SOUTH AFRICA: Commission concludes settlement with Oceana
5.	Uganda Troops Capture Senior Leader of the Lord Resistance Army


1.	African Women Making Changes in Africa
2.	Uganda Troops Capture Senior Leader of the Lord Resistance Army
3.	KENYA: The Mathenge Menace
4.	Sahel: the fate of 160,000 Malian refugees hanging in the balance
5.	UN official stresses urgency of security and justice reforms in the DRC

Submitted by IQ4News on Fri, 02/12/2011 - 9:20am

While many may argue that wife inheritance is a thing of the past among the community, it is real among the teenagers.

By Joab Apollo

Dismas Okumu* has been embroiled in a hide and seek game since Mary Ajwang* lost her husband 2years ago.

It is an alarming episode pitting him against the widow’s children who feel embarrassed seeing him take over the role of the father in their family.

However residents of Kombewa Location in Kisumu rural constituency are not alarmed because cases of teenage boys being deluded by women into inheriting them has earned prominence in the village, and by extension the whole of Nyanza province.

“Does this astound you? He is not the first one. There are many young boys these days who inherit women in this village,” said David Omondi*, a neighbuor. He adds that widows take advantage of the naivety and the poor economic status of young men to re-marry them.

“They know these boys have got nothing. Most of them are orphans and from poor background and so they buy them food and the teenagers fall prey,” he said.

According to him, Okumu* dropped out of standard eight and has been engaged in the affair with the woman for quite some time, in one instance Mary’s children beat him up.

HIV/AIDS Prevalence

For Philip Ombogo, a Medic Laboratory Scientist in Eldoret, more shocking about these scenario is that they do not undergo HIV test before getting into such relationships.

“They (boys) do not understand how they endanger the lives of people in that area. They do not know what caused the death of the husbands. They just inherit them blindly,” Ombogo says.

As a result, Ombogo says, HIV/AIDS prevalence continues to plague the region.

“They (boys) are also in relationships with other young girls in the village which they infect with the virus unknowingly”.

But Roselida Achieng, a grocer at Kombewa Market disagrees. According to her, people from the area are well-informed about their health status.

“Tinde jite nie andila (These days everyone is on Anti-Retroviral Drug (ARV)),” she states, comparing those without ARV’s in their homes to phones without network.

Continuity

According to the Luo community culture, widows in the child-bearing bracket are inherited by any of the deceased brothers or a member of the clan to provide continuity. Such a person would then take up the role of catering for the needs of the children and the wife, but the culture seems to have been abused. Mzee Joshia Ngunya, a member of the Luo Council of Elders, argues that sex maniacs have ended up misusing the practice, leading to the rising cases of HIV/AIDS among the Luo people.

“The practice had good intentions, but it has been misused by people who are after sex. Both the widows and our men are to blame. Our widows for shattering the future of teenagers, and our men for engaging extra-marital sexual activities. Our mothers were also inherited but by respectful men. That’s why we grew up to be respectful men, but the ones I see today are jokers. We are killing this community,” Mzee Ngunya argues.

As the world marks this years’ World Aids Day on first December, the monster Dismas Okumu* and many young men in the region have fallen victims to must be tamed to reduce HIV/AIDS spread in the region, and Kenya by extension.

*N.B. The names with asterisks are not real. This is to protect the identity of the persons.