Venessa Misewe

WIFE INHERITANCE IN THE LUO COMMUNITY IN KENYA, EAST AFRICA

The Luo community is the third largest tribal group in Kenya with a population of about 3.3 million. Kenya is a small country in East Africa, along the coast of the Indian Ocean, with a total of forty two tribes, and a population of about forty million people. The Luo tribe is one of the main tribes in Kenya known to have very strong customs that have been tightly preserved and passed on for generations. One of the main cultural practices in the Luo culture is wife inheritance, which is a main part of the culture, and one of the key practices that the Luo people are known for. Wife Inheritance is a practice where a Luo woman is forced to be inherited by a married cousin or any kinsman of her deceased husband upon his death. This practice was originally intended for good and was meant to take care of widows in the Luo community by caring for their economic needs(the person who inherited the widow was responsible for providing for the widow and her children), physical needs(the man who inherited the widow had the right to engage in sexual acts with the widow) and lastly the man who inherited the widow was responsible for protecting the widow’s wealth that she acquired from her deceased husband, and he in turn was the one who decided how the widow’s wealth would be used. 

However in the late 1980’s the Luo practice of wife inheritance was being threatened by the onset of HIV. When HIV first started in Kenya, many people began dying in large numbers, and the infection rate especially in the Luo culture tripled because when a HIV infected man died, his wife(who was also HIV positive), was automatically inherited by her husband’s brother. The wife was required to have sexual relations with her husband’s brother and this in turn passed on the infection to the husband’s brother. Let’s keep in mind that the man who inherited the widow was still married and still sexually active with his wife. In no time, HIV infection increased and many men continued dying and many HIV positive widows were inherited, and in turn greatly aided in spreading HIV infection. This practice went on for years until the late 1990’s when AIDS was declared a national epidemic in Kenya with about 500 people dying of the disease every day in 1998. The British people who were assisting in trying to stop HIV infection in the 1990’s came to the Luo community and learned about the “Wife Inheritance” practice in the culture, and attacked the Luo people by saying that the practice was wrong and needed to be abolished because it was increasing the spread of HIV. The British in turn tried to educate the Luo women about condom use, and additionally tried to urge them to say no to wife inheritance. When the women tried to implement the use of condoms the men in the Luo culture were very angered by this because they viewed condoms as a way in which white people who had previously colonized them were trying to exert power on them again, and consequently, Luo men felt attacked and hey lashed out in an attempt to say no to condoms and preserve their wife inheritance custom. Women who insisted on the use of condoms or refused to be inherited were disowned and kicked out of the community together with their children.

Before the HIV pandemic hit Kenya, the Luo culture did everything to make sure widow’s conformed to the wife inheritance custom. To make the widows succumb to the 'wife inheritance' practice, the Luo culture imposes some rules to ensure that all the widows conform. Unless a widow goes through the inheritance cleansing ritual, she is (1) not allowed to attend social functions in the village and among relatives. She is viewed as a bringer of death and a bad omen. Even carrying someone's child is a taboo. (2) She is not allowed to engage in any economic activities such as farming. Even erecting a new house for her by anyone else apart from her male inheritor is a taboo. (3) She is threatened with wasting diseases leading to death. Failure to go through the ritual of wife inheritance is said to lead to a complete wipe-out of the widow's children and future offspring.   

http://www.preventgbvafrica.org/sites/default/files/images/resources/wife_inheritance_large.jpg?1313242355

Widows in the Luo culture had no choice but to conform to the wife inheritance practice. Although this practice was intended for good, the picture above shows that many men in the Luo culture misused this practice and used it as a way of taking advantage of the widow’s vulnerability by stealing her wealth. Not only did the men do this, but in turn, they raped many of the widows who refused to engage in sexual acts with them, and thus aided in the spread of HIV during the 1980’s. Many widows in the Luo culture did not like the practice, but had no choice but to conform to it. It was degrading and oppressed not only the widows but also their children because the men did not do much to provide for the widows children. The image above shows how widows in the Luo community suffered for years all in the name of culture which in turn lead to their death sentence during the onset of HIV. The mask symbolizes the evilness on the wife inheritance practice, and all the negative effects in brings along with it; rape, property theft and HIV/AIDS. It just shows how something that was originally intended for a good cause can lead to all these negative side effects. Culture can sometimes be our worst enemy, and it is better for us to hold on to what is good in our culture, and try our best to get rid of what is not good in our culture.

Although Wife Inheritance has been openly criticized in today in Kenya, many Luo people are still stubbornly trying to continue implementing the culture. The video below shows how widows in the Luo community are still struggling to free themselves of wife inheritance practices, and in order to do this, they have to go outside the community and seek help from government officials and tribal elders who are more open to change the custom. In most Kenyan communities women are traditionally not allowed to inherit their deceased husband’s land, but a new constitution was released in 2010 that gave women the right to inherit their deceased husband’s land. Although the constitution gave women the right to inherit land, many communities are still having trouble accepting and following this new rule, and this is what the video below shows.

DISINHERITED WIDOWS VIDEO PLACE HERE

                                  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3daHAXZlC2I

This topic of wife inheritance in Kenya reminded me of this week’s article, “Endangering safe motherhood in Mozambique: prenatal care as pregnancy risk,” by Rachael Chapman that talked about how women in Mozambique delayed seeking prenatal care until their second and third trimester because they had a cultural belief that if they went for prenatal care early in their pregnancies because they were scared that “they and their unborn infants will be targets of witchcraft or sorcery by jealous neighbors and kin.” Even though Mozambique women had good intentions for delaying their early prenatal care treatments, they did not know that they were actually harming themselves and their unborn infants by not seeking prenatal care in their first trimester. The cultural practice of delaying prenatal care by the Mozambique women actually resulted high infant mortality rate, lost pregnancies and high maternal mortality rate in women in Mozambique. To the Mozambique women, delaying prenatal care was seen as a good thing, even though they were not seeing the consequences that their cultural practice was doing to them and their unborn infants. 

The wife inheritance image with the mask, the disinherited widows video and the Rachel Chapman’s article about prenatal care in Mozambique all show how culture is embedded in us, and how even though some of our cultural practices can be meant for good, it can actually be causing harm to us. The wife inheritance culture in the Luo community of Kenya was actually meant to protect and provide for the widow and her children, but in turn ended up actually harming the widows through rape, property theft and HIV/AIDS infection. The video about the disinherited widows shows how the wife inheritance practice still affects many widows in the Luo community and how Luo men are still trying to keep the practice alive by oppressing widows. Rachel Chapman’s article shows how a mother’s good will to protect her unborn child actually ends up hurting her in the long run. 

I think that these three elements (the video, image and Rachel Chapman’s quote from her article) show us how culture is a very important part of who we are and how we view life. It’s very patriotic to love and want to preserve your culture, but at the same time, you should be willing to let go of cultural practices that are harmful to you. It may seem like an act of Ethnocentrism when an outside comes into your culture and tries to correct certain parts of your beliefs, but you must be willing to reevaluate your culture, swallow your pride and change the wrong things that need to be eradicated, and preserve the good things. In summary you should make your culture work for you.

Worked cited

http://www.preventgbvafrica.org/sites/default/files/images/resources/wife_inheritance_large.jpg?1313242355

https://www.morebooks.de/assets/product_images/9783848448/big/5031078/wife-inheritance-among-the-luo-of-kenya.jpg?locale=gb

Centre for Rights Education & Awareness (CREAW)

Family Planning Association of Kenya

http://www.fpak.org/

FEMNET - African Women's Development and Communication Network

http://www.femnet.or.ke/

s

Center for AIDS, Development, Research and Evaluation

http://www.cadre.org.za/

POWA - People Opposing Women Abuse

http://www.powa.co.za/

http://www.arc-kenya.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3daHAXZlC2I

http://anth215withava.blogspot.com/

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND GLOBAL HEALTH

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND GLOBAL HEALTH

            The most striking thing about the readings we’ve done in the last ten days is how everything is about Global Health. It really interesting to see how global health and the World Health Organization are mainly controlled by the developed countries e.g.: United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. These developed nations are the ones who make the rules and regulations that for the most part favor their own personal interests, and hurt the interests of the other less developed countries. A perfect example is shown in this week’s article “The WHO transition from International to Global Health” when United States and other developed countries in the WHO took full dominance of the organization in 1949 after the Soviet Union and other communist countries left the organization. America found a way to quickly dominate the WHO in 1949 and by the time the Soviet Union joined the UN and WHO in 1956, the US had already used the WHO to favor their country’s personal interest.

            I will not refuse to give credit to the WHO because they have really helped third world countries in the control and treatment of diseases like AIDS, Malaria, Small pox and Polio, but at the same time I personally feel like they could have done more. If you closely look at the WHO, yes it’s meant to serve and meet the problems of all nations in the world, but is certainly does the opposite. The WHO is just a way of developed countries to enforce power over developing and undeveloped nations. It’s like a form of slavery in a way. The developed nations (mostly white) form the guidelines, set the rules and force other nation to live by these rules and follow them. Developed countries are the ones who determine what is wrong or right in terms of health care and make the whole world believe that their ways are correct.

           

            The image above clearly shows that the whole world is judged by the standards of a small group of people. This group of people (developed countries) is the one that determine the world’s health care, and that the whole world is forced to do things their way or the high way. Which leads me to another thought; the World Bank. The World Bank was mainly created so that nations can borrow money from it during times of need. The World Bank which is mostly governed by developed countries, mainly loans most of its money to undeveloped and developing countries that were mainly colonized by the developed countries. Most of these third world countries borrow and will continue borrowing money form the World Bank because after their colonizers left, and they gained independence, they had a hard time starting over and learning to govern their countries and do things on their own. When colonizers like the British, Dutch, French and Portuguese colonized their colonies, all they did was use all their colonies resources (human labor, gold, oil and plantation) to benefit themselves, and as a result, they got richer, why their colonies for the most part did not benefit at all. After their colonies gained independence, their colonies were left with the hard task of figuring out how to use their lands resources, and that took a long time to figure out. Most colonies gained independence in the 1960, and up to date, they are still trying to figure out how to govern themselves.

            So for the most part third world countries will always owe the World Bank millions of money in loans, and the developed countries will always have power over global health because they are the main contributors to the World Health Organization, and as much as I hate to say this, developed countries will forever reign superior over the whole world. That’s just the plain truth.

            Global Health is just a word that was coined in order to make the world believe that the World Health Organization is all for one and one for all. But in actual sense, global health is not a universal movement because it has major actors who are: - the World Bank, WHO, private organizations and philanthropists (westerners), who will always be at the top food chain of global health.