Living in Turkana: Marriage - law and love, August 2013

We were back in Turkana for UNICEF, to research marriage of girls under 18. This is illegal yet persists in Turkana for cultural as well as economic and other reasons. The idea of our trip was to collect real stories, and return to the families we knew and trusted to help explain things.

The beads of a married woman

Those we met brought to life the difference between how a ‘development issue’ is seen from the outside, and how it is experienced by those living it. Fresh from reading child protection reports, we did indeed see instances of abuse and broken dreams – like the girl who walked three days to escape being married to an old man who would bring her father many camels but would destroy her goal of completing school forever. But we also saw instances of communities and girls very much in control of child welfare, education and prosperity, according to local standards… yet engaged in early marriages because of development failures rather than wilful child abuse. For them, their child’s marriage was a last resort and a desperate way of coping – for example after being hit by violent raiding that wipes out a herd, or animal diseases that decimate unvaccinated livestock, or poverty and lack of access to services that strangles the choices available. They were not marrying off their daughters simply to persist with what agencies term a “negative cultural practice”. Rather, in a world without formal insurance, protection or state support, they were forced to do so to for the sake of a bride wealth payment that would transform the entire family – and in some cases ensure they would actually survive.

The research also looked at how school was a hard choice for many parents in Turkana, and how far from fast-tracking their daughters to success was seen as more likely to make them drop out of traditional society and become unmarriable – while also failing to get a job. These issues and that of the law, widely seen not to reach such remote rural areas, I bundled up in the formal report on child marriage. But here I thought I could share how ‘our family’ in Nakapelewoi helped us understand it, and also how they were doing a year after Nachukuli’s death.

Aragai

Aragai

We have watched Aragai grow over the last four years from a girl into a beautiful and composed young woman. She lives in the home of her mother Etukoit, not far from the town of Kaaleng, and the year before this visit her father Nachukuli died. The household moves but we found them fairly easily, directed by a young girl near the road who knew the family. We spent several happy days catching up with everyone, and I took the time to get to know Aragai at this turning point in her life.

About fifteen years old, Aragai seemed subtly more mature than when we had last seen her. Had the lines of her face hardened? Or was it the way she carried herself, a subtle shift in posture that accentuated curves that were not there before? She was dressed traditionally as usual, but with significant beads around her neck that gave her the impression of a woman-in-waiting. It was fun to watch how she could walk like a queen with a heavy jerry can of water or bag of cereal on her head; and then be as lithe and fast as the young goats she chased around the homestead. Most of all, I noticed she was confidently aware of the gaze of others – even when, as is often the case in the desert, she was not exactly sure where it was coming from. With the self-assurance of the beautiful, she flounced to the water point with bouncing breasts and a light smile…

Aragai walking to the water point

Aragai was as close as ever to her mother Etukoit. Not only do they adore each other – sitting side by side at night singing to the younger children – but they also depend on each other. Aragai needs her mother, who in turn could not do without her caring for babies and children, herding and tending small stock, collecting and preparing foods, repairing huts, and doing just about any other domestic task of a Turkana or pastoralist home. Etukoit has kept Aragai at home longer than many mothers keep daughters of marriable age. She told me that is a suitor had approached to marry Aragai at a young age she would have said, “This is my last born, please wait, because I love her - she is my last child and I want her with me”.

Etukoit and Aragai

We learnt that times had been harder since Nachukuli’s death, a death inevitable given his old age but no doubt hastened by the brutal drought of 2011 which people in this area called ‘the splitter’ [Kijiana]. The family were continuing their pastoralism, supplementing food and income from their herds with money from selling aloe vera to a local Somali trader (bitter, smelly work that Aragai does regularly), sharing and selling relief flour or cash transfers received, and taking casual labour opportunities when they arise. But they were in transition, since they now belonged to Nachukuli’s older brother. Nachukuli had paid all three instalments of bride wealth for Etukoit, a vast number of cattle and other animals in total, and so on his death his older brother inherited her, her children, and all their livestock and assets.

Emotionally, they were in transition too, and Aragai almost immediately spoke of how she was still aching from the death of her father. She told us, “It is a death inside” – with intense gravity for someone so young, someone who you imagine would be protected from prolonged grief by the pace of adolescence. She also, worryingly, said that she still suffers from the ekapilan [witchcraft] she was affected by over a year ago, during drought, when a jealous woman with no daughters cursed her for walking past her home carrying water. The most obvious symptom has been pain in the throat, as well as general distress for her and her parents, and they have been to a healer but it persists.

Aragai’s other news was that she never did not get to go to school as she had wanted to, or even to the Sunday school nearby which she had marked out as a compromise. It would have let her sit with peers and learn, while it would not have threatened the traditional aspirations her parents had for her, nor taken too much time from the many domestic tasks she had at that time. Yet the domestic tasks got greater after Nachukuli died, and the family struggled to make money any way they could, so she could not be gone for a whole morning a week…

Marriage

Aragai with her mother, niece and dogs – including her own, the black and white one she has called Nasil Fashion (after the name of a shop in town)

Now mature – judged physically and emotionally rather than in years – Aragai will soon be married. It was on her mind as well as mine, and we spoke a lot about it. The choice would now belong to her uncle, the brother of her father who inherited them all, and yet Etukoit and Aragai expect to have their say in the matter. Aragai declared firmly, “It is my father’s brother who will decide, the man who inherited my mother. But I will also decide! I will see the man he chooses and decide for myself, and if he is the right man I will marry him. If I see he is not the right man I have the right to refuse, and I will object to my uncle’s decision.” She had some pretty clear criteria for ‘the right man’: “My uncle will choose a rich man with many animals, a man whose herd he admires. When it comes to my decision, I will choose a man who my blood will agree with, and also a man with animals, and also a man who will not beat me. I want to marry a man I am together with, one I make plans with. I will refuse an old man, whether he is wealthy or not. I will accept a young man, but he should be wealthy as well.”

Turkana is famous – even among pastoralist societies – for high payments of bride wealth. It might be decreasing compared with old days, but it is still formidable – and a girl like Aragai will command many livestock. Etukoit, balancing wealth and happiness, explained, “If it is a good man I would be happy with 20 big animals and 500 small animals as bride wealth. I want her to go to a man who will make her fat; not to a man who, when she visits us again, will send her here looking thin and with dust in her eyes…”

Love

Listening to Aragai and her mother talking about good husbands I am curious about the place of love in Turkana marriages, which are typically understood as economic transactions or social alliances. Speaking of someone who ‘her blood would agree with’, I felt Aragai was describing chemistry she hoped to find. Certainly her mother Etukoit has talked excitedly in the past about how handsome and strong – and rich! – her own husband Nachukuli had been when they met.

I found a surprising source on love in Turkana in an artefact held at Oxford’s Pitt River’s Museum. It’s a traditional girl’s apron given almost a century ago by a young girl to her lover. This now dry and dusty article, collected by a Juxon Talbot Barton in 1918, is a girl’s ‘puberty apron’ that she gave to her lover. He then wore it across his chest to prove himself a man in hunting or battle, and the two iron rings are thought to mean he killed two men. The full description is at http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/pdf/TurkanaApron.pdf. If only we knew more about the lovers and their fate.

Turkana 'puberty apron' given by a young girl to her lover - now in Oxford's Pitt River's Museum

Unfortunately as a young and single man, our trusty translator Lokale has never been a very good interpreter of the issue. Once I asked him if he would like to find a girlfriend and his quick reply was, “It would be adding a problem to a problem”.

Lokale in Etukoit's hut

Nevertheless, we have heard plenty of good stories of illicit love in our time in Turkana – and the punishments they attract. In Kache Imeri a young woman (married to a decrepit old man) had an affair with the dashing neighbour: they were both forced to cover themselves in the stomach contents of a cow, slaughtered by her father’s family, and then parade around the homestead of her husband being beaten! And once we felt we narrowly escaped a beating ourselves, with an old man who announced almost immediately, on meeting us for the first time, “Your grandfather fell in love with a young girl from here, they hid on a mountain because their marriage was forbidden and then they ran away. He took her without paying a single cow!” That was a plucky white man indeed, in these parts, and I wonder what happened to them. I like to think they made it…

It is now more common for illicit love to be accepted as an ‘informal marriage’ in Turkana. This we heard all over the place in more urban areas, but also in Etukoit’s own home. Her first born daughter Emuria – the one who had been so fat when we first came to Nakapelewoi – fell in love with a boy who was helping the local Somali aloe vera trader. She was at the roadside selling flour, bought with the Oxfam monthly cash transfer that the household’s second wife Kwee receive, and he was there working for the Somali who Aragai regularly sells aloe vera juice to. (Aragai earns 1,000 shillings or 12 dollars for a full 20 litre jerry can, but gets so stinky in the proeess that Etukoit won’t share a hut with her!). According to Etukoit, “He is not a wealthy man, he doesn’t have any animals at all, but that was her choice and we accepted it. Even Nachukuli would have accepted it, if he had been alive, because he respected his children’s choices. Emuria fell in love with that man and is now pregnant and living with him.”

There was no wedding, and no bride wealth was paid, so the baby will be Emuria’s, and Etukoit’s family’s, unless the man pays bride wealth in future. That also means if it is a girl and she has a formal marriage, Emuria’s family will receive the bride wealth for her.

With informal marriages more common, children increasingly belong to their mothers – another part of the fundamental shift where women take up all sorts of new enterprises and are regularly ‘empowered’ by NGO programmes.

After Etukoit pointed out what a huge social change this meant, I tried to explain British feminism linked to a post-war era where women continued doing ‘men’s work’ and could access contraception to control their reproduction. ‘Iteni, iteni!’ said Etukoit in her brilliant way (meaning 'True! True!), ‘We are having that kind of change here in Turkana now too!’

Aragai at the water point

Before we left we had a happy time following Aragai to the water point, about 3 km away, across a scorching moonscape. There we spoke to other herders who complained about the drought that was coming and a missionary who had promised (falsely) a well that would provide cleaner water than this open dam shared by animals and people.

Esekon berriees

On the way we stopped for ripe esekon berries. On the way back the little children Ekireket and Ekure could be heard yelling at us from the branches of one of these trees, but we never saw them. We could only shout back in the direction of their squeaky invitation to join them and eat esekon! With those two there was certainly mischief afoot. Later they had a ‘driving lesson’ in the LandRover, and became even more uncontrollable…

Ekireket takes the wheel

For the first time we had a larger home that could receive guests – a bell tent – and it allowed us to play host. Just as with a Turkana akai, guests approached from the east, including strangers who wanted water and dear Etukoit who brought a baby goat to show us. That was a good opportunity to give her a jar of honey we had brought as a gift – none of the co-wives or neighbours were watching! She tasted it, approved, and then told us a very funny story from her childhood. It involved some young men who wanted to show off to her by fetching her some wild honey from a tree – but ended up rolling and rolling and screaming at her feet as they were covered in furious biting bees! She did a wonderful impression of the cowards, and I thought that Nachukuli would have enjoyed mocking them too… He was very good at reminding everyone how handsome and strong he had been as Etukoit’s suitor. I think we all felt his presence during our visit.