The Shocking Lesbian Traditions that thrive in Western Kenya

President Uhuru has always been categorical that any form of gayism and homosexuality cannot be allowed in the country. It was evident when former US President Barack Obama visited Kenya towards the end of his second and last term at the US presidency.

Kenyatta affirmed that he did not say that gay people did not have rights but majority of Kenyans did not wish to legalize homosexuality. Uhuru was addressing the question as to why the Kenyan authorities seem to tolerate the ‘persecution’ and ‘discrimination’ of the LGBT community in the country when it is supposed to protect all its citizens’ right irrespective of their sexual orientation.

But what may have been lost to Uhuru as he talked tough on this controversial topic, is that same sex marriages were then and are still going on under his government’s watch with nothing seeming to be done.

In a recent TV feature, these gay lesbian marriages are widely practiced by the Kuria community of South-Western Kenya, under what they call ‘nyumba mboke’. The practice allows for woman-to-woman unions, despite the fact that gay marriage is criminalized in Kenya.

But there is little love or romance in this marriage, the report notes before going forward to use anectodes of two women who have been married under ‘nyumba mboke’. But there is little love or romance in this marriage.

One of them Grace Boke, 19, dropped out of school and married Pauline Gati after conceiving her first child out of wedlock. “My father forced me to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) when I was very young, in class two, and immediately after that, I was involved with a man who made me pregnant and disappeared.

“My parents were very poor and decided to give me away for four cows to a woman with no children. She is now my partner,” Boke said. She adds: “My father later sold the cows and went for a drinking spree and never gave my mother any money from that. He later died.” The couple lives in abject poverty as the woman who married Boke has no farm and ‘all she wanted was me to help her get children’.

Gati on her part, said that same-sex arranged marriage is culturally accepted so women who are unable to have children, or those who have not yet had a son, can fulfil societal expectations.

“My husband died and left me with no children after we had lived together for many years,” she said. I was facing a lot of stigma from the community and was advised to get a young woman to help me get children,” Gati said.

Gati and Boke do day-labour jobs in farms to get by and say they and the children are used to sleeping hungry.

“[Boke] has no source of income. She is supposed to rely on me entirely because the men who make her pregnant have no responsibility for these children. The men she meets are supposed to make her pregnant and walk free; we do not follow them … because we fear they may kill us or the babies,” she is further quoted as saying.

Several other women in such marriages that Al Jazeera interviewed, the Doha-based global TV network notes, had a similar story as that of Gari and Boke. Sammy Chacha, a chief in Kehancha, confirmed that nyumba mboke marriages have wreaked havoc on the community.

“This culture is deep-rooted among this community and therefore the young women and children born out of these arrangements suffer a lot. Parents … get carried away when they are offered few cows to give away their daughters,” he is quoted as saying, adding that Nyumba mboke unions are not constitutionally supported and, therefore, violate the rights of women and children.

“As local administration in this region, we discourage this practice but people do it behind our backs. We only get to hear about it when conflicts arise,” he said. Chacha told the TV network that he is aware of at least 400 women in such marriages.