Thursday, Mar. 22

The photo is of Kate Fletcher and one of the older girls holding the new 7 mo. old member of the Hekima family.



My brother asked me this morning via Skype (for him it was last night) what I spend my time doing here besides tutoring math. It’s not very exciting to describe because what I’ve been doing is working on revising employee contracts and job descriptions. All these documents are in English, and English is usually the Kenyan’s third language after their tribal language (there are 50+ tribes in Kenya) and kiswahili. The contracts are written like a legal document done up by a non-native English speaker. So we are trying to simplify the language so the employees can understand what they’re signing. All the employees work under one-year contracts that are renewed annually (assuming it is decided they should stay on).  The job descriptions have been written by hand on the last page of the contract, so I reduced all those to electronic form so we can attach printouts to the contracts - hopefully easier to read. Now I need to work on the Staff Guidelines, which is written about as opaquely as the contracts and includes policies and procedures that don’t necessarily agree with what the contracts say. Now isn’t that exciting?

Kate and I went to a Rotary dinner meeting in Karen last night (yummy tandori chicken!) and talked about Kenyan marriage practices on the way home. Here in Kenya, women still seem to be considered property - either of their parents or husbands. Parents demand a ‘bride price’ from any suitor before a girl can marry. In rural areas the price is in cows or goats, but in the cities it is more often money. I sort of thought this practice was mainly a Maasai one of cows for wives but apparently it is common among all tribes. Of course, Kenya is a poor country, and few young men have the resources to ‘buy’ their bride outright. So they pay their bride’s parents off over time - and it may take years. Kate told me that one of the men who works here still hasn’t paid off his ‘bride price’ and he has an 8th grade son! Until the bride price is paid, the husband can’t stay on the parents compound when the couple goes to visit her parents and I guess the marriage is not considered official. There is a major ceremony when the bride price is finally paid off.

According to one blog I read (written by a man), this bridal dowry is not an evil thing. He says, “The purpose of dowry is not money or sale of a bride. You cannot sell human beings. Slave trade was banned in 1884 and cannot happen in this era and time. Dowry payment is essentially a manifestation of commitment and agreement. It has no commercial value but social satisfaction. Among the southern Luos the word is not price but, agreeing.
The payment which is a token symbolizes that the bridegroom accepts to take the bride to his home as wife permanently and for good. Dowry payment and agreement is a ghost contract and the payer receives the bride. It is done publicly, in the day time, and in presence of close relatives and in-laws from both sides of the divide.” Hmmm.