COMMENTARY: The spirit of sisterhood

c. 2007 Religion News Service ASEMBO BAY, Kenya _ “You can still smell it,” Millicent said in Swahili. “What can you smell?” I asked. “The hippo,” she answered, pointing to a swath of crushed vegetation. “It ate all of my sweet potatoes.” Ah, yes. I hate when that happens. The hippopotamus had made its way […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

ASEMBO BAY, Kenya _ “You can still smell it,” Millicent said in Swahili.

“What can you smell?” I asked.


“The hippo,” she answered, pointing to a swath of crushed vegetation. “It ate all of my sweet potatoes.”

Ah, yes. I hate when that happens.

The hippopotamus had made its way to a tract of land near the shores of Lake Victoria where Millicent and a number of other Luo widows have a small farm.

The Asembo Bay Women’s Cooperative grows kale, onions, papaya, mango, tomatoes, potatoes and other produce that is both a source of sustenance and income.

As Millicent showed me around, we compared notes on her life in this tiny fishing village and mine back in Chicago.

“If your husband dies, what can you do?” she asked.

“Anything you want to do,” I answered.

“Do you have to marry again or can you live by yourself?” she asked.

“It’s your choice,” I said.

“Sawa,” she said in Swahili, meaning “all right.”

When Millicent’s husband died a number of years ago, tribal leaders told her she didn’t have a choice. In Asembo Bay, where most inhabitants come from the Luo tribe, there is a long tradition of “wife inheritance.”

Originally it was a noble concept: When a husband dies, his side of the family is responsible for the physical needs of his widow and her children. While the widow is officially another “wife” of her brother-in-law or another male in-law, the relationship is meant to be nonsexual.

But that changed in recent generations, with the heir demanding sex, seizing the widow’s property and leaving her destitute. This new brand of wife inheritance also has led to soaring rates of HIV/AIDS.

“They tried to take my cow but I said no,” Millicent said, motioning to a skinny Holstein tethered near her husband’s grave between her house and the chicken coop.

Millicent shirked tradition and said no. No, you can’t take my house. No, you can’t sell my property. No, I won’t marry him.


The community could have shunned her or worse. But she believed she could make it on her own, with God’s help. The only man she needed, apparently, was Jesus.

Millicent’s bold example has empowered other widows in her community to reject the practice of wife inheritance and stand up for themselves.

There are 26 widows in the cooperative, ranging in age from late teens to early 80s. Together they care for about 70 children, including a number of orphans. They run several businesses _ the farm, a mill that grinds nuts, a four-cow dairy farm, seven small shops that sell everything from steel wool to eggs, and a fish-smoking operation.

Standing outside Leonitta’s large hut overlooking Lake Victoria, the woman we came to call “Big Mama” and some of the other Mamas of Asembo Bay, as they are known, proudly explained they had recently bought a boat.

They were fed up with fishermen sexually exploiting the young women who collect the day’s catch each morning. The Mamas said no to trading sex for tilapia, so they bought a small boat and hired a group of young men to fish for them. They sell the smoked the fish _ it’s delicious _ to the locals.

As the women continued to tell their stories, I thought of the ideal woman described in Proverbs 31 _ she rises early to provide for her family, has strong arms from all her hard work, is smart with her money and her businesses, helps neighbors in need, and wears purple garments she makes herself.


The Proverbs woman, the Bible says, is worth more than rubies.

In their matching royal purple dresses, heads held high, arms finely muscled from years of manual labor, the Mamas of Asembo Bay should be valued like precious gems. Yet they have been treated as little more than chattels.

After a lavish lunch of local delicacies prepared in honor of their Chicago visitors, the Mamas danced, singing a song that was either about God’s grace or matatus, the insane minibuses that get most people from place to place in Kenya.

Holding a horsehair baton, Leonitta motioned for me to dance with them. She is a fierce, regal woman with a broad smile, thick build and piercing eyes. You don’t say no to Big Mama.

So I danced awkwardly as they whooped and hollered, shaking rusty bottle caps strung on a piece of wire. They celebrated our presence, God’s grace and each other.

Before we left, the Mamas asked me to tell their story. And then they prayed for my strength.

They say sisterhood is global.

They also say sisterhood is powerful.

(Cathleen Falsani is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and author of “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.”)


KRE/LF END FALSANI775 words

A photo of Cathleen Falsani is available via https://religionnews.com.

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