Nelly, the lady who took me to the wedding (you will hear about the wedding in another post), is a hard worker. She has a shop in town in which she sells oil, cookies, candies but the main product is miraa. These are leaves that when you chew it produce the effects as an hallucinogen (I tried it but didn’t produce anything in me, maybe I didn’t have enough). You should eat it with peanuts, I have no idea why.
Anyway, Nelly has 4 daughters. She is a widow. In Samburu tradition, if your husband dies you stay a widow for the rest of life. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a boyfriend, it just means that you can’t get married again. Nelly had her first daughter with her husband. Later he died in an accident and she had a new boyfriend and two more daughters. After, she had another boyfriend and another daughter. The fathers of her daughters help her once in a while with some food but not with school fees or other things. Nelly has to support her daughters by herself. Also, because she can’t get married, the men have all left. To the question of why she had 4 children if she doesn’t have any support from the fathers her answer was “I was looking for a boy” …Really?? if you think this is a special answer, look at this: Nelly has not told any of her daughters who their fathers are. She told me that they might leave looking for their fathers and she would be left alone!!! So, everyone lives the consequences of their own decisions!!!
In this culture having boys is a blessing… instead girls are not very welcome. It is weird for me, because when your daughter gets married you as a parent receive animals and in some cases money. But in this patriarchal culture being a man is important. A man is the one who receives the inheritance in case the father dies. Also, what the single and widowed women have told me is that when you have a boy in the family people don’t gossip as much as when you just have girls. Now, I can understand Nelly and why she wished to have a boy.
Nelly wore her traditional Samburu necklace for the wedding
Nelly danced at the wedding!!