Report from Kenya #643 -- The End of Traditional Bride Price in Kenya
David Zarembka
The End of Traditional Bride Price in Kenya
Report from Kenya #643 – February 19, 2021
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By the look and type of cars this wedding is obviously for wealthy Kenyans. The bride’s father, Hussein Maro, gave his blessings to the marriage. He amazed everyone when he then asked for a bride price of 7/- (7 US cents). The groom’s family was shocked as they had brought, according to news reports, millions of shillings for the bride price. The groom’s family thought they misunderstood and that he meant 70,000/- ($700) or 700,000/- ($7,000). No, he only wanted 7/-, but there was a catch. He wanted 7 one shilling coins. This then became a labor of Hercules. One shilling coins are now useless in Kenya. Recently I gave my grandchildren a shilling coin each to buy a piece of candy at the local shop and the shop owner refused to accept the coins. I use them now only to teach additional and subtraction to my grandchildren. The groom had no one shilling coins so he had to ask for them from the guests. But they didn’t have enough either so he had to leave the ceremony to beg for the coins in town.
The traditional custom of groom’s family paying bride price to the bride’s family is going out of fashion in Kenya, at least in the traditional sense. Let me explain.
Traditional bride price was paid by the groom to the father of the bride. There were two main rationales for this custom. As the custom was for the bride to leave her ancestral home and move to the husband’s home, first it was a method to join the two families together via the transactions. The pre-wedding where the bride price was negotiated and agreed upon was a chance for the two families to meet each other. The second rationale was that the groom was now reimbursing the bride’s family for raising their daughter and compensating for the lost labor that occurred when the bride left the family.
In the old days the bride price could be quite substantial including a good number of cows, goats, honey, beer, consumable items, and more recently money itself. As a result it would take the groom a long time to collect the items necessary to marry so that often he did not marry until the late 20s or even 30s. His bride, though, tended to be very young, fourteen to eighteen years old. This left a large age disparity between the ages of the couple.
This bride price caused for two major other problems. Often the father of the bride, regardless of her opinion, would marry his daughter off to someone who could give a substantial bride price. For example, in the latter 1930s the father of my first Kenyan wife gave his daughter, Priscilla Matete, then about 15 years old, to be the fourth wife of a neighboring man who was at least 25 years older than she was. She resisted and somehow on the marriage day got her elder brother, Kioko, to come and rescue her from the marriage. Her father had already received the bride price and had to return it. She then latter married my future father-in-law, Wilson Malinda.
The second major problem was that the husband would use the fact that he had paid the high bride price (as if he were buying a cow or a piece of property) to assert that he “owned” his wife and she was required to obey him. This could lead of family abuse. If it became too bad, the wife could run back home and the family would have to pay back the bride price, but of course they would be reluctant to do this and would force the wife back to her husband’s compound.
In 1969 my first father-in-law, Wilson Malinda, did not ask me for bride price for his daughter nor did he do this for any other of his four daughters. He was a staunch first generation Christian, of that generation who had to defy parents, society, and culture to become a Christian. The Christian missionaries did not approve of bride price and campaigned against the custom. When I got married to Rodah Wayua Zarembka, Wilson was studying to become a pastor in the African Inland Church and so subscribed to the Christian teachings even if it was contrary to the customs of those days.
Today bride price is changing. In my recent Report from Africa, Where Are the Wedding? (see here), I noted that currently weddings are rather rare. Consequently if there are few weddings, there are few payments for bride price. Kenyan women leaders also campaigned against bride price because of its negative aspects listed above. In the new Marriage Act of 2014, only a token amount was required to prove that a marriage had occurred. It seems that this token amount in now 10,000/- ($100) for a bride unless she has finished college when it is 100,000/- ($1000). The legal age of marriage is also now 18 years old, making it difficult for a father to “sell” his daughter to the highest bidder if she does not agree to the match.
Ankole cows that used to be given for bride price in Rwanda. I admit that I included this picture because of how spectacular Ankole cows look with their long horns.
While this wedding occurred in Rwanda, the lesson is interesting and appropriate. A few years ago I was invited by the groom to a pre-wedding on Saturday and the wedding on Sunday in Kigali, Rwanda. The bride’s family arranged and paid for the pre-wedding, while the groom’s family took care of the wedding itself. The pre-wedding was an extremely large gathering of at least 1000 people. The bride’s family sat on one side and the groom’s family sat on the other. Since I was invited by the groom, I sat on the groom’s side. It was a fun affair with traditional singing, dancing, the clown fool, and so on. During the celebration, the groom’s family did the following: Both families were urban Kigali people with both the couple being college graduates. Clearly they had no need or interest in getting any cows as part of a bride price. But to the merriment of the crowd including me, the groom’s family presented the bride family with a rope, a cow bell, a milk bucket, and a scythe for cutting grass. These were the symbols for the non-existent traditional cows.
Another main reason that the custom is dying out is that since 2002 girls were required to finish primary school and since 2019 to finish secondary school. There is no doubt that having the girls in school makes it more difficult to marry them off at a young age. Older girls are more likely to choose their own spouse rather than have their father’s pick their husband.
There also have been a number of high profile stories of fathers who asked for a token bride price. The story under the picture above is one example. Another was in 2019 when Abubakar Joho, the elder brother of the Governor of Mombasa County, Hassan Joho, asked for a bride price of 250/- ($2.50) plus a copy of the Quran.
Of course, legalities and customs change slowly. There are still fathers, particularly, among the pastoral tribes, who ask for a large number of cows and other items from their daughter’s groom. Poor families often give away their daughters to richer men because they can no longer take care of them. Transforming Communities for Social Change has initiated a number of campaigns to get under-aged child brides returned to their homes. This often means putting pressure on the local chiefs and sub-chiefs (who are government appointed employees) to intercede even if they have been bribed by the groom. Another aspect of these campaigns is large community education projects for the parents to convince them that they cannot marry off their daughters at a young age.
For these reasons, the traditional bride price custom is dying out in Kenya. While traditionalists lament these changes, others, particularly Kenyan feminists, are pushing for the bride price to become no more than a token. Rather than calling it a “bride price”, they are also proposing that it be called “a gift” so that the husband does not feel that he has “purchased” his wife from her family.
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David Zarembka
Email: davidz...@gmail.com
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