69-year old Hassan ole Kamwaro (right) stands next to his third wife,
23-year-old Eunice Sisian at his office compound in Nairobi on the 4th
of November 2013. The couple got married on Saturday 1st of December in a
traditional wedding in Olchorro Narok. This is the first time Eunice
has been to the city of Nairobi.
Photo/EMMA NZIOKA
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Resplendent
in multi-coloured shukas and heavily adorned, the couple stood side by
side in the sweltering heat, the bride looking somewhat distraught while
the man exhuded pride and self-satisfication.
The
two, former Transport Licensing Board (TLB) chairman Hassan ole Kamwaro,
69, and village girl Eunice Sesian, 23, had become man and wife at a
ceremony that had brought to the fore the clash between modernity and
culture among the Maasai, a community that has kept its customs largely
intact in the face of Westernisation.
And last week, at
his private offices on the ninth floor of Town House in Nairobi, we
found Mr Kamwaro showing Sesian around the office.
As
the head of the homestead, Sesian is now in charge of her husband’s
three bomas — in Nairobi, Eor Enkitok outside Narok town, and the Olkeju
Ronkai Lodge in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve — while his older
children, including one aged 45, will call her Yeiyoo, Maa for ‘Mum’.
And to enable Sesian, wife number three, to manage his vast estate, Mr Kamwaro plans to enroll her for computer classes.
But she doesn’t have an identity card yet, she only went up to Standard 7, and this is her first time in the city.
Isn’t that going to be a problem?
MANY OTHER CONTENDERS
No problem, Mr Kamwaro informs us. Those were the reasons he chose her in the first place!
“I did not want (a woman) with a lot of education like some in this town,” he says, referring to the modern Nairobi woman.
There
were many other contenders, but Sesian was ‘the one’ for Kamwaro, who
says he wanted somebody “who could take care of her children and those
of my other wives” because “a family without guidance is no family”.
But Kamwaro, now approaching 70, is no spring chicken. So why did he decide to marry again?
“I was lonely,” he explains. “I needed company. My (second) wife left me when I was very ill.
I was undergoing treatment in Dallas, US, last year when she left.”
The
treatment was for a neck injury he sustained in 2011 and involved an
elaborate operation that cost Sh9 million and saw him bedridden for six
months.
“I have been going through hell. Living without somebody to help you when you are ill is very difficult.
My children have been nursing me, but you know there are limits to what your daughter can do for you.”
To
those who suggest that he should have looked for an older woman,
Kamwaro, whose first wife died in a road accident in 1996, retorts: “I
can marry any age.
I am a Maasai. Even in the Bible, David was given a very young virgin to keep him warm.
Though I am called Hassan, I am a born-again Christian and I know these things.”
UNDER ELDERS' ADVISEMENT
He
says Maasai elders went to him and told him that he was doing badly and
needed a companion, “so I went to her family and negotiated with her
and we reached an agreement”.
But, how does his family
view this marriage to such a young girl, given that his daughters are
old enough to be Sesian’s mother?
“They respect her,” says Kamwaro, who is also an elder in his local AIC church.
“They were the ones who supported me during the courtship.
I did not pay even a penny; I only paid the customary bride price of five animals — three cows, a calf, and a sheep.”
He also paid an extra cow — as blood compensation — since both he and Sesian are from the same clan.
Mr
Kamwaro says he has no hard feelings towards the wife who left him, and
that he will educate her children to the highest level, but adds that
she is welcome to return.
Although his unlikely union
with the young girl raised eyebrows, the marriage has been endorsed by
leading Maasai novelist and cultural expert Henry ole Kulet, who says it
is “culturally perfect”.
“It meets the basic
standards,” says Kulet. “First, she is not a daughter of a blood
relative, and, second, 23 years is a ripe age.
In fact, what usually happens is that when your older wife gets old, they get you a young girl.”
Mr Kulet says the most important thing is not age, but the circumstances under which somebody marries.
“For instance, does he have a lot of cattle, and so on.”
AGE AIN'T NOTHING BUT A NUMBER?
Which begs the question: is age really just a number?
Little
research has been conducted in Africa on age hypergamy, a marriage that
involves a big age difference such as that between Kamwaro and Sesian.
Perhaps
this is because of the way in which marriage is viewed in Africa, as
evidenced by Kulet’s statement that the union is “culturally perfect”
since the marriage “meets the basic standards”.
Dr
Charles Muga, a sociologist and behavioural scientist, says people now
marry the person “they think will make them happy”, a statement laden
with meaning because it posits that, when it comes to love and marriage,
it is all about the couple’s happiness first, not what the society
thinks of their union.
Still, such relationships are likely to suffer a number of psychological challenges, particularly on the part of the woman.
A
study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic research in
Germany shows that the bigger the age gap between the woman and her
husband, the shorter her life expectancy, regardless of whether she is
married to a younger or older man.
Lead researcher
Sven Drefahl argues that age hypergamy favours the man since he lives
longer if he is married to a younger woman.
But while
Drefahl’s study does not give the reasons why the age difference works
against the woman, a Nairobi-based counselling psychologist, Ken Munyua,
has clinical observations that might explain the difficulties that such
unions might exert on the two.
POSSIBLE DIFFICULTIES
For one, he notes, the man and woman are at different stages of their lives, which makes them “emotionally incompatible”.
“Both
have expectations, which they will seek to fulfill to each other
alright, but in very different ways that, unfortunately, may leave each
of them disappointed,” he says.
An older man is likely
to be driven by ego, more focused, eager to reap the fruits of his many
years of labour and take pride in his accomplishments.
“He
is looking for a person to care for his wealth and his idea of how to
love a woman is ‘build her a good home, give her children and provide
her with everything she needs’,” explains Munyua.
In contrast, the young woman would be seeking intimacy and a thirst to establish her identity.
She
wants a man who can take her out, play with her, give her jewellery,
remember her birthdays… things her much older spouse might dismiss as
childish, or might not have the strength to take part in, Munyua
continues.
MORE LIKE A FATHER
Because of the generational gap and deficits, an older man will just extend parental love to his young spouse.
“He will call her ‘Baby’ to mean ‘daughter’, but the woman wants ‘Baby’ to mean ‘wife’”, Mr Munyua says.
Nobody considers what is in it for her, save for the high society and privileged address.
Citing
Sesian’s case, for instance, Munyua says she is being taken to school
“to be able to run the businesses, not for her scholarly aptitude”.
“All she is ever going to do is work hard to prove she is up to the task and meeting people’s demands.
That is not the life for a woman in her 20s, no matter how early she might have matured.”
MEN HAVING HARDER TIMES
Mr
Munyua’s observations echo those of American psychologist Gail Sheehy,
author of Understanding Men’s Passages: Discovering the New Map of Men’s
Lives.
According to Sheehy, men aged 40 and above are
having a harder time today making a satisfying passage into the second
half of their lives than are most women.
While women
feel pangs over losing their youth, men feel dread, and it is harder to
be their companion at this age because they are so used to being in
control of their life that they might never talk about these fears.
Consequently,
such men are confronted by a variety of forbidden subjects in this
climate of uncertainty: their concerns about ageing, the ebbing of
physical strength and athletic prowess, their fears of losing their
economic empires, their envy and fear of empowered working women whom
they could have wooed, their wish to be closer to their children before
the children leave the nest, their retirement anxieties, and the whole
question of potency in all areas of their lives.
But in Sesian Kamwaro sees not just a wife, but a companion who will fill a void so deep and hurtful.
And, for him, that is all that matters.
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