We listened and picked up the following narrative. All the pieces fell together. There was nothing that seemed unknown or inexplicable to them. This was not a fictional story, but an account of what had happened in a family in their area. For my part I will never understand how most of these events were ever known to them. What was the source? What was witnessed? What was surmised? How could they possibly know what had been said in a late night argument between a husband and wife? Whatever the answers to such questions, I certainly had come to appreciate that in this part of the world, everyone's life was everyone else's business. And these events validated a reality I didn't believe.
The account concerns the life, and death, of Arap Mutai (all names here are pseudonyms). I don't know who he was; perhaps our paths had crossed. In typical fashion no one explained his identity to me other than someone who lived not that far away. But here's the background information necessary to understand what happened:
Arap Mutai had two wives, the first, now getting on in years, has two grown sons and a teenage daughter, Chemioga. Perhaps there are other children, it doesn't matter. The second wife, much younger, has at least two small children, I'll just assume a girl and a boy.
Wives' households are established as separate economic units, and are separately endowed with cattle by the husband. If the needs of one wife are seen to, she has no grounds to complain about a co-wife. Theoretically the husband should treat each equally in terms of financial support, time, and personal attention. Given that co-wives are almost always of significantly different ages, with a different number of years in marriage, and at different stages of raising a family, the theoretical ideal of equality is rarely achieved. Everyone understands that co-wives are set up as rivals and that men find young women attractive. It is not often that women, or men, can transcend the problems inherent in the system. Those men with multiple wives often find a way to settle them in different communities.
For the men discussing this case, it went without saying that Arap Mutai's first wife was resentful of the attention, and financial support, he gave to the young second wife. In public, senior men are expected to demonstrate authority over young men, women, and children. Some men take this to heart; others are privately more adept in their handling of such issues. It was clear that Arap Mutai had not consulted his first wife about taking a second wife. The first wife now had grown sons and a daughter coming of age. Arap Mutai was eager to see her married to a man who could both provide for her and give him bridewealth cattle as required. And so he arranged, again apparently without consulting her mother, for her marriage to a successful upstanding younger man, Arap Taiywa. Chemioga was initiated, emerged as a young woman, and was married by Arap Taiywa with all proper ceremonies and transfer of cattle.
But teenagers don't always follow their father's wishes. No long after the wedding, Chemioga ran off to be with her young lover, Arap Basa, who was employed as one of the army of laborers who hand pick tea on the Brooke Bond estates near the town of Kericho. (The fact that he was taking such a job reveals that he was a man with no real holdings in land or livestock.) Over the months, perhaps many, many months, the jilted husband, Arap Taiywa, asked Arap Mutai for the return his daughter, and when that proved impossible, finally for the return of his cattle (which would amount to an annulment of the marriage). Chemioga's brothers were now primary school teachers and over the years their education had consumed most of the family assets. Arap Mutai asked Arap Taiywa if he would accept a partial refund, with the rest to be returned when possible. To do this, he would need assurance from Arap Basa or Arap Basa's family that he would receive as least some few cattle to again make an honest woman of his daughter – and give legitimacy to her children should there be any (unmarried couples are said to be 'stealing each other' [from their resepective families]).
And so, according to my friends, one night Arap Mutai sat down with his first wife to tell her what he was going to do. She, apparently, sided with her daughter and had had enough of her husband's plans. When he said that he was going to walk to the local trading center the next morning to take the bus to Kericho in order to track down and confront Arap Basa, his wife is reported to have said "If you do, it will be the last trip you ever make."
The next day, on the bus as it approached Kericho, Arap Mutai collapsed. Heart attack? Aneurysm? Stroke? No one knows. Arap Mutai was rushed to the government hospital in town where reportedly he was given an injection (in a population that was until very recently antibiotic-naïve, injections are considered miraculous interventions). Still, he died right there.
Some time later, Arap Mutai's brother came to the first wife's home, acting as the moral representative of the deceased and claiming, rightly, to be his executor. He had come to see that his brother's estate was settled properly. After a man's death, if he had more than one wife, his property should be divided equally among their houses. This does not simply mean equal divisions of any cattle or other assets he retained, not yet assigned to one wife or the other. To be done correctly, any uncommitted assets should be alloted to produce an equal division, as much as is possible, of his total estate taking into account the differential amounts already spent by each house during his life. In this case there may not have been much left to divide, but virtually all of it would go to the young wife. That idea was immediately rejected and the visit quickly erupted into a heated dispute. The first wife is reported to have shouted at her brother-in-law: "I killed my husband with words. Do you want to argue with me?" The second Arap Mutai beat a retreat, and presumably the younger wife and her children were cut off from further support.
"So," one of the men said to me, "you see, there are witches."
When I asked if all women could kill their husbands with words, he added "No. That's why some strangle their husbands in their sleep – or put Gamatox (cattle dip powder) in their food."