By Kipchumba Kemei and Nikko Tanui
Maasai women have demanded representation in land control boards to check rampant sale of family land.
They claimed men were using hired ‘wives’ when they appeared before the local land committee with intensions of selling family land.
Narok Nominated County Assembly member Lucia Teeka said many women were left homeless after parcels belonging to their families were sold without their knowledge.
“We only discover that family land has been sold when strangers come and order for our eviction by claiming they had bought the land,” said Teeka.
Teeka, who is also the region’s Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organisation chairperson, said women from the community have been turned into paupers who depend on handouts.
“Maasai women have been turned paupers who depend on handouts after their husbands secretly sold their only land before eloping with other women in Narok town where the proceeds from the sale of the property is spent on leisure at the expense of family welfare,” she said during a workshop for journalists and peace and reconciliation members from South Rift region.
It emerged during the workshop that a large number of women victims of such cases have found their new homes at rescue centres offered by churches and non-governmental organisations.
Pastor Davies Kisotwa said many Maasai homes have been divided after husbands sell off land without the knowledge of their wives.
“I have been forced to shelter tens of such women and children in my church after they were forced out of their homes and made squatters by their husbands,” said Kisotwa.
Alice Munge, a Maasai girl-child education activist, claimed that rampant incidents of wife battering could be linked to women who have stood up to protest the sale of family property without their consent.
