Julia Quinn Instagram – DAY 4 of the Landesa Kenya Trip! 🇰🇪🇰🇪🇰🇪🇰🇪
We set out early and drove 6 hours from Baringo to Kisumu County, where we met with a group of women who are experiencing legal conflicts regarding land ownership.
Much of the land in Kenya has never been adjudicated, meaning that the government never issued titles. Everyone knows which family has been living on which land, and that is who “owns” it. As you can imagine, this can lead to disputes.
Kisumu County land, however, was systematically titled in the early 70s. This is good, except that each time land changes hands, the government collects a fee, and buyers and sellers often instead choose informal transactions without providing the buyer with the deed. Also, when a landowner dies, very often the family doesn’t “do succession,” which means to legally register the transfer of inherited property. This leads to situations where land is still registered to long-dead grandfathers.
Women face extreme difficulty in owning land for several reasons. First, traditional rural Kenyan culture dictates that when a couple marries, the wife goes to live with the husband’s family. It’s NEVER the other way around. So parents don’t bequeath land to their daughters. Also, when a woman is widowed, the husband’s family usually tries to “reclaim” his land. The wife may be kicked off the property (especially if she has no sons).
The women we met were so strong. One woman (we’ll call her Anne) was nearly kicked out of the home she’d been living in for 2 decades because when her in-laws bought the property in 1971, they did so informally and never received a deed. Fast forward 50 years, and the descendants of the original seller came out of nowhere to claim that their ancestor never received the full price. Fortunately, Anne had the original contract, but the claimants tried to bully her off her land and attacked her family with a machete. She now lives in fear for herself and her children. @landesaglobal is working with her, and we are hopeful that she will finally get the title to her land and feel secure in her home. | Posted on 11/Jan/2025 01:11:44
