Woman married to four wives
After 10 years of marriage without a child in the 1960s, she did what would sound crazy in the eyes of many. Elizabeth Chemesunde Olekima, 87, divorced her husband and sought fellow women to start a new family. The Nandi culture allows a barren woman to marry another woman to sire children with her husband or another man of her choice — a form of surrogacy. In early 1970s, she started looking for a wife, got one, paid dowry and started living with her. Her desire to have many children saw her negotiate and pay dowry for other three wives, a rare feat but elders approved the marriage. Chemesunde grew up at Kapkoi in Uasin Gishu and in Nandi and got married and settled in Kilgoris. When she couldn’t bear any children, she returned to Nandi where her relatives and elders approved her intentions to marry. "I wanted to marry so that I can have children to maintain our family lineage," she says. Chemesunde says she met her first wife and negotiated with her parents and later paid seven cows... School for the Girls