By Muli wa Kyendo

A Kenyan TV this week carried stories of two polygamous homes. One was a Maasai with nine wives, nearly 40 children and over 100 grandchildren. This happy family was featured because they recently realized that they were large enough in number to incorporate themselves as a business enterprise. Using the patriarch’s name as their corporate identity, the family approached the Ministry of Cooperative Development and registered themselves as a cooperative.

“We have been helping each other ever since we were small”, one of the children told a KTN reporter. “We started by contributing Shs20 every month. Now we are contributing over Shs200.” Their enterprises included large acres of wheat, large herds of sheep and other animals. They have rules and standards to keep themselves on track and to continue as a family and as a business enterprise.

The other story, coming from a nearby community (not more than 50 kilometers away) concerned another polygamist with six wives and nearly the same number of children. He was featured because a Whiteman, representing a family planning NGO (non-governmental organization) had thought him a good target for propaganda against large families and therefore excellent for marketing his wares. Pictures showed displayed a beautiful and comfortable family with good houses.  The man was however, supposed to show dissatisfaction, so he said he regretted not having used family planning methods. “Each wife should have had only six or so children. If I had fewer children I would have been a very rich man in deed. But as it was, even to get clothes was a problem. Many times they (the children) went naked.”

Of course, like in the old, tired advertisement, the Whiteman was now shown talking about the importance of family planning in Kenya.  Although he appeared newly arrived in the country, he had already noticed that in Kenya “there are very many pregnant women who don’t know about family planning.”

When I looked at the Whiteman, I saw him as the embodiment of Africa’s underdevelopment. Europeans have come, creating dissatisfaction where there was none, making non-issues such as female circumcision the key agendas and thereby taking away money and effort from genuine problems whose solution would move Africa forward.

Nearly 99 per cent of Kenyans come from polygamous homes. And they would confidently tell you that those of us who went starving and in tatters would have done the same if they had been born an only child. The average polygamist is working hard to improve his family. Many have put up schools for their children in their own land, but the schools also accommodate children from other families. If we all imitated their good example, giving and contributing to community good, Africa would not need foreign assistance.