In a poor community, practice known as nyumba mboke allows same-sex arranged marriage but surrogates are being abused.
In a southwestern Kenyan village near the border with Tanzania, Grace Boke, a 19-year-old mother of three girls, lives with her wife – a woman who was unable to bear her own children.
They were married under “nyumba mboke”, a practice which allows for woman-to-woman unions, despite the fact that gay marriage is criminalised in Kenya.
But there is little love or romance in this marriage.
Boke is among hundreds of Kenyan surrogates who mostly live in poverty with their partners, who are desperate to have their own children.
The teenager, who speaks in Swahili and her local dialect, dropped out of school and married Pauline Gati after conceiving her first child out of wedlock.
She holds her nine-month-old daughter in their small mud house in Kibunto village, Kuria District. The baby has a skin infection and cries when nursing.
“My father forced me to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) when I was very young, in class two, and immediately after that, I was involved with a man who made me pregnant and disappeared. My parents were very poor and decided to give me away for four cows to a woman with no
children. She is now my partner,” Boke told Al Jazeera.
FGM, child marriage and woman-to-woman marriages are common in Kuria.
“My father later sold the cows and went for a drinking spree and never gave my mother any money from that. He later died,” said Boke.
“When I was welcomed in this home I was told that there was no farm to get any form of food, all she wanted was me to help her get children. This really made me worried but she insisted that we will struggle through thick and thin to get food for children.”
Boke and Gati struggle to feed the three children, who are all younger than five.
Gati said same-sex arranged marriage is culturally accepted so women who are unable to have children, or those who have not yet had a son, can fulfil societal expectations.
“My husband died and left me with no children after we had lived together for many years,” she said. “I was facing a lot of stigma from the community and was advised to get a young woman to help me get children.
“I do not have a farm because I ran away from where I used to stay. Here, a good Samaritan donated this small piece of land where we have this small two bedroom house. I then decided to marry Boke and gave out four cows. The children … will now be mine. I will have someone to take care
of me when I grow old.”
