Come Again?

Inheritance, ahh, such an unfamiliar word to western ears.  Almost sweetly foreign—like the Philippine delicacy, balut, which turns out to be a fetal chick nestled in a soft-shell casing.  Yum.  How do we contextualize cultural conundrums for which we have virtually no frame of reference?

I was leafing through one of our girl’s files when I noticed her father’s date of death, which was a healthy two years before her birth.  Hold up.  Either her poor mom has the gestation period of an elephant (God forbid!) or her father  isn't really her father. 

After living in this country for three years, one might suspect that I wouldn't be so green about such things.  But inheritance just didn’t figure anywhere on my radar screen.  Innocently, I asked our social worker to explain how this “orphan” could be an orphan if her father died well over 9-months before she was born.  He was quick to assure me that she was, indeed, an orphan, because her father’s brother who had inherited her mom, although technically the father of the child, really isn't the father of the child.  Come again?

     ?

According to Kenyan custom, once a woman is widowed, she can be inherited by her husband’s male kin, but she is forever considered a widow after the passing of her husband. Any children fathered after her husband’s death are still considered the children of her dead spouse.  

So the man who fathered the child is considered the uncle and not the father, leaving the child an orphan at the death of her mother.  And the mother’s dead husband, who obviously didn’t have anything to do with the conception, is the “father.”

Now, if you’re slightly confused by this whole explanation, you’re not alone.  Westerners, however, might be alone in their consternation at the concept of inheritance, which has been around and active in numerous eastern countries since biblical times.

While it seems to work for the rural villagers here, westerners can breath a collective sigh of relief that inheritance is decidedly uncustomary in our culture.  Much like that coveted Philippine delicacy, balut.