Parents for hire

By Alex Kiprotich

With parents being too choosy on who their children have to marry, four people have started cashing in on the situation by offering ‘parents for hire’ services.

The four offer services to young people whose parents do not approve their choices of partners from different communities. The two men and two women from the South Rift pose as parents for the occasion.

“We know our culture is rigid when it comes to intermarriages. For instance, the Kalenjin often oppose marriages of their sons and daughters to individuals from Central and Eastern provinces,” explains Moses, 47, who doubles as a pastor and an uncle during the ceremonies.

Moses teams up with Zakayo, 62, Martha and Linah.

Zakayo takes up the role of a father, Linah, who says she is in her 50s, poses as the mother while Martha is a neighbour.

During negotiations, it is Moses who leads the exercise besides doing the introductions with the help of Martha.

“According to Kalenjin customs, the parents of either the bridegroom or the bride do not take part in the negotiations. They only monitor the progress. Only once in a while are their opinions sought but away from the negotiation table,” says Zakayo.

Avoiding suspicion

It is hard for anyone to suspect that the four are up to any mischief given Moses’ gift of gab and Zakayo’s looks of a serious father.

Though Zakayo, a retired civil servant, and Linah, a former teacher, can communicate in Kiswahili, they feign lack of knowledge of the language while in their business as Martha acts as their interpreter.

To get the ‘parents for hire’ services for a day, one has to buy the impostors suits, cater for their transport and feeding and a fee of between Sh8,000 and Sh13,000. “At first I did not believe it until a friend invited me to meet them while planning for his show up,” says Mr Vincent Kipyego, who introduced this writer to the group at a hotel along Moi Avenue in Nairobi.

Before we settled down for business, Moses insisted the ‘parents’ only represent young men planning to marry from different tribes and not from within the community.

He says their interest is not the money but to salvage young relationships from failing when parents or relatives’ oppose them.

“We assist young men whose parents do not support intermarriages,” he says.

The groom is required to invite few friends to act as his siblings and friends during visits to the bride’s parents. When not on hire, the two women would often be spotted along Continental House waiting for handouts from MPs while it is hard to miss the men near Development House, popularly referred as Koita or opposite Jogoo House.

Moses says, they took more than 10 men to Machakos, Kathiani, Maua, Murang’a and Matuu between November and December for marriages.

“We depend on the goodwill of those who have benefited from our services — they are our ambassadors,” he explains.

They started the trade soon after the post-election violence when Kenyans became deeply divided along tribal lines.

“After the violence, we realised many parents had a passionate hatred for some communities and could not approve inter-marriages. We tried the service and it worked,” explains Zakayo.

It must look real

And if the parents of the girlfriend or bride insist they want to visit their son-in-law’s home, the ‘parents’ assemble in one of their rented house at Ngong to receive the ‘in-laws’.

“It must look real. For those who insist on visiting we receive them in one of our houses,” says Linah.

Mr Thomas Kiprono says he had no choice but enlist their services when his aging parents could not give consent to his relationship with a Kamba woman from Kathiani.

Kiprono, who works in Nairobi’s Industrial Area as a mechanic, says he met his girlfriend, a security guard in Nairobi, but he could not convince his parents to give him consent to marry her.

“I explained everything to her. She understood but the pressure from her parents to meet mine was irresistible. They wanted to meet for dowry negotiations,” he says.

She was later convinced and they went for the ‘parents for hire’.

“We visited her home last month. My greatest challenge is to now confront my parents with the bitter truth that I am already married without their involvement,” he says.

Another beneficiary, Mr Peter Rotich, says with commercialisation of bride price, it is now easy to exclude parents in negotiations if the groom can comfortably raise dowry.

“Now we pay money and not livestock. During negotiations everything is converted into cash. So it is easy for people working in town to marry without parents’ consent and as long as the bride’s side does not insist for a church wedding,” he says.

Linah says apart from cases where the man does not want to involve his parents, they also represent orphaned people.

“Most of those we have represented are orphans,” she says.

 Source: The East Standard