The single mothers of Karamoja’s warrior culture

 As the women take turns to plait each other’s hair, brainstorming on how to tap into the project, we notice that the group is majorly composed of single mothers heading households that have been deserted by men.  

 This village, which lays approximately three kilometres west of the foothills of Mt. Moroto in Loputuk sub-county, Moroto district, is no different from hundreds of other villages across the Karamoja sub-region.

Women here are still viewed as the property of men, with girls considered a source of generative wealth that comes in the form of bride price. And yet, one cannot escape the irony that as the menfolk wander in the rangelands looking after livestock, women are the breadwinners and custodians of the children.

 After the two-hour meeting, we follow some of the single mothers into their manyattas (an enclosed village surrounded by thorns and shrubs). The outer beauty of the manyattas pales in comparison to the gloom inside. A number of girls of school-going age tend to children while others prepare the day’s meal of cowpeas and sorghum bread. There are no sanitation facilities in sight.

At 28, Kelementina Aleper, a mother of two, is resigned to her fate. Her husband abandoned her two years ago.  

“It was an arranged marriage – against my will. I had dreams of attaining a higher level of education. The worst part was that I was forced to marry a polygamous man. When our second child was nine-months-old, he decided to quit the marriage. I don’t know his whereabouts, although I have heard a rumour that he is in Kenya,” says the Primary Six dropout. 

Aleper has been forced into the labour market to fend for her children, one in Primary One and the other at the Early Development Centre. Nowadays, she hawks greens in Moroto town. When there are jobs to be found in the stone quarry, one can find her sitting at a heap of stones, crushing them into little pieces. 

In a nearby manyatta, Rose Imo is also struggling to raise her three children after she was abandoned by their father, Mariko Losiru. 

“Our culture is silent on the role of men in marriage. When you are abandoned, you cannot dare to question the status quo. After Primary Seven, I was married off to a polygamous man. He walked out of the marriage after seven years. He now lives with another woman in Nataparakwangan village,” she says.

Imo, who also grew up in a polygamous family, says none of her sisters reached Primary Seven. “I do not want the same fate to befall my children. We have a single mother’s savings group in this village and we are dedicated to seeing that our children attain a higher level of education,” she adds.

A day’s meal here, according to Imo, is hard to come by but it can equally become a myth if a mother fails to till the land as a result of the uncertain weather patterns.

 When the seasons fail and there is no grain to make a meal for the children, the residues from the local brew form a major source of nutrition, especially when one does not have the money to buy maize flour from the retail shops in the town.

 “We thank God that we may not experience hunger this year because the sorghum in the gardens is promising a bumper harvest. We also have signs of a good cowpea harvest because of the wet season that has been ongoing from March to-date, “she says.

Harmful culture 

Joseph Lokeris, a reformed warrior who has four wives, says because of the polygamous nature of the Karimojong culture, men often move on to new women who, they say, need a lot more attention than the older wives.

 “In our culture, a woman has to take care of herself and fend for her children. A man’s absence is not a cause for concern, after all, in most cases, we always return to ensure that the wife gets more children,” says the 35-year-old.

Augustino Abura, an 88-year-old kraal elder in Locholi village in Napak district, reasons that some cultural beliefs and norms cannot be easily bent because the elders have a strong commitment to pass them on to the next generation.

“Upon initiation into the rank of elders, we are charged with keeping the treasure that is our patriarchal customs intact. Women are supposed to take care of their children, build houses for the family and build kraals for the goats and calves. The men, on the other hand, are obliged to graze the cows and make merry with other men in the village,” he says. 

Abura says a newly wedded Karimojong girl has to work hard to please her husband’s family because they paid a number of cows as her bride price.

“Before a young man gets married, he spends most of his teenage life in the rangelands as a pastoralist. After marriage, he transitions to a life of making merry and leisure while the wife shoulders the domestic chores. All that binds the couple are the conjugal rights in the night or whenever the husband wishes to have sex,” he says.

According to the Uganda Demographic Household Survey 2019/2020, in Uganda male headed households were the majority apart from Karamoja sub-region where majority of households (69 percent) are female headed.

Empowering region 

Single motherhood, coupled with poverty, is creating an environment where illiterate women are raising illiterate children, who in turn, will become illiterate child mothers.  

 Charles Owiny, the Abim district education officer, says close to 86 percent of the girls in the sub-region do not get the chance to complete primary school. This means the majority of them go into early marriages.

 “This is not the Karamoja we aspire to. To correct this, development partners have to start empowering parents and elders to appreciate the importance of education and also give them financially empowering incentives,” he says.

Owiny adds that the failure by the girl child to complete the primary section is also due to the fact that most of them cannot afford to buy sanitary pads to use during their menstrual periods.

 “Perhaps our culture has really failed the girls in that they have to accompany their mothers in the fields for farming and collecting firewood, while those in urban areas have to toil in restaurants in return for a day’s wages to fend for themselves. These two are the biggest contributing factor behind the high numbers of school dropouts,” he says.

Esther Nakiru, a mother of two, was abandoned in 2020. She suggests that the Karamojong culture should be modified if the rural, uneducated woman is to realise emancipation.  

 “Some of the norms and practices cannot help us thrive in this heavily monetised century. Our grandparents lived in a time of plenty when survival was dependent on nature. Today, we hardly get milk for our children because our herds have depreciated,” says the resident of Locholi village, in Napak district.

To make ends meet, Nakiru sells Abutia, a local brew, which is a delicacy among the men.

“Without this income, life would be extremely difficult. Unfortunately, since many single mothers have opted to join this business, we have to fight for customers,” she says.

Not all men abandon their families, though. Some, who have chosen the warrior life, get killed during cattle rustling raids. Others were found with illegal guns and arrested by the army, the end result of which is that they are now serving lengthy terms in prison. 

 Joseph Dehetts Lokapel, Napak’s district inspector of schools, says the resultant poverty has impacted on the chances of the girl child staying in school.

“The girls remain at home because of the cattle rustling situation. In trying to replace the stolen cattle, the family marries off the girl so that her suiter can bring in cows as bride price. Our children are also trafficked to Busia, Iganga, Jinja, Kampala, and some, as far as Nairobi, where they work as housemaids,” he says.

 Lokapel adds that an administrative incapacitation of the district units means there are no funds to make routine visits to the 66 schools in the sub-region to enforce ordinances on education and to track the whereabouts of both boy and the girl children who drop out of school.

Government rising to the occasion

According to Thomas Odelok, the executive director of Karamoja Women Umbrella Organisation, an advocacy but not-for-profit organisation fighting for the rights of women in Karamoja, between 80 percent and 90 percent of households in Karamoja have women as breadwinners.

 “Men dominate property ownership and decision making while women fend for the family. Women can access land for farming but they cannot own it. But things are slowly changing. Today, we see men carrying charcoal to the market participate in casual labour and in the building of manyatas,” he says.

Margaret Lolem, the Moroto district community development officer, insists that the government’s intervention to empower women in Moroto district is having a significant impact.

 “Women in Karamoja can now engage in restaurant business, cereal bulking, and livestock business and by doing so they are able to fend for their children and also send them to school. The district local government also disseminates the gender policy, issues of men-to-men talk, women-to-women talk, and strengthens the structures that empower women’s work,” she says.

 However, she acknowledges that culture puts women in a subordinate position, because when it comes to children, men prefer having boys to girls. 

“If the woman gives birth to only girls, our culture gives the man the liberty to find another woman who can give birth to a boy. It is hard to estimate the exact number of households headed by single mothers because of the nature of the landscape. However, gender-based violence and peer pressure are also catalysts behind female-headed households.

 Besides community sensitisation forums for men and women on appreciating equality, Lolem says her office had interested schools into grooming their male students into responsible men who appreciate honest work.

 However, as long as the women in the manyatas, like Aleper, are not given high priority, the region will continue to face high illiteracy levels as girls are pulled out of school to look after their siblings, before they are married off to cushion the family’s position in society.

According to the UDHS 2019/2020, Karamoja had the lowest literacy levels (30.4 percent) compared to Kampala (93 percent), which has the highest literacy levels in the country.