When Faith Muthoni got married at the age of 18 in 1985, she was optimistic that she would enjoy a loving marriage, have many children and live long enough to watch her family prosper.

As a village girl with a Class Seven education, her ambitions were to have a husband who would help her rear goats, chickens and cows, educate their children to university and once they secured good jobs, watch them build their parents a permanent home, buy cars and establish successful families.

She had not imagined that in later life, she would rely on a father-in-law's dying declaration, which the family regarded as a curse, to secure an inheritance for her four children.

Her marriage appeared to be going according to plan when she and her husband, Fabias Munyua, welcomed female twins in 1986, followed by sons in 1988 and 1990.

Their compound had two indigenous goats, a cow and about a dozen chickens, with the family surving on farming with a combined monthly income of about Sh2,500.

“We were a simple family who farmed for a living. Our combined monthly income was about Sh2,500. This was modest fortune,” Ms Muthoni recalls.

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IMG_20260811_115918_862 — Faith Muthoni, 56, secured inheritance rights for her four children thanks to her father-in-law's final declarations.

Photo credit: Mwangi Muiruri | Nation

She had hoped to have at least five more children, guided by an Agikuyu belief that many children are an investment in wealth.

“The wisdom is that the sons can prosper and the daughters get betrothed to rich families hence attract good dowry,” she says.

But while Ms Muthoni was looking to build a bigger family, her husband appeared to be taking a different path.

Starting in 1992, Mr Munyua began behaving differently.

“He suddenly became an alcoholic, brutal and negligent. He refused to provide for the family and also started selling household goods,” she says.

She suspected that he had changed because he wanted to pursue polygamy.

Mr Munyua, however, told the Nation that he had no explanation for the transformation.

“It was not about anything. Even to date I have never understood how I changed. I have been unable to drop love for the bottle. It happens, it happened to me and it is not a big deal. At 60 now, I have nothing much to look forward to. Only living a day at a time,” he said.

Ms Muthoni says village expectations required her to remain submissive and obedient even as the beatings became increasingly severe.

For three years, she stayed in the marriage.

That changed in 1995 when a savage beating left her hospitalised for three months.

“I could not run back to my parents since customs demanded that I persevere and build my own home even in times of turbulence,” she says.

She eventually moved to Maragua town where she became a tenant and began renting pieces of land to grow horticultural crops to feed and educate her children.

She managed to stabilise her life and provide for the children, but one concern continued to trouble her: what would happen to their inheritance?

Ms Muthoni says relatives advised her to seek help from the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), an organisation known for helping women pursue family-related justice.

But she did not know how to approach the organisation and was also reluctant to take the matter to court.

“In our culture, one does not go about suing in-laws since there are conflict-resolution mechanisms involving elders,” she says.

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IMG_20260811_115915_385 — Faith Muthoni, 56, secured inheritance rights for her four children thanks to her father-in-law's final declarations.

Photo credit: Mwangi Muiruri | Nation

It was with this cultural understanding that she returned to her marital home in February 2011 and sought out her father-in-law, Job Ndung’u.

She found him ill and explained her fears about the children’s inheritance and the advice she had received to pursue the matter legally.

“He told me to relax. He said he knew all the four children were his son’s. He told me that he would provide me with a more binding solution than the courts would aadmd said he would give me a solution that none could appeal,” she recalls.

Mr Ndung’u instructed her to bring three elders from her family and set a meeting for March 18, 2011.

When the elders arrived, they found that Mr Ndung’u had also summoned his son and four elders from his side of the family.

Ms Muthoni says that Mr Ndung’u explained the meeting was intended to resolve issues of family cohesion before addressing his children's affairs.

When it was his son’s turn, Mr Ndung’u declared that he recognised only one wife, Ms Muthoni and their four children.

He directed that upon his death, Mr Munyua should neither sell the family land nor marry another woman or have more children who would claim a share of the property.

Mr Munyua could only marry another wife and have more children, his father said, if he first bought his own piece of land and established his polygamous household there.

Mr Ndung’u died on October 16, 2011, leaving behind what the family regarded as a binding declaration over his son's marriage, children and land.

More than a decade later, Mr Munyua says he has respected his father's wishes.

“To be honest, I had plans to marry another wife. But the moment my father expressed his will on me, my wife and my four children, I became bound eternally,” he said.

“I cannot sell my land, cannot get married and cannot disown my children. I am poor and I cannot afford to buy another land so as to free myself from the dying man's voice.”

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He says he intends to summon elders and make a similar declaration over the property when his time comes.

“I will also say my wife and my children should never sell this land or bring in other beneficiaries apart from those born of them,” he said.

Mzee Julius Nginyangi, who witnessed the meeting and chaired the elders who documented Mr Ndung’u's wishes, told the Nation that such declarations by dying men carried considerable weight in the community.

“Such declarations from dying men can only be appealed when the author is alive. Mr Munyua never appealed and now that his father is dead, the voice is binding unless he wants to court a generational curse,” he said.

Although Mr Munyua and Ms Muthoni now live apart, they remain bound by the declaration made by the dying patriarch, a pronouncement that, in their community, carries a weight that they believe could outlast a court ruling.

At 56, Ms Muthoni still farms rented land for a living. But her four children now have their claim to ancestral land secured not through a courtroom battle but through the dying words of an old man.

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