The Mt Kenya Times 
By David Ndirangu
Worth Noting:
- This rumour was proved right when at the beginning of the term, the two Mirioni boys were enrolled in the local primary school in Mirioni’s name. There was of course much talk in the village about the development and it was not easy for the Mirioni boys. You can only imagine us the hard-edged village boys asking them all manner of questions but the Mirioni dollar question being whether they called Mirioni ‘baba’ (dad) or ‘Cucu’ (grandmother). Do not even attempt to think about LBT.. whatever. It was unheard of then.
- The Mirioni saga was in actual sense a form of surrogacy classified as traditional surrogacy which has been practised by many communities since time immemorial.
Many years ago when we were growing up, there was an elderly woman in my village who was known as Mirioni.
Mirioni actually had a real name but my grandmother and fellow village mates had for some reason nicknamed her Mirioni. Maybe she used to brag to them that she was worth a million given that she had a couple of acres of land and a few cows.
I am sure you by now have an idea where the name Mirioni is coming from. Those who speak my language sometimes don’t understand why there is a difference between R and L and thus use them interchangeably. So to us million and mirioni sound the same.
My grandmother and her friends appeared not to like Mirioni a lot. During their conversations, it was common for them to simultaneously pull out their lips and with a sneer point them in the direction of Mirioni’s homestead. Maybe it was just village mate rivalry. Unfortunately Mirioni had not born any children and used to live alone.
During one of the school holidays, Mirioni brought home a young woman of about thirty years. No one in the village appeared to know her but it was later discovered that she was from a village two ridges away. The young woman came accompanied by two scruffy looking boys say nine and seven years old. It was said that Mirioni had ‘married’ the young woman together with her two sons.
This rumour was proved right when at the beginning of the term, the two Mirioni boys were enrolled in the local primary school in Mirioni’s name. There was of course much talk in the village about the development and it was not easy for the Mirioni boys. You can only imagine us the hard-edged village boys asking them all manner of questions but the Mirioni dollar question being whether they called Mirioni ‘baba’ (dad) or ‘Cucu’ (grandmother). Do not even attempt to think about LBT.. whatever. It was unheard of then.
The Mirioni saga was in actual sense a form of surrogacy classified as traditional surrogacy which has been practised by many communities since time immemorial. The agreement in this case was that Mirioni would take over the bringing up of the two boys and any other children who would be born afterwards just as a father would. As to who would be the biological father or fathers of the later children, there would be an arrangement between Mirioni and the young woman as to a particular man or men. But in all cases Mirioni had to give consent as to who sires children with her ‘bride’. The said fathers would however remain anonymous. Eventually all the children and their mother would be heirs to Mirioni’s estate.
The Kenya Constitution 2010 accommodates surrogacy whereby it recognises that every Kenyan has a right to form a family. In as much as surrogacy has a constitutional basis, there is no substantive legislation and policy framework to guide the same. There is currently no law on surrogacy arrangements in Kenya except for what has been developed by the courts of law in their rulings. Surrogacy can be defined as an arrangement in which a woman (surrogate) agrees to carry and give birth to a child on behalf of another woman or a couple (intended parent or parents).
In modern times, surrogacy had changed in tandem with technology. We now have genetic surrogacy in which the intending mother will have her own egg harvested with the intending father contributing his sperm or even sperm from an anonymous donor may be used. They are then artificially inseminated into the uterus of the surrogate mother. In other cases the egg of the surrogate is artificially inseminated with the sperm of the intending father and the resulting embryo introduced into the uterus of the surrogate.
Surrogacy can further be classified into commercial and non – commercial surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy is whereby the surrogate mother receives payment which is well beyond reasonable expenses associated with bearing a child, i.e. conceiving, gestating, and child bearing and subsequently relinquishing her parental right to the child upon birth. It is worth noting that commercial surrogacy is prohibited by law in major jurisdictions like the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Kenya is among the few countries that legally allow commercial surrogacy. Therefore in absence of requisite law on surrogacy, we may not know the kind of ‘shady’ deals that are happening in our country especially with our women who are in genuine need of money, fertility clinics, ‘surrogacy agents’ and foreigners in whose countries commercial surrogacy is illegal.
In non-commercial surrogacy, the surrogate mother receives payment purely as compensation for the reasonable expenses associated with child bearing but not for her services or for relinquishing her parental right to the child. Non – commercial surrogacy is allowed in most jurisdictions. However, in absence of relevant laws and a policy framework as in the case of Kenya, it is definitely not easy to differentiate what is commercial or non-commercial surrogacy.
This is a discussion that Kenyans urgently need to have.
David Ndirangu BSc. International Business Administration (USIU- A) CPA (K). Business Management Consultant and Author of the book; This is DAVE. Email ndirangudavid2023@gmail.com
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