1Slavery and other forms of coercion were part of everyday life in many parts of East Africa, but they did not always appear as clearly defined institutions. While a lot of scholarship has focused on the Indian Ocean coast and long-distance slave trading, slavery in the interior often took forms closely tied to family life, marriage, labor, and belonging. Due to this reason, it was rarely recorded as slavery or dependence in colonial archives and was later absorbed into family histories and local explanations of social difference (Cooper, 1979; Médard & Doyle, 2007).
2Historical scholarship has shown that the difficulty in identifying slavery in inland societies lies not in its absence, but in the ways it was socially reorganized, renamed, and absorbed. Médard and Doyle (2007) argue that during the colonial period, administrators, missionaries, and local elders frequently referred to enslaved or dependent people as “wives,” “children,” or “servants,” terms that concealed coercive relations and made them appear socially acceptable. These practices contributed to the long-term silencing of slavery in both official records and oral accounts.
3African scholars have emphasized that emancipation did not end dependency. Unequal relations often continued within families and communities through inheritance rules, bride wealth obligations, and access to land. According to Nyanto (2024), formerly enslaved people and their descendants were frequently incorporated into households in ways that hid their origins while maintaining social hierarchy. Over time, these relations became normalized and remembered as part of family tradition rather than as forms of coercion.
4Among all, marriage played a central role in this process. Studies of slavery in Africa have shown that women who entered households through capture, forced movement, or lack of alternatives were later remembered as wives, even when consent was limited or absent (Miers & Kopytoff, 1977; Robertson & Klein, 1997). Recent studies in family histories have reinforced how marriage could function as a form of control while still being narrated as a normal social relationship (Apio, 2022; Seymour et al, 2022).
5Memory and silence are therefore central to the study of the afterlives of slavery. Glassman (1991) demonstrates that formerly enslaved people and their descendants often adopted dominant moral and cultural values to claim respectability and belonging. Therefore, silence and selective remembering are not signs of ignorance, but ways of managing the stigma. African historians working with oral sources have similarly argued that what is left unsaid can be as important as what is spoken (Sheriff, 2010).
6Therefore, building on this scholarship, this study approaches slavery as a set of social relations rather than as a category that can be identified directly. Based on oral family histories from Vihiga County in western Kenya, it examines marriage, bride wealth, adoption, labor, and social belonging as key sites through which past dependency is remembered or left unspoken, remaining close to local ways of speaking and remembering. The study further explores how unequal relations are embedded in everyday kinship narratives and shaped by silence, moral commentary, and selective remembering, and seeks to understand how these narratives reveal the afterlives of coercion in inland societies, and the influence of colonial and postcolonial transformations on social memory.
7To investigate memories of kinship, marriage, and dependency in Vihiga County, this study adopts an oral family history approach, with particular attention to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c. 1890–1930). Rather than treating slavery as a fixed or self-evident category, the research follows a relational and indirect methodology, focusing on family narratives through which forms of dependency, incorporation, and exclusion are remembered, reinterpreted, or silenced across generations.
8This approach responds to longstanding historiographical concerns about the limitations of fixed definitions of slavery and the tendency of colonial records and later narratives to obscure coercive relations by reframing them as kinship, marriage, or adoption. Oral histories are therefore treated not as straightforward reconstructions of past events, but as socially situated narratives shaped by present concerns, moral frameworks, and inherited silences. Elderly narrators and recognized knowledge holders, who occupy positions of moral authority within their communities, play a key role in shaping both what is remembered and what is withheld.
9Particular attention was paid to indirect indicators of dependency, including postponement of bride wealth, inheritance restrictions, guardianship marriages, unpaid labour, capture during periods of war or famine, and the social categorization of “outsiders” within communities.
10This study was conducted in Vihiga County, located in the western highlands of Kenya. It is situated about 35 kilometres south of Kakamega and is characterized by gently undulating terrain at elevations ranging from 1,300 to 1,800 meters above sea level.
11In the nineteenth century, the western Kenyan highlands, including present-day Vihiga, formed part of a densely settled agrarian landscape within the Lake Victoria Basin. The region’s relatively reliable rainfall and fertile soils supported intensive hoe-based cultivation and permanent homestead settlement (Were, 1967). Finger millet and sorghum were the principal staple foods, later increasingly complemented by maize toward the end of the century, alongside legumes and root crops. Livestock keeping mainly goats, sheep, and poultry supplemented cultivation, though cattle holdings were generally modest compared to more pastoral regions. These ecological conditions allowed stable agricultural production and relatively high population densities, while also rendering communities vulnerable to periodic drought, famine, disease, and localized conflict. Such environmental stability combined with demographic pressure shaped landholding practices and reinforced lineage-based control over access to land and marriage.
12Vihiga County offers a particularly appropriate setting for examining how histories of marriage, orphanhood, labour, and belonging are narrated within families, and how earlier forms of dependency continue to shape social memory across generations.
Figure 1. Map of Vihiga County showing the study sites and neighbouring counties (Adapted from Asena et al. (2017).
13Across the oral family histories collected in Vihiga County, marriage is remembered not as a private or individual choice, but as a process shaped by the wider family and lineage. Respondents repeatedly explained that marriages were arranged through discussions among elders and relatives, and that they represented alliances between families rather than personal decisions. In these accounts, marriage appears less as a matter of individual preference and more as a way through which people were brought into existing networks of kinship, obligation, and belonging. This pattern resonates with historical scholarship on African lineage societies, which has shown that marriage functioned as a mechanism of alliance and incorporation, linking households through enduring rights and obligations rather than individual choice (Goody, 1973; Miers & Kopytoff, 1977).
14As “Elijah” from North Maragoli explained, his grandfather did not personally identify his wife; instead, “the elders sat, discussed, and then told him the woman had been chosen.” Refusal, he noted, would not have been interpreted as individual preference, but as disobedience toward lineage authority. Similarly, “Dorica from South Maragoli”, recalled that her aunt’s marriage negotiations were conducted entirely by male relatives, who agreed on bride wealth terms before informing her. In these accounts, marriage appears less as an intimate union and more as a structured mechanism for regulating belonging, alliance, and reproduction.
15Marriage thus functioned as a central institution of social incorporation. Through bride wealth negotiations, individuals were integrated into networks of reciprocity, land rights, and lineage continuity. At the same time, the management of marriage by elders reveals how authority operated through kinship structures. Control over marriage arrangements could both enable incorporation and reinforce dependency, particularly in cases where guardians negotiated marriages on behalf of individuals with limited autonomy. In this sense, marriage emerges in these narratives not simply as a life event, but as a key mechanism through which status, belonging, and social hierarchy were reproduced.
16Additionally, marriage was not always arranged through negotiation alone. Several narrators referred to the capture of women, described in Maragoli as Kemori. A Kemori, literally meaning “a calf,” referred to a woman taken and brought into a household without prior negotiation. Timina Kiboiya from Viziru village in Vihiga recalled: “I used to hear stories of women captured. For example, a man seized a woman and brought her home, and then when night came, the man left the woman for his brother to make her a wife.” Similarly, James Chumba (77 years, Zimbalo, Vihiga) stated that “there were also cases of capturing women during times of war or famine. After capture, the woman became the wife of the captor.” These testimonies show that capture operated as an alternative pathway to marriage. The term Kemori situates the woman at an early stage of incorporation — not yet fully recognized through bridewealth, but already under household authority. Narrators recalled that lineage inquiries and later compensation could follow. Over time, captured women were remembered simply as wives, and references to capture were often softened in retrospective accounts.
17On the other hand, widow inheritance also appeared within marriage narratives as a recognized and expected practice. One respondent recalled: “In the past, there was wife inheritance. If your brother died, you would inherit his wife…We used to call it Omuani, and it was accepted.” The use of the term Omuani indicates that inheritance was not an informal arrangement but a socially named and normalized institution. In such cases, the inheriting man assumed responsibility for the widow, her children, and any outstanding bride wealth obligations, reinforcing marriage as a system of continuity and long-term incorporation.
18Following marriage, death and interruption repeatedly appear in family histories as moments that reconfigured households and produced new forms of dependency. The death of a husband or both parents brought orphans into the societal realm. In Kimaragoli, orphans were referred to as Vavisandu and Mbisandu if one. These terms were used consistently to describe orphans, but, as with other Maragoli categories, they did more than identify a condition. To be Mbisandu or Vavisandu was to occupy a recognized social position always associated with vulnerability, obligation, and mediated belonging. Orphans were not described as outsiders, but neither were they remembered as fully autonomous members of the households they moved to.
19Narrators consistently explained that orphans were absorbed into the households of grandparents, uncles, or other close relatives. Guardianship followed lineage obligation rather than individual preference, particularly where bride wealth remained unpaid. As Safina Mboga from Masingira Village stated, “Wanawachukua, wanajiwekea, wanalipa” — indicating that surviving relatives or children assumed and settled outstanding debts.
20Similarly, Alex Chore from Vihiga emphasized that responsibility did not end with death; brothers or other clan members were expected to oversee marriages and ensure obligations were fulfilled. In these accounts, care and debt were inseparable. Protection of the orphan was simultaneously a continuation of lineage responsibility.
21Guardianship extended beyond everyday care into authority over marriage arrangements. Orphaned girls were frequently discussed in relation to bride wealth: guardians received bride wealth on their behalf, reinforcing control over both the girl and the resources attached to her marriage. Orphaned boys, by contrast, were more often expected to assume and repay debts once they reached adulthood, including unresolved bride wealth. These expectations were narrated as customary and necessary, yet they reveal how dependency persisted across generations and was structured differently by gender.
22Labor was an unspoken but central part of these arrangements. Orphans were expected to work within the households that raised them, contributing through farming, herding, and domestic tasks. This labor was rarely framed as exploitation. Instead, narrators spoke highly of helping, upbringing, and learning responsibility, and work was described as a form of care and proper upbringing. At the same time, these accounts show that labor functioned as a means through which guardianship was justified and dependency was maintained. Orphans who worked within households without independent claims to land or marriage remained tied to their guardians long after childhood.
23The social pressure to marry was reinforced by the category of Musumba (plural: Vasumba), referring to an unmarried adult man. Respondents described Musumba not merely as a descriptive label, but as a socially incomplete status. A man who remained unmarried beyond the expected age was regarded as suspended between youth and full adulthood. Without marriage, he could not establish an independent homestead, claim full authority within lineage deliberations, or secure recognized heirs. Being Musumba was remembered as a condition of waiting — not only for a wife, but for full incorporation into the moral and social community.
24Unmarried men, described as Musumba or Vasumba, also appeared within these narratives of dependency. Some Vasumba were remembered as living within extended family homesteads, contributing labor while waiting for marriage arrangements to be made on their behalf. In rare cases where they could not get married, these men remained socially incomplete, continuing to depend on relatives for land, recognition, and support. Their labor, like that of orphans, was narrated as contribution rather than obligation, yet it reinforced their dependent position within the household.
25Throughout these narratives, moral language softened the conditions that produced dependency. Guardianship was consistently framed as care, labor as helping, and delayed marriage as misfortune rather than exclusion. When narrators spoke of Vavisandu or Musumba, they emphasized responsibility, patience, and endurance. Explicit discussion of inequality was rare. Instead, silence and moral commentary worked together to normalize these arrangements and protect family respectability.
26Reflections on change over time further shaped how these experiences were remembered. Colonial rule, Christianity, and schooling were frequently invoked as forces that altered moral expectations and social classification. While practices such as guardianship, bride wealth, and labor within kinship continued, narrators demonstrated that the language used to describe them had shifted. Older terms like Kemori remained in memory, but their meanings were often softened or avoided in contemporary speech. These changes did not erase dependency, but they reshaped how it could be spoken about, contributing to the layered silences that characterize present-day family histories in Vihiga County.
27Taken together, these narratives show that dependency in Vihiga County is remembered not as an exceptional condition, but as an ordinary feature of family life structured through marriage, bride wealth, guardianship, and labor. Categories such as Musumba, Vavisandu, and Kemori provided locally meaningful ways of naming incomplete incorporation without explicitly invoking coercion. Marriage functioned as a prolonged process rather than a single event, generating obligations that extended across generations and shaped the lives of men, women, and children differently. Orphans and unmarried men were incorporated through care and work, while remaining socially mediated through others. Silence, moral language, and selective remembering allowed these arrangements to be narrated as normal, responsible, and necessary, even as they sustained unequal relations. The persistence of these categories in memory, alongside their gradual softening over time, reveals how dependency survives not through formal institutions, but through everyday kinship practices and the ways families choose to remember their past.
28This study set out to examine how forms of dependency are remembered and narrated in family histories in Vihiga County, western Kenya. Rather than identifying slavery as a fixed category, it approached dependency as a set of social relations which in this case includes marriage, bride wealth, guardianship, labor, and everyday kinship practices. Through oral family histories, the study has shown that unequal relations were not remembered as external impositions, but as ordinary features of family life, explained through locally meaningful categories and moral language.
29Marriage emerged as the central institution through which dependency was organized and normalized. Practices of arrangement, delayed bride wealth, inheritance of widows, and capture structured how individuals were incorporated into households and lineages. Bride wealth obligations extended across generations, binding families together through debt and responsibility, while guardianship and labor reinforced dependency within relations of care.
30The study has also demonstrated that silence and moral commentary are not absences in oral testimony, but active elements of remembering. Narratives emphasized responsibility, care, and normality, while softening or leaving unspoken the conditions that produced dependency. Over time, colonial rule, Christianity, and schooling reshaped how these relations were narrated, altering moral frameworks without eliminating the underlying practices.
31By remaining close to local categories and ways of speaking, this study contributes to broader debates on slavery and post-slavery societies in Africa, particularly in inland regions where dependency was absorbed into family life and later obscured within narratives of respectability and belonging. It demonstrates the value of oral family histories for understanding the afterlives of coercion beyond the archive, and for revealing how inequality can endure through ordinary social relations.
32This research was conducted with the support of the IFRA-Nairobi Stolen People and Family History Fieldwork Grant. I am grateful to Prof. Henri Médard and the IFRA-Nairobi team for their institutional support during the fieldwork phase. I also thank the community elders and local leaders in Vihiga County whose involvement made this research possible.
