Gestational surrogacy has saved the Kamba girl

By Sabastian mwaluko 

A gestational carrier or a gestational surrogate involves an arrangement in which a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person who is unable to bear children. This process entails taking the eggs for making the embryo from another woman who is not the carrier and implanting them into the uterus of the carrier woman through the use of in vitro fertilization (American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2022). This process appears to be a modern version of the traditional form of surrogacy that was practiced by the traditional Kamba community before the invention.

Based on the traditions of the Kamba culture, barrenness was highly detested and perceived as resulting from women taking in hot ghee, a belief that modern science shows is not be factual. 

Once a woman was accused of barrenness in the Kamba traditional community, the latter was taken to the traditional healers who would perform rituals on her to enable conception. Such rituals involved giving the woman a chain to put around her waist and some chicken eggs that she would also smear around the waist. If such rituals did not yield fruits in enabling her to conceive, the woman was allowed to marry another wife who would sire children on her behalf, and in this case the children would bear the surname of the woman who brought the other woman as her wife.

This form of surrogacy in the Kamba community was helpful to the individuals who had child bearing issues by keeping them off the stigma of being identified as childless people who were likened to witches in the Kamba community, and helped them get reliable heirs who would inherit their accumulated wealth and take care of them in times of sickness or during their old age. It was guarded by ethics such that no form of mistreatment could be met against the married girl by the wife or husband who married her.

Since marriage affairs were organized by parents in the traditional Kamba community, the woman in question was culturally allowed to identify a teenage girl from the village, meet her parents, make a marriage proposal and pay dowry for the girl then later take her to her home as a wife. This activity itself was so detrimental to the victims as the young girls learnt how to conduct themselves as married women after being taken from their parents’ homes while in their early teenage years. Currently, with the invention of the gestational surrogate and the rules governing it, the Kamba girl child is safe since the basic principle above it all is seeking the consent of the person from which one intends to get surrogate services from through legal agreements before starting the process, therefore no way a girl can find herself in a forced marriage.

After marrying a surrogate wife, there were no restrictions on who would sire children with the young girl since the traditional Kamba culture barred the husband to the married wife from having sexual intercourse with the young girl and siring children together. Due to this, the young girl was allowed to have sexual intercourse with any other man of her wish as long as the man was fertile, and thus the girl could end up having several children with different biological fathers. This did not only expose the young girl to the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections but also played a major role in contributing to promiscuity in the society. With the introduction of gestational carrier services, this behavior has been killed since the source of the eggs or sperms to be used in in vitro fertilization is identified prior to the signing of the agreement between the two parties thus ensuring safety of the individuals involved.

The traditional Kamba culture further allowed couples who gave birth to girls only and reached their menopause without a boy to seek the services of a surrogate mother who would sire boys for them. This could often be complicated when the married girl was found to be barren or gave birth to girls only. In this case the couple would further be forced to marry another surrogate mother. This has been resolved through the invention of gestational surrogacy since the couple decides whether they want a baby boy or a baby girl before the process starts, and later have their carrier implanted with either the eggs or the sperms based on whether they want a baby boy or a baby girl.

The benefits brought about by scientific intervention of gestational carrier services to the humanity are vast and not limited to the Kamba community alone, they cannot be summarized in a single writing and anyone with child bearing challenges can try this form of gestation process.