Did you know that unmarried Pokot men did not possess houses in the past? Since women were the ones who built huts for their families, a man had to be married in order to have a roof over his head. Unmarried men had to sleep outside and defend the community from any nightly attacks.
Some Pokot families were pastoralists while others grew crops. The agricultural Pokot lived in large villages consisting of about fifty homesteads while the pastoral Pokot were nomads who moved from place to place in search of pasture. The homesteads of the agricultural Pokot comprised of a man’s hut along with a hut for each of his wives and her children.
Huts were built using sticks and cow dung, but crop growers built more permanent structures while cattle herders had temporary ones that could be dismantled when they moved. In the rainy season, skins were flung onto the roof to keep the inside of the huts dry.
What do you think about the home ownership rule applied by this community in the past?
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