Mugosi Maningo and Anastasia Juma's homestead lies among a cluster of hamlets that make up the remote village of Nyamongo in far northern Tanzania. There's no road to their circular thatched houses in the bushland, only a snaking dirt track carved out by cattle on their way to graze. It's early May—the rainy season in this part of East Africa—and the sky is growling loudly. The two women rush to gather crops before the inevitable downpour hits. "My wife and I do everything together," says Juma, 27, a petite woman wearing a fuchsia T-shirt and short braids in her hair. "We're just like any married couple."
According to Dinna Maningo (no direct relation to Mugosi), a Kurya reporter with leading Tanzanian newspaper Mwananchi, nyumba ntobhu is an alternative family structure that has existed for many years. "Nobody knows when it started," she says, "but its main purpose is to enable widows to keep their property." By Kurya tribal law, only men can inherit property, but under nyumba ntobhu, if a woman without sons is widowed or her husband leaves her, she is allowed to marry a younger woman who can take a male lover and give birth to heirs on her behalf. The custom is very different from same-sex marriages in the West, Dinna adds, because homosexuality is strictly forbidden. "Most Kurya people don't even know gay sex exists in other parts of the world," she says. "Especially between women."
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