In this deeply personal and culturally grounded episode, Anne Adhiambo takes us back to a Luo homestead in the early 1980s, when her father married wife number five — and the women of the family were expected to celebrate it.

Through the innocent eyes of a five-year-old girl, we witness a moment that was presented as joyful but was quietly soaked in emotional sacrifice. Women cooked, decorated, and competed to welcome their husband’s new bride in the name of “Konya Hero” — a phrase that literally means “help me love,” but in practice meant “I have no choice but to accept this.”

This episode unpacks what polygamy looked like inside Luo culture — not just as a tradition, but as a system that quietly trained women to suppress grief, compete for male approval, and call endurance “strength.” Anne reflects on how culture rewarded men for expansion while teaching women to make peace with emotional displacement.

Moving between memory, cultural analysis, and adult reflection, she explores:

The invisible trauma women carry in polygamous families;

How girls are socialised to admire male power before they understand female pain;

The cost of asking women to welcome what wounds them;

And how modern womanhood begins when we refuse to nurture what we cannot enjoy.

This is not an attack on culture — it is an honest conversation about how some traditions shaped women’s silence, endurance, and self-erasure.

If you have ever been told to “understand,” “accept,” or “be strong” while something in you was breaking, this episode is for you.