Yup! You got it right, village where mans are forbidden.

Wondering where?

Well, it’s in Kenya and the village is called Umoja.

Consisting of 47 women and 200 children as of 2015 the village runs the Matriarchal system.

Wondering how it’s possible to have children when there are no men?

Well man is allowed to enter village only in night. They are forbidden to enter the village in the light of the day as well as forbidden to live in the village.

The only men who are allowed to live in the village are those who are born in the village.

This village is one of its kinds because of the unique story attached to it.

Let’s go & find out why mans are banned to enter in Umoja.

Umoja basically consist of samburu women who in olden days possessed the subordinate position in their society.

Like, they were not allowed to own a land or any type of property not even the livestock. You can say that they themselves were considered as property of their husbands, and left to suffer dastardly and terrible crimes like forced marriage with the elders, rape and domestic violence and so on.

And then, the case of military raping more than 1,400 Samburu women came into light. The case was cleared.

But these women were abandoned by their husbands because they were considered to be “defiled”. While some other men left their wives fearing they may get prone to some sexually transmitted diseases from their raped wives. If they’ll remain in their contact.

After many women didn’t find any place to live, they created Umoja (means unity).

Rebecca Lolosoli is one of the founders of Umoja, came up with the idea of creating a village for women after she was beaten up for speaking out and eventually fifteen women came together to found the original village in 1990.

These women initially started out by selling vegetables they bought from others but that didn’t worked out since they didn’t knew that how to farm themselves so eventually they turned to selling traditional crafts to tourists.

And then the Kenya Wildlife Services took notice of them & helped these women to learn from successful groups in areas such as the Maasai Mara, so that they can improve Umoja’s business.

In 2005 Rebecca Lolosoli (Founder of Umoja) visited UN as well. Shortly after her visit men in the neighboring village filed a court case against her, to shut down the village.

In 2009 Lolosoli’s former husband even attacked the village, threatened her life.

But eventually the women of village occupied land for themselves.

So that was the tale of Umoja – the forbidden village for man.