The Grassroots Girls Initiative
The Maasai Girl’s Passage to Freedom
- By Emmanuel Otoo on January 30th, 2012
- Category: Blog, Grassroots Girls Initiative, Sub-Saharan Africa
Kakenya Center for Excellence
Nairobi, Kenya–The Maasai people live in Kenya and Tanzania along the Great Rift Valley. A pastoralist people, they occupy an estimated total land area of about 160,000 square kilometers (roughly 62,000 square miles). Traditions and culture are of great importance to the Maasai, and among these traditions are female circumcision and early marriage for girls. Before a Maasai girl is married, she must undergo circumcision a rite of passage to adulthood. In addition to the actual procedure, the rite includes a traditional ceremony where the entire community gets together to celebrate the girl’s passage to adulthood. Because Maasai girls are traditionally seen as children until they are circumcised, it is considered important for a Maasai girl to undergo the circumcision rite before she is married.
The procedure that the Maasai perform is called clitoridectomy, a type of female genital mutilation (FGM) in which all or part of the clitoris, and sometimes the adjacent labia, is removed. Studies have revealed a number of negative effects of FGM. Among them is excessive bleeding during the procedure, leading to death. The procedure is mostly performed using shared and unsterilized sharp objects, which can lead to HIV/AIDS and tetanus. FGM can also result in additional damage to nearby areas such as the vaginal walls. Among the long-term effects of FGM are chronic infections of the urinary tract and reproductive system, pain during sexual intercourse, and difficulties in childbirth.
In 2001, the Kenyan government passed the Children’s Act, which is designed to protect the rights of the child and to ensure that the child receives formal education. The Children’s Act also issued a ban on FGM, including clitoridectomy, and on early marriage. Early marriage is defined as marriage by people below 18 years of age. Many Maasai families face challenges in providing for their children, and the most common solution is to marry daughters off at a young age. It is perceived among most Maasai that a daughter’s marriage increases the wealth of the girl’s family through combined cattle and cash dowries, and since a girl joins her husband’s family upon marriage, her father is relieved of the financial burden of taking care of her. Maasai fathers tend, therefore, to believe that their family will not benefit from investing in a daughter’s education. For those few families that are able to pay education costs, there is a preference for educating sons first. Early marriage in place of education is also motivated by a number of other factors: girls are usually ridiculed by their peers if they are still in school after circumcision, and in Maasai culture, women are traditionally valued on the basis of how many children they can produce for their husbands, not by how educated they might become.
Kakenya Center for Excellence, www.kakenyasdream.org, is the first organization in a predominately Maasai region to offer access to quality formal education for young adolescent girls. Founded by Kakenya Ntaiya, a Maasai woman who left her village to obtain an advanced education, the school incorporates substantial female empowerment techniques, leadership skills, and reproductive health and hygiene education, and works with the girls to instill in them the spirit of community development. Appreciating Kakenya Ntaiya’s initiative, the community supported the Kakenya Center for Excellence with about six acres of land for the construction of a classroom block and other buildings to ensure the smooth running of the center.
Currently, 124 adolescent girls are receiving formal basic education, life skills training, and leadership training at the center. The Global Fund for Children provides both technical and financial support to the Kakenya Center for Excellence to enable the school to achieve its objectives. Using a multifaceted strategy, the school is currently working with girls, their families, and the community, as well as the government, to ensure that girls’ education is taken more seriously among the MaasaI people. One program that GFC is supporting aims to have all domestic and gender-based sexual violence (including FGM and early marriage) rejected by community members and leaders. In spite of some challenges being faced by the center, Kakenya Ntaiya is determined, with support from organizations such as GFC and the Maasai community, to continue the center’s effective community sensitization programs to ensure better understanding of the harmful effects of FGM and early marriage. These programs work with the people of the community to help them internalize the decision to revise the expression of their culture and traditions to protect the best interest of the child at all times.
The Kakenya Center for Excellence is also planning to initiate sustainable income-generating and social-enterprise activities to help families support their girls to attend and remain in school, and to reduce the pressure of poverty that sometimes pushes families to force their girls into early marriages. In addition, the center intends to deepen its partnerships with key government agencies and other strategic allies to ensure that girls who are being forced to undergo early marriage or FGM are rescued, rehabilitated, and supported to go to school or acquire employment skills, and that the perpetuators of these traditions are dealt with according to the law.
Please consider this an opportunity to donate to The Global Fund for Children. Help support GFC’s efforts in assisting organizations such as the Kakenya Center for Excellence and bring smiles to the faces of deprived, abused, neglected, marginalized, vulnerable, poor, and socially excluded children around the world. The time to act is NOW!
i think this is a piece ful of isights on the trauma children go through in certain parts of our world. We all have a responsibility to ensure that our future is not disabled by our present negligence or inadequate acton. the time to act is Now, indeed!
Great piece! Highly informative and insightful. It is refreshing to learn that visionaries such as Kakenya exist to change the status quo for girls. Kudos also to GFC for supporting these types of initiatives. Looking out for more inspirational stories from you, Emmanuel! Keep them coming!
EO
Great write up! It takes our brothers to state the truth as you have! There is power in your pen!! Keep it up!
After decades of suffering and inhumane practices on innocent girls, finally some assistance to these vulnerable girls. It is for a worthy cause. Thumbs up
This is a great piece. Highly informative. Kudos to GFC for the great work it is doing. I commend the writer for a the good work he is doing. We need men who are sensitive to women and girls’ issues, especially in the area of sexual and gender based violence, as well as empowerment. I will recommend this article to any gender class.
Kudos to Kakenya Ntaiya for the wonderful intervention. if all african countries gets people like this, we will have better and transformed societies to live in. thanks a lot GFC for the support and resources made available for such worthy cause. Mr. Otoo, thanks for this great piece. bless u.
This is great ,wonderful intervention bravo to all who help in bringing this out i believe very soon africans will come out from this atrocities. God bless you Mr. Otoo and all those partnering with you.
This piece is very educative and informative. You and your team will be facing resistance from the perpetrators of this harmful act. Seat up and continue. Never relent in your efforts. Support the Center and its allies to end this practice to save innocent girls. ROHEO is proud of you. Keep us updated. Thank you.
Great piece of work. The level of advocacy displayed here is deep.The more i think about it the more ii am convinced that it is a human rights issue and must be tackled as such. Another example of outmoded customary practice.
Wonderful and insightful write up indeed. it brings out the trauma girls go through to become women. It also gives an indication of however steadfast we hold on to tradition. I just wonder if men could also begin to look at their sexual preferences and begin to marry women who do not go through the ordeal of FGM. Kakenya Ntaiya has done a great job indeed. it is a cause worth investing into. GFC, thanks of the support!
Given that cultural practices are so deeply ingrained in our social fabric, the push to change the harmful practices is really an uphill struggle. It’s gratifying to learn of these efforts to better the lives of girls and women among the Massai of Kenya. Thanks for this informative piece and kudos to the GFC for supporting this effort. Hope to see more of this across the continent.
Indeed GFC is to be commended for the great work you are doing in the lives of deprived and vulnerable children. There is no better way of securing the future of such girls than ensuring that they are educated. working towards influencing long standing traditions and community cultural practices take time and is challenging but with persistence many have broken through.
Kudos to the Kakenya Center for Excellence, keep up the good work.
The writer of this article, Emmanuel Otoo also deserves to be highly commended for the passion he attaches to his work. This is an excellent piece of writing. Keep uo the good work, Emmanuel.
When a community sees vestiges of hope and momentous stories like this, outsiders cannot but look out for ways of supporting such initiatives and doing same in their communities.
Excellent work Kakenya and Emmanuel.
Great piece by all standards. I am expecting your return trip to the Maasai land for another piece, but this time on the ‘Maasai Boy’ whom I understand is turned into a man (with a gun and a piece of land) very early in his life. I personally believe, if work can be done on this ‘Maasai Boy-man’, it will go a long way to positively affect the situation of the ‘Maasai Girl’ – kind of double barrel solution!!!
Kudos Kakenya! Kudos Global Fund for Children for standing up for a good cause. God bless you.
Very informative. Kakenya Ntaiya must be commended for her heroic effort in standing up to bring change to this negative cultural practice against innocent girls. She must be supported to bring an end to this negative cultural slavery. Thanks Emmanuel Otoo and GFC for the support.
This is a great discovery, Mr. Otoo. Well done. it is an inhuman act and must not be encouraged, how could girls of such an age (below 18 years) be put through so much torture and torment, while girls their age else were are experencing a better life. I pray that civilization gets to them soon, thank you once again Emmanuel Otoo, God bless you for telling their story. Smiles a blessing into your life, keep up the spirit.
Great article, Emmanuel, this is very eye opening. Your hard work is very much appreciated.
Thank you all for the great comments and very engaging discussion on the blog post. Indeed, the general issue of child protection and youth empowerment is of crucial importance to the development of communities such as the Maasai, where some strong negative social structures, systems and practices work against the opportunities for girls empowerment. Most girls are socially excluded and prevented by unacceptable traditions and gender biases to obtain education. Institutions such as Kakenya’s academy are challenging a new way of thinking by debunking the widely held notion, that there is little to no return on investments in girls education. Research also establishes that educating girls is one of the most cost effective ways of ensuring holistic social development, as female education creates powerful community-owned wealth creation initiatives that has the potential of yielding significant and sustainable intergenerational gains (perhaps a good topic to explore in a future blog-post). GFC has taken a stand—can you help us in playing our role to support initiatives similar to Kakenya’s academy? Please get on board and get involved today!
Thank you for this article and the attention it gives to the Kakenya Center for Excellence. Engaging parents and the community in dialogue about serious health issues like FGM and in the significance of educating girls is a critical step in influencing practices that are harmful to girls and women and their future. Credibility must be achieved in Maasai communities that it is worthwhile to invest in girls. This can be achieved through public dialogue, through changes in values and through ‘real’ achievements of girls and women which bring benefits to their families and to the community. Kakenya Ntaiya seems an example of this. I applaud her and the work that she and The Global Fund for Children are doing and I appreciate such a thoughtful and informative article.
Wonderful article, Emmanuel! So glad to see you’ve profiled Kakenya’s wonderful organization. I had the privilege to meet her last year – what a smart, warm, and inspiring woman! She’s doing such great work.