By Sharon Simaloa Leina
I count myself lucky to be a millennial. It is a privilege to be part of a generation that reaps the benefits of centuries of work and struggle around gender and racial equality. I feel that this stage we have arrived at might be the farthest we have reached as a civilization, in terms of social equality. Nonetheless, my heart weeps, and is burdened with deep sorrow when, in spite of the many strides made to empower women globally, I still witness the huge burden of oppression endured by the African girl child today. It pains me to realize that, in a world so full of promise, my sisters and I are still bound by millennia old customs and traditions. The weeping rings even louder the closer I examine my Maasai origins and my rights as a Maasai girl. The injustices are manifested everywhere I turn.
Poverty is probably the single worst cause of so many problems afflicting Maasai girls today. It affects their lives, from their upbringing to their marriage and beyond. Maasai girls who do enrol in primary school attend free public day schools. But all students in Kenya are required to wear uniforms, which many families cannot afford. Public primary boarding schools offer many advantages, however they are prohibitively expensive for most Maasai families. The quality of education in these rural day schools is rarely adequate to prepare students for the national exams required to go on to secondary school. These schools are underfunded and woefully overcrowded, with a student-teacher ratio as high as one teacher to a hundred learners. A lot of work needs to be done around girls’ education to rectify the lack of educated and professional Maasai women to fight for gender equality and against patriarchal household structures. The benefits to societies of educating women are well-documented and include lower birth rates, better health, lower infant mortality, fewer teenage marriages and pregnancies, and greater economic well-being not only for women, but for the entire community in which they live. I am glad to be among the lucky few educated girls in my community. Taking my education to higher levels will set a powerful example to my Kenyan sisters.
I feel immense sadness when I think of the girl with valid dreams often see her chances of an education slip from her grasp. Girls who are desperate to attend school are often forced to engage in transactional sex with older men and even teachers in order to pay their fees and cover the costs of supplies thus exposing them to higher risks of STDs and HIV/AIDS infection.
In addition to limited access to education, girls are often pressured by their family and peers for an early marriage. Early marriage is the most often cited reason that Maasai girls drop out of school. Maasai girls are taught that circumcision is a rite of passage into womanhood that accompanies puberty and an immediate precursor to marriage. Once circumcised, girls are ridiculed by their peers if they continue their education, since school is for children. Further escalating the pressure for early marriage is the reality that in the Maasai culture, women are traditionally valued on the basis of how many children they can produce for their husbands, not their education or economic success. There are also economic incentives for early marriage. A daughter’s marriage increases the wealth of Maasai girl’s family through combined cattle and cash dowries and her father is relieved of the economic burden of supporting her. The practice of early marriage is worsened by the increasing poverty of the Maasai people, which leads Maasai fathers to marry their daughters off at increasingly younger ages. For those few families that are able to pay education costs, there is a widespread cultural preference for educating sons first. This stems from the tradition that Maasai girls leave their parents’ village and become a member of the husband’s family upon marriage. Therefore, Maasai fathers tend to believe that their family will not benefit from investing in their daughter’s education.
The Maasai society is patriarchal and polygamous. From birth, a Maasai girl child is treated as a second-class citizen and the cultural norms deny her opportunities to make her own choices. Women are not able to own or control property and are commonly confined to the domestic sphere. Maasai women are not given the right to choose their husbands and are often married by the age of twelve or thirteen. Girls also experience a disproportionate amount of workload at home and often have the responsibility of looking after younger siblings. This is another reason why girls are kept from attending school.
A further cultural challenge and barrier to education faced by young Maasai girls is early pregnancy due to early sex and sometimes rape. Research undertaken in 2011 by the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) and partner Community Aid and Small Enterprises Consultancy (CASEC) found that morans, or young Maasai warriors, are specifically tasked by community elders to get young girls pregnant so they are forced to drop out of school. There is also evidence that families bribe teachers to fail girls and force them out of school.
No wanting to accept this fate for girls and society in general, I started an initiative known as SaWa, which stands for Saidia Wasichana Initiative (Swahili for ‘help girls’). SaWa aims to help girls in all aspects of their lives. A centre of SaWa has already been created at the Sirua Aulo Academy in Transmara District, Narok County in Kenya. SaWa is readying to work closely with Village Volunteers’ Empowering Women Period initiative which aims at helping with the sanitation of the girl child by production of biodegradable sanitary towels using water hyacinth, an abundant and destructive aquatic invasive species.
I have been raised in utter poverty, and have grown up to be lonely as my peers got married off or dropped out of school to be stay-at-home mothers. I therefore feel the need to be empowered and use my platform in life to change as much I can in my society. Founding SaWa while still in high school was a big part of who I am as a young woman, getting in touch with issues affecting my peers, and being a part of the change required to transform their lives.I hope to be a change maker in the future. I want to be at the fore front to fight for the Maasai girl child’s rights and create a ripple that is felt around the world. And for that I want to start by studying further and becoming a good student to set an example for my Kenyan sisters.
I hope to be a change maker in the future. I want to be at the fore front to fight for the Maasai girl child’s rights and create a ripple that is felt around the world. And for that I want to start by studying further and becoming a good student to set an example for my Kenyan sisters.
Sharon is from Transmara District, Narok County, Kenya and is a member of the Maasai community. Outside of her life as an active high school student, Sharon supports the work started by her father Emmanual Leina Tasur at Namunyak Maasai Welfare, a community welfare organization that effects positive change in the Maasai community through the provision of education, employment and vocational training opportunities to the most disenfranchised members of society. Sharon is an active speaker and advocate for women’s rights in her community. She is also a strong supporter of Village Volunteers’ Empowering Women Period project that will provide employment to underprivileged women through the setup of facilities that will manufacture 100 per cent biodegradable sanitary pads made out of water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic weed.
This post is an excerpt from Sharon’s application for undergraduate courses offered by universities in USA. We’re grateful to Sharon for sharing this with us and the larger Village Volunteers community. Thank you, Sharon!