The Latest from Samburu

Annamaria on Monday

It's been six months since I posted an update on what is going on with the efforts to save pastoralist girls in the most marginalized area of Kenya.  Our goal: to defend girls against beading, FGM, and forced marriage. A lot has happened since my last blog on this subject.  And it is all good.

(Aside:Regular readers of MIE know the background story.  if you want to learn about the beginnings of that effort you can find a post here)

Six of our secondary school girls

The Sidai girls are thriving!  We are now up to 48, eight of whom are in secondary school and have a safe place to come home to during school holidays.  Of great importance is Sidai's progress in changing the hearts and minds of the elder men who have, until now, perpetuated the brutal treatment of girls.   They have done so, not because they are evil, but because the practices have been an integral part of their culture for millennia.  They knew no other way.

Years ago, Sarah Lesiamito, the teacher who began the effort, took girls into her home to protect them.  Two of the girls, Shar and Sonia, had fathers who demanded to have them back and were angrily vocal about their rights as fathers. As Sarah reports it, "I told them that I was helping them raise their children."  The fathers went away mad, but - thanks to the Kenyan laws against such treatment, they were unable to take the girls back.  Years later, Shar returned to her village as a registered nurse, the only professional healthcare giver in the area.  Her father is now so proud of her achievements that he gave Sarah a goat.  A pastoralist man gave an animal to a woman!

That's Shar on the right.

When Sonia graduated first in her class from secondary school, her father too repented his early angry rejection.  He asked Sarah how she was able to do what she is doing.  She told him, "There is this woman in New York.."  He said, "When that woman in New York comes to Samburu, I will give her a cow."  This declaration has led to a great deal of hilarious conjecture about how I will transport the cow to NYC and how it might be taken up to my seventh-floor apparent.  Cow or no cow, there is this to rejoice over: Sonia is now in college, studying to be a community Healthcare Specialist. On school holidays, she is assisting Shar in providing health care to a community that lacks even a basic clinic.

The culture of the Samburu people is a gerontocracy of men.  Their acceptance of Sidai's work has reached a point where, this past summer, the elders went to Sidai, carrying bowls a milk, their sacred liquid, and chanted and blessed the Sidai installation, the dormitory and the library (the only such thing in the county)!  Here they are:

This social progress has happened because the Sidai Method for saving girls is fundamentally different from how other efforts ordinarily keep girls safe - by taking them out of the community where they were born.  Sarah keeps the Sidai girls in the area, where all the people can watch them thrive and achieve.

Water seekers

Just in the past few weeks, a new possibility has arisen.  To both Sarah and me, this opportunity feels magical.  By a series of mind boggling coincidences, I learned about an American nonprofit called the Samburu Project, which for the past fifteen years has dug wells in Samburu County as a first step in improving the lives of women and girls in communities like that of Sidai.  The sequence of events that led to this connection between Sidai and the Samburu Project began with a decision of a thirteen year old girl in Los Angeles to make a charitable donation.  This led to  seven incredibly unlikely steps that put the head of the well-digging effort in Kenya in touch with Michael Lenaimado, Sarah's husband.  Erich, that well-digger chief, just happens to be a member of Michael's coming-of-age group - a relationship that makes them blood-brothers for life. Marvelous!

Sometime in the next week, Erich is going to test the substrate near the Sidai Center.  If there is water beneath the ground, Sidai will be on its way to having a well, in a climate so dry that the women and girls spend a great deal of their lives searching for and carrying water.  According to Sarah, relief from that burden would be the greatest thing that could happen to the women of the area.

My thoughts will be focused on that prayed-for outcome over the next few days. Join us a crossing our fingers.

www.sidairesourcecentre.org