We have made it.  This is a milestone.  We have matching, freshly starched uniforms for the thirty-one girls attending Kakenya’s School of Excellence.

School Uniform shop

Don’t be fooled by the manifestation of this baby-step in the revolution.  In fact, be convinced by it: with the simple gift of one plaid jumper, maroon sweater, pair of tan knee-socks, patent-leather shoes, and cream collared shirt, you will see each girl lengthen her spine to hold back her shoulders and smile with the confidence that she is, in fact, a miracle.  And I bet you some exorbitant amount of Kenyan shillings she will also do better in her studies - because it is clear someone is invested in her, and she is worth that investment.

Kakenya shows off her school's very own uniform

Beaming for her girls

Kakenya understood the gravity of this moment, and she was silenced by it (save this little clip just before her descent into disbelieving quiet).  She has completed one large orbit of her goal, one of the first rings of her Saturn.  This ring started with one fundraising event after another, visits to Vital Voices in DC, more and more time away from her son and husband, her dissertation; then it was a long trip last summer, another this February, and now one month back in her Kenyan home to see how the girls of her school - “her children” - are growing.  And during this packed month, Kakenya has taken an eight-hour matatu to the large town of Eldoret (“that’s too busy, like New York City”) and spent the whole day personally seeing to it that each girl has every piece of this elaborate outfit that leaves will eventually, on the dirt roads of Enoosaen town, leave all onlookers without a doubt in their minds: this girl is going somewhere.

Now, maybe,  you can see the multiplier effect behind the demure uniform Kakenya holds up in this short video.  You should have been there: adding rings to a planet is worth witnessing (and worth doing).

Video: Kate Cummings. Location: Eldoret, Kenya. Partner: Vital Voices

As the parents entered the gate to Kakenya’s school, I noticed the majority of them were fathers.  There were no couples, but plenty of men carrying their power sticks.  I was interested to talk with them, mothers and fathers, before the assembly began.  Here’s what a few parents had to say about the budding Center for Excellence and their daughters’ education:

Rhodah Chemonget

Rhodah Chemonget is 25 years old with 4 kids (2 of them girls).  Rhodah has one daughter attending Kakenya’s Center.

Q: Have you noticed improvements in your daughter since she started at this school?
Rhodah: She’s doing well. When she was in another school, she wasn’t concentrating on her work.  But now, when she gets home, she is always reading.  My other kids don’t read at home.

Q: How far did you go with your education?
Rhodah: I went to Class 5 [fifth grade].  I wanted to go farther, but my parents refused.  My life would have been better if I’d gotten more education.  But now, my life is hard.  If I’d gone to school, I’d be earning an income – not taking the donkeys to collect maize everyday.

Q: How do you want to raise your daughters differently than your parents raised you?
Rhodah: For a long time, fathers just wanted daughters to be married so they can get cows – but I, I want my daughters to go all the way with education.

Paul Murunka

Paul Murunka is 39 years old with 8 kids (5 of them girls)

Q: What are your expectations for your daughter at this Center of Excellence?
Paul: I am expecting my child to prosper in education.  This school will be different than others.  Judging from the title, “excellence”, and its good foundation, I know it will be an excellent school.

Q: Has your daughter changed since she started school here?
Paul: My daughter is improving.  She’s speaking in English, and also she’s not shy like she was before.  I want to see her being among the first in the class.

Q: Why do you want for your daughter to receive an education?
Paul: Culturally, girls aren’t supposed to inherit anything from the family.  I want, while I am alive, for my daughters to inherit an education from me.

Q: Is there anything else you want to say?
Paul: May God bless Kakenya, because she is not selfish.  She is making more Kakenyas here [gestures to the children playing in front of the school].

Christian Saleh

Christian Saleh is 33 years old with 3 kids (all of them girls – two attending Kakenya’s Center).  Christian was the only other girl in eighth grade w/Kakenya when they were at the end of primary school; all the other girls were dropping out to be circumcised and then married.

Q: Do you have expectations for your daughter at this school?
Christian: The aim I have is for my girls to finish school here and continue other studies.  I finished school up to Class 11 [eleventh grade] – I didn’t finish my schooling because I couldn’t pay the school fees.  I wish I had finished.

Q: Was it difficult to be the only other girl w/Kakenya in Class 8?  How do you want your daughter’s education to be different from your experience?
Christian: Sometimes the boys would beat us and we ran away from them.  Sometimes I had to stay at home to take care of the younger kids, the farm – I had to miss school sometimes to do work for my family.  I want my daughters to do well in exams and go farther than I did.  I don’t want my daughters to have to stay home and take care of the animals.

Life at Kakenya’s homestead has been as rich and full of learning as our time working on her projects; I feel like I’d only be telling only half the story if I didn’t mention the goats, the kitchen hut, and Kakenya’s family, who are now my own.

The small town of Enoosaen consists of one main road of single-level buildings and shacks – most of them a mix of phone charge shops and convenience stores carrying the essentials.  On Wednesdays and Saturdays the town is bustling with the local market, drawing people from neighboring villages.  On a regular day, though, the earthen streets are dotted with children playing and idle donkeys.  On the sides of the road you can often see large tarps laden with corn – the cobs litter the road, becoming part of the uneven pavement during the rains – and sometimes millet, all drying in the sun after a harvest.  The road leading to Kakenya’s house is lined with sugarcane fields, the tall lush grasses on the cane waving their soft swish swish.  There are plenty of cornfields, too, and small mud huts with thatched roofs (some with aluminum sheeting) and children sitting in the shifting shade.

The youngsters

Old women sell tomatoes and sacks of corn along the road leading home, their earlobes stretched long and adorned with beaded bands, their shoulders covered by a colorful shawl patterned according to their age (red polka dots or bright pink for younger women, checkered design for elders).  And finally, after a winding walk of about 45 minutes around the mountain on the right, we arrive at the next, smaller dirt road that skirts the edges of rocky fields, trees dangling yellow orchid-like flowers, to the wooden gate of Kakenya’s house.  If you’re feeling tired, ask any motorbike in town to take you to Kakenya’s, and they’ll know.

View over the grain houses

The family compound’s size seems small at first.  Upon entering, you first see the main house with a tin roof, a smaller house with a thatched roof, and some rotund huts made of wicker down the hill.  But as you wind down the footpaths, you find there are other homes and smaller huts – the homes for sisters and brothers, the huts for grain.  The chicken hutch is just behind the kitchen – conveniently placed near our bedroom window where the roosters are in clear earshot.  The goats’ pen sits on the slope of the hill, past the homes, and just above it is a wooden fence that encompasses the cows – a few dozen of them.  And I haven’t even mentioned the shampa (farm): it covers a long stretch of land opposite the main house, where Kakenya’s mother grows all the corn, collards, pumpkin, potatoes and tomatoes that we eat.  The people who live on this sprawling property, are: Anne (Kakenya’s mom, or “yeiyo”), Nasiegu (Kakenya’s younger sister, about 26), Kishoyian (younger brother, about 22), Toto (the youngest sister – about 14), and Nasiegu’s children (Chesang – maybe 2, Manu – around 8, Michelle – a few months)…I think that’s everyone.  If you have trouble keeping everyone straight, you are not alone.  Nasiegu sleeps in a house near the cows, her son Manu sleeps in the kitchen hut (there’s a cozy bed by the fire), and Kishoyian has his own house (being a warrior and all) closer to the river.  Kakenya has more siblings, but they live in other parts of Kenya and one in the US.

Sheep in front of the kitchen

Home in the evening

Morning with the cows

Kakenya and her clan

Every morning, Yeiyo (that’s Mom) and Kakenya get up before the sun and milk the cows.  I’ve tried this; it is not easy.  All the teets are different, some are dang hard to get a grip on, and good luck getting the steady stream of warm milk to hit your jug with a satisfying fizz they way Yeiyo can.  After milking, there’s plenty more: washing dishes outside of the kitchen (there’s no running water, so fetch a bucket from the main house and fill it with one of the barrels that has river-water), cooking pumpkin and some millet porridge fresh from the farm, pick around 70-100 lbs of tomatoes before the sun comes up so they can be sold in the market – and if you want a shower, make sure you boil water over the fire and mix it with the river-water for the right temperature (take it to the cement room next to the latrines and use the bucket to pour the water over your head – it takes coordination, so don’t be discouraged on your first try if you find you still have soapy toes afterwards).   There’s always washing the floors of the main house, but that’s usually Toto’s task: she is an expert at flicking water onto the mud floor and sweeping the moisture over the cracked surface so that it dries unbroken and firm.

The regular guests

Laden clothesline

Inside the main house

There’s no electricity in our mud houses – or in any of the houses surrounding town, but a small solar panel on the main house roof provides us with a bright light for night’s first couple hours.  There’s usually milking again in the evening (5 liters sells for a good $2 every morning, and you need more at night for plenty of chai), and there’s always the skillful rounding up of cows by the men that Yeiyo has hired.  Manu is an apt cowboy himself – running with a light switch in hand in between the lumbering cows, his galoshes slapping his shins.  The goats are his specialty, and he manages to corral them into their wooden hut with ease.

Manu

Goat house

Manu the shepherd

I mentioned one day that I really wanted to hold one of the kids (baby goats) and he spent the next several minutes chasing the youngest ones, finally catching a brown-spotted hind leg.  We are developing a habit now – when it is evening, and the goats are being shepherded to their house, Manu runs to me, “hold goat?” And I invariably drop what I’m doing to follow him, his form dim in the fading light, as he leads me to the shuffling pack.  I’ve learned how to catch the kids off-guard and grab the hind leg – with audible protest – and cradle the soft body in my arms.  Manu stays with me, laughing at my affection and himself coming closer over time to pet the small head and rub the long ears.  Some nights when I am talking on my phone outside, under the bright night sky, Manu runs up to me and, finding himself without much to say, stands by my side; after a few moments, he rests his head on my waist, and I put my hands on his head like he is my child.  Inside the house, the evenings are lively, everyone talking about the day’s excitement, Kakenya’s two year-old running under legs and demanding that everyone participate in another recitation of “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Nathan's nightly bath

The food arrives around nine, and everyone is quiet with eating.  Kakenya is usually up late with her mom, and sometimes her brother, laughing with each other and gesturing wildly at the day’s drama – how could that guy have said such a thing?  Did you hear her when she spoke to me that way?  What am I going to do about this girl’s parents?  There is no end to the engrossing conversation topics.  From the comfort of my mosquito-netted bed, I listen to the energetic rise and fall of their voices against the steady hum of the crickets outside.  After some time, Kakenya goes to sleep in the room next to Luna and I, Kishoyian to his house, and Yeiyo takes turns at the main house and her daughter’s.  The cool night air only barely reaches us through the wooden windows, but it is enough to make the covers more inviting and my sleep uninterrupted until pinholes of light stream down from the tin roof, and the roosters have decided it is time to get up.

Morning alarm clock

P.S. Check out my Flickr pictures for much more, from the farm and everywhere else I’ve been.  I’m always updating it with new images!

Just after arriving in Enoosaen, we visited Mr. Gideon Konchella, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Transmara District (Kakenya’s district).  MP’s in Kenya hold enormous power – and a good number use this influence to pad their wallets and hand out favors to friends.  Mr. Konchella is different.  On the day he was visiting the town near Kakenya’s home, he had a line of men from the area waiting for a moment with him.  There must have been one hundred or more of them, pouring out of the waiting room and onto the steps of the building.  But this is not unusual; what was quite different was the preference he showed for Kakenya.  We were among only a handful of women peppered amongst the crowd, and we waited for only a few minutes before being called into the MP’s office.  Mr. Konchella, his face warm and welcoming, was eager to help Kakenya.  He has already contribute $15,000 for the construction of her school’s dormitories; during this visit, he offered for his office to manage Kakenya’s funds when she mentioned some of her money had been misappropriated during the school’s construction.

MP Gideon Konchella advice to Kakenya

We seized on the opportunity to talk to a man in politics who actually advocates for girls education, and here’s what Mr. Konchella had to say:

Kate: Why do you think girls’ education is important in Maasai culture?

MP Mr. Konchella: It is so important because, first of all, girls have been left behind.  The process of FGM has been a terrible issue, also, because a girl has to go through this ritual before she is married.  And once the child has been schooled and then [goes through FGM], her mental attitude is now I am a woman and now I need to get married.

…The Maasai community has a very unique behavior – they do what they want to do because they’ve seen someone doing it.  If you have good cows – a good breed – everyone wants to have that breed because they will have more meat and more milk.  So when they see somebody who has a PhD, they say what?  What is a PhD?  So if she gets a job [pointing now to Kakenya], and she is articulate, then everyone wants their daughters to be like her.  So it is a very easy community to transform.  Other communities will be different.  This is a social community, where people live together…they know each other – they follow the one who is doing better.   So that is why I am encouraging education for girls – to transform the community.

K: So if women become educated, what changes will you see in Maasai culture – how will households be different, and families be different?

MP: Certain habits will not be there.  Like FGM or being careless about managing a home.  Cleanliness, health problems – and educating their own children – it is going to change…we have sent a lot of other people like her [points to Kakenya] to university in other parts of the world and out of that, they are working in the government and in the private sector… each one has put up a stone house, they have a car, and everybody says wow I want to be like them.

Luna: As a father, how did you educate your daughters – how did you encourage them to become more independent?

MP: First and foremost, I know the one who loves me even more than my wife is my daughter.  Because the daughter first and foremost thinks about the father – second, the mother [I look at Kakenya, confused.  She nods – it’s true, in Maasai, the father is who the daughter looks up to the most]…You don’t want a daughter dependent on a man who is a lousy fellow and doesn’t care because that will destroy their life.  It is very important for girls to be educated enough to decide what they want.  [If they are educated and] They get married, they can decide how many children they can have – when they are uneducated, they do not have that thing to decide.  Within 10 years, a girl married at the age of 13 or 14 – by the age of 25 she has 10 children.

K: What about the other side of the equation – if empowered women continue to be paired with men who do not take responsibility – do you see any need for actions to empower men in different ways to be more responsible towards the women they marry, and towards their families?

MP: The only way to empower a man is through education, – he has to decide his life for himself.  It’s very difficult to tell these fellows what to do.  When an educated girl reaches a level like her [points to Kakenya], you can’t mess with her – it is difficult to mess around with her.  That’s why our [educated] daughters end up marrying people from other communities – white people or other African[s] outside their clan.

Then, they take away all their knowledge to another community.  So it seems kind of pointless to educate her and then she goes away to America forever [Kakenya interjects, “I’m not going away to America forever!” laughing]. So there are good and bad about it.  Good because she’s better as a human being – a person – bad because the community will lose her in terms of support.
——-

Member of Parliament Mr. Konchella and Kakenya

The MP’s daughters are successful university students and professionals; it is clear he has prioritized their education regardless of gender.  And, in addition to his unusual and commendable support of girls education and women’s rights, I detected the line of patriarchy in some of his responses.  His notions of how a woman’s education level would affect her household – she would keep a cleaner house, have healthy, educated children; but where is the mention of her own life?  Her career choices?  He mentions only that she would be more discerning in choosing a husband and having a say in how many children she birthed.  In reference to Kakenya, he regards her acquisition of a car and a house in America as evidence of her success.  But I hesitate to draw much attention to these comments; Mr. Konchella is helping Kakenya, his own daughters, and many other girls who benefit from the schools he is helping to build.  Isn’t that enough?  [This is a real question]

I found the eloquent MP less prepared for my question regarding the responsibilities of men.  He seemed convinced that women’s choices could be transformed by education, but Maasai men – they are an immovable force.  And, in the end, he seemed to imply the lack of acceptance some men demonstrate towards women is not the issue.  And Mr. Konchella isn’t to be singled out for this: it is the predominant opinion of most men I’ve met in Kenya.  Mr. Konchella’s resolution to my question was that these educated women just marry men outside of their tribe; but is change going to continue in the community if women can only find men who respect their empowerment outside of the Maasai?

This is where I continue to get stuck when I see girls and women’s empowerment programs that are thriving.  I wonder, how are the boys doing, the husbands?  Are they recognizing women as equals, as capable of earning a living or making important family decisions?  The answer is complicated.  For instance, some of Kakenya’s most committed and trustworthy supporters in Kenya are men.  At the same time, the majority of Kenyan women I meet have struggled enormously with gender discrimination from the men at work and at home.  I hold to the notion that, without men’s willingness to accept women as competent peers, girls education will only afford a girl a better future if her father, brother, or pre-selected husband says so.

Gathering firewood

Kakenya got off the phone, shaking her head.  “Some bad news today.”  She stood up, then sat down again.  “One of the girls from my school – her teachers say she has been sitting in class with a blank stare, she jumps suddenly sometimes, closes her body up.  They think she’s been raped.”  How old?  I asked.  “Maybe nine.”  Who did it?  “They think it was a relative. “ What?  “Yeah,” Kakenya looks down, frowning.  “She was visiting her mother’s relatives in another area – they think it happened then.  Maybe an uncle.”  Kakenya looked up quickly, her braids flying back.  “I want to know that man so I can beat him myself.”

The next day we were in the yard, some chickens around our feet and freshly picked tomatoes piled nearby.  Kakenya started yelling to a voice behind the fence – come!  There was a yelp and then a girl, bright and running, appeared in the dirt drive.  “This is the girl – she lives just next door,” Kakenya said.  The girl leapt over stones, lithe and tall, her head shaved and her school uniform hanging loose on her frame as she moved without stopping into Kakenya, burying her face and laughter in her dress.  With both hands on the child’s head, Kakenya spoke softly, smiling down at the girl’s crown.  “How is school?  You’ve been working hard?”  The girl nodded with head tilted sideways, her eyes lit up.  Her embarrassment increased by the moment, so much attention, and she returned her face to Kakenya’s stomach.  “Have you been sick?”  Kakenya tapped the girl’s chin.  The girl shook her head.  “Because I hear you missed some school – you were not sick?”  The girl is quiet, her head movements less noticeable.  “We will talk, just you and me.  Come on Saturday?”  The girl looks up – yes, her head nods.

Young girls of Enoosaen

“I don’t know how to counsel a girl about this.”  Kakenya was sitting in the living room, elbows resting on her knees.  Since the girl’s visit, she had been noticeably distracted. “What if she cries?”  I think that would be good – I said.  That Saturday, during the purple in-between time of sunset and nightfall, the girl came back.  She was quieter.  The two of them retreated to one of the grassy hillocks near the edge of the farm.  Kakenya asked the girl to tell her what she remembered and, resting her body against Kakenya’s, she started slowly:

It was daytime.  I was alone in the house.  An older man, he touched me.  When I see men now, I think they are coming to get me.  They will do the same thing.  Sometimes when I am in class, I remember, and my body gets so tight.  I couldn’t see for two days [she went blind from the trauma].  I hear a ringing in my ears that lasts the whole day.

Kakenya could feel the girl’s heart beating rapidly, the muscles of her jaw, arms, thighs like taut rope.  She gave the girl a diary for writing.  “Whenever I am not here, write down what you want to say.”

I saw her the next day in school.  We came to visit the students, and play a few games.  I taught them a song, and watched the girl as she bumped shoulders with her classmates, eagerly mimicking my hand motions and tones just like them.  We repeated the melody, molding our hands into flowers, mountains – and in between the mountains and the hills, the girl dropped her hands, an almost imperceptible cloud covering her eyes.  She bowed her head, and passively moved her body out of the crush of students.

There is no healing ceremony for rape in the Maasai tribe, despite how often it occurs. What is present and too common is women and men’s reaction: “This is the girl’s fault”.  To hear rumor of this response sets fire to the disbelieving heart.  But to put your hands on the head of a nine year-old child, to see her eyes still remarkably bright, and to know that she is the one that mothers, brothers, fathers are blaming for a grown man’s brutality – this is enough to break even the observer.  I, like Kakenya, want to beat this man.  I want my anger to become a swarming force of violence that surrounds him in his home and tears apart any piece of him he thought was good.  And then I want her to know, this small girl, that she is perfect again.

School girls

Walking into town with Kakenya is an event.  Old women stop her every ten feet, touching her head to remind her that she is still the child and they are her elders.  “She is my mother,” Kakenya whispers – and after she has said this a dozen times, we come to learn that in this village, raising a child is indeed a communal effort.  Older men, carrying their smoothed sticks with metal club-heads (a symbol of power among the Maasai) reach for Kakenya’s braided crown: “taqwenya” they say and she replies, facing the ground, “igo.”  The children stand on the edges of the red path, giggling; some of the brave ones run up to Kakenya and remind her who they were last year, or the one before, when they were even smaller.  “It is you?  No!” Kakenya yells, laughing as soon as she realizes the adolescent is not the five year-old she remembers.

Kakenya and elders of Enoosaen

And there are some people she has to pass by, just to make it to the town center before the day is through.  “You see that man?  He was my fifth grade teacher.  And him?  Oooh, I dated him for awhile.  Yes!  I know, he looks older; the alcohol they drink here, it turns your skin so quickly.”  And so we move down the impromptu line of greeters, each one shouting a hello to the American woman who was once just another child in this town.  Lately we have been catching motorbikes from the farm instead of walking the 45 minutes to town, giving Kakenya a moment’s peace.  Nearly everyone Kakenya has ever sat next to in class, gone on a date with, sold milk alongside, greets her from the earthen curbs of Enoosaen – and not all of them want to welcome her home.

Meetings in town start late and run even later, and as the hours wear on Kakenya slumps further down in her chair.  There are board meetings for her school; gatherings with mentors and mentees of the youth mentoring program she is managing; hours spent with village elders who offer to quell tensions between Kakenya and members of the community who take advantage of her projects funds when she is away.  After meetings, some people lag behind, looking for a moment with Kakenya.  She sighs as she makes her way out of the room, always the last to leave – “did you see that man talking to me?  He wants me to send his girl to the US.  What does he think I can do?  I’m just a student, too.”  These interactions are the most exhausting for Kakenya – and they happen at the tailor’s, outside the store, while we are waiting for a car to go home.  Unlike appeals from strangers in Nairobi, these requests cannot simply be ignored; Kakenya is the child of a village that is collectively responsible for her education in the US.

Kakenya is determined to return to Kenya with her husband and son as soon as possible, and this means she will be visiting her hometown more regularly.  In short, her family is still here, her projects are here – she cannot push aside the requests of her extended Enoosaen family.  And when difficulties arise with board members and other participants in her projects, Kakenya cannot simply replace these challenging people;  they are her relatives, her neighbors – and, as they remind her, they are the ones who enabled her to start her life in the West.  With the groundbreaking of her school behind her and the students now sitting in classrooms, Kakenya is faced with the complications of a dream coming true, in a town that both hungers for opportunity and starves its own chances for a different future.  There is a saying in Asian cultures – “the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”  Kakenya, despite her talents and profound generosity, is not the moon – nor is she supposed to be.  She is doing her best to point out the true source of this community’s wealth (for one, it’s girls), and one too many minds clouded by desire and acquisition see Kakenya, fresh off the plane, as their single portal to a different life.

“All I want to do is see my girls.  Are we going to make it?  Oh look, it’s already past four.”  Kakenya is pointing from the window of the car at the school children, running in their uniforms along the roadside.  School has just let out and children are chasing skipping darting everywhere, unattended, on their long walks back home.  We pull into Kakenya’s hometown of Enoosaen and quickly leave the rows of shops for a dirt road leading into the hills.  The car lets us out and Kakenya is walking fast, her excitement building as we see the sign, “Kakenya’s Center for Excellence.”  And just as we have the driveway in our sights, a flood of girls comes around the fenced corner.  There are so many of them, their dresses different colors and patterns – some bright pink, others brown-and-white checks, a few with green collars peeping out from torn sweaters.  Their small bodies stretch over the earth like track sprinters, hugging the twists in the path as they close in on us.  From only a few feet away, their smiles are wild – huge and full of joyful screaming; Kakenya is waiting, her arms open, and all of the delicate frames in bright colors come rushing into her, hugging one another when they cannot reach Kakenya.  I became, in a matter of seconds, completely devoted to these girls.  Their goodness was so clear, whole; the world should belong to them.

Kakenya's welcome

It takes actually very little information to know someone.   It takes only, for example, the abandon in the girls’ sprint to know them.  It takes just the size and grip of the embrace that surrounded Kakenya to know Kakenya’s Center for Excellence.  And it took only one moment of looking at Kakenya, surrounded by the uncontained love of her students, to know that Kakenya is exactly the person you have always hoped for.

Kakenya's School of Excellence students

The Center was officially begun the groundbreaking ceremony last summer, and thirty-one girls started filling the classroom a year later in May, 2009.  The school is unique in many ways – offering the first primary boarding school in the district, leadership training that empowers the girls to speak and present themselves with confidence, and Kakenya hopes that soon there will be summer leadership camps that open up the opportunities of the school’s leadership training to other girls in the region who are not boarders.  Kakenya also wants to plant corn and other vegetables on school property so the students can have their own supply of food (and training in agricultural practices).

The girls at the Center are between eight and fourteen, and many of them are among the most underprivileged girls in Transmara district.  Many of them are at risk of early marriage, female genital mutilation, and a life governed by poverty (like many of their parents).  Presently, the school is still under construction, and the girls are going to class in a nearby building made of aluminum sheeting.  The dormitories have not yet been built, but the district’s Member of Parliament has contributed the funds for its construction.  Many of the girls walk over two hours to school each day, alone, on isolated roads in the hills.  It goes without saying that the completion of the dormitories will make the lives of the girls immeasurably more safe and stable.

Impromptu assembly

The girls seem unaffected by their temporary learning center, but Kakenya is pained to see the two-story school incomplete and her students without the amenities she anticipated.  “You see their outfits?  All of the holes in the dresses and the sweaters?  We have got to get their uniforms before I leave!”  We are at an assembly in the open field with the scaffolded school building.  The girls are singing songs of welcome, answering Kakenya’s questions in unison “Are you studying hard?”  “Yes!” “Are you treating each other like sisters?”  “Yes!” The two teachers, Madame Lydia and Madame Margaret, stand proudly behind their pupils, encouraging some girls to speak up and others to straighten their bodies instead of slumping away in shyness.  There is nothing sleepy or sedentary about these children, which is more than I can say from my days working in America’s public school system.  They are poised for instruction, eager to be – of all things – polite; for this American, the brightness of these attentive faces is the most miraculous outcome of Kakenya’s Center.

Kakenya's children

And, unlike Kakenya, these girls have a role model for another kind of future – Kakenya herself.  “If I had a woman to look up to when I was a girl,” Kakenya says, “I wouldn’t have had to struggle so much by myself.”  Kakenya is an ideal model: tall and graceful, respectful of her community elders and boldly insistent on adjusting cultural norms that subjugate girls and women.  The students affectionately address Kakenya as their mother, and all of them are clearly her children.  “Look at my girls,” Kakenya leans over and whispers.  “Aren’t they perfect?” And if only you were here to see, you would agree: they are, unequivocally, perfect.

A different future

Postscript: I am writing to you from the nurses station at Enoosaen’s maternity ward.  This is one of the only places in town where electricity, when you’re lucky, is available.  When I come out of the room periodically and look across the hall, there is often a woman who is just about to, is in the process of, or has just gone through having a baby.  Today when I come out, I see a young girl on the table.  There is only a thin sheet for a doorway, and I catch a glimpse of her face laying sideways on the torn mat of the table.  My friend Lillian, the attending clinician, comes out from behind the curtain.  “She is just about to give birth.”  I nod, still craning my neck around to the open door.  “Do you know?  She is fourteen and she has already been cut (had female genital mutilation).  She is unmarried, so any man that marries her from here will treat her like” and Lillian flicks her hand to the ground, “nothing.  Now,” she looks hard at me, and I bring my eyes back from the doorway to meet hers.  “her education is over.”  She invites me to watch the birth, and I quickly refuse.  As I am typing this to you, the cries of the newborn are audible through the door.  Another girl’s future has been decided.