In Her Own Words

Students Tell Their Stories of Courage and Resilience

Salula

Sylvia Salula Naingisa was rescued at the age of eight in the midst of a forced marriage ceremony to a 46-year-old man. The Tasaru Rescue Centre was her sanctuary until she graduated high school in 2017. Since then she has been a S.H.E. student, completing her Certificate and Diploma levels in Social Work, and currently studying for her Degree. Here is some of her story in her own words.

When I was a little girl, seven or eight years old, I was determined to go to school. I loved learning. But my family, my culture, does not allow females to be educated. I could only watch the guys pass next to our home on their way to school. I would go out and wave at the boys in the morning, then, when they came back from school, I could go back and wave at them again. I could only admire them. Just look and admire. I didn’t know what to do.

When Salula was eight years old, she underwent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in preparation to be married to a 46-year-old man.

The customs of FGM and Early Child Marriage are still practiced by many Christian Maasai, although they are against the law.

For you to get married, you have to be prepared by your mother. So when I was eight years old, after I was done FGM, my mother started telling me to make the beads because you need to be beautiful when you are married. But I had this attitude: I was telling my mother, “I’m not going anywhere because I’m going to school.”

And my mother said to me, “How will you say that to your dad? He will not allow you to go to school.”

I told her, “I don’t know, but I’m going to be the first girl to go to school in this family, and I’m not going to stop. I don’t know where the help will come from, but I’m going to school.” 

But everyone was telling me, “Go take care of your husband.” 

I told my mother, “I’m not going to stay there!” 

My mother was crying. She was worried about me. She thought I was going to kill myself if I went with that man. His place was near a big river. So my mother was scared that I might go and throw myself in the river. Which I was planning to do!

Now it was time to leave. I think it was almost 8 AM. When I was walking by where the cows stay, I saw a police car. Then I was so confident! I knew my dream was coming true! As I went toward the man who was going to marry me, the police came and interrupted the ceremony. They directed me to the Tasaru Rescue Centre vehicle. My father was arrested. And so was the man. They were taken to jail.

From “The World” by Salula Naingisa

Our fathers are selling their innocent girls.

Sell?

Yes, sell. And they sell them for cheap prices.

Imagine me being sold for a blanket worth 1,500 shillings or less.

Three cows, four goats, and some kilos of sugar!

That’s a crime that our fathers are making.

The police took me to the rescue center. There I was welcomed and given everything that I needed. I was undressed from the beads and the stinking dress made of skins that you wear in a wedding, and I remember one of the secretaries washing me. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t speak their language, Swahili, because I only knew the language of my tribe, Maa. But I was happy. I knew my dream had come true and I was going to school!

For the next ten years, Salula’s home was the Tasaru Rescue Center. The girls are sent to boarding school, and all their needs are provided for.

In 2017, after Salula graduated high school, she was reconciled with her parents in a huge ceremony attended by hundreds of villagers.

After college, I would like to go back home to Maasai Mara to mentor other girls. Because I can express myself better than they can. And I have good mentorship skills.

Salula graduated from Kenya Institute of Community Development and Social Work at the top of her class with both a Certificate and a Diploma. Here are a few words from her graduation speech:

Today is my great day. 

This is the day that I show the world that I did it. 

My dream was to go to school, but my community, my dad, and other people never believed in girls’ education.

But now they do. 

Because of me.

Education is power. It has given me power. 

And it has given me wings to fly.

Salula is currently studying for a double Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work and Psychology, the next step in her commitment to transforming the lives of women and girls in her community, her tribe and the world.

Regina

This photo is a portrait of a dream fulfilled. Regina, in cap and gown, has just graduated with a degree in Early Childhood Education. She is surrounded by the women of her village and two of her S.H.E. “sisters” in a traditional Maasai dance of celebration. The women who flank her range in age from late teens to well into their eighties.There is no doubt that Regina and her S.H.E. “sisters” are the only women in the photo to have been educated beyond primary school.

What you can’t see in the photo is that with the photographer are seven S.H.E. funders, among them Maureen, who, with a group of her friends, has been supporting Regina’s college studies for the last three years. Maureen and Regina have been sharing words, photos, and poems through texts, but this is their first meeting. Behind the visitors are about 100 villagers who have gathered to celebrate this “daughter” with speeches, ceremony, song and dance. 

One after another three preachers and the local Maasai Chief proclaim that because of Regina, girls will no longer be cut in this village. Because of Regina, girls will be sent to school. Because, the Chief proudly tells us, Regina has not only managed to graduate and get a job, she has fulfilled every Maasai daughter’s dream: she has earned enough money to build her mother a good house. This, he says, has the greatest impact of all, an undeniable reminder to the community of the benefit of educating girls.

In fact, when I last visited Regina’s mother, she was living in a traditional Maasai manyatta, a mud and dung house with a grass or iron roof. Today, before the ceremony, Regina proudly leads us to the large home, made of iron sheeting, with a big tank outside for gathering water so that her mother no longer has to walk for hours to a muddy river so her family can survive.

I met Regina in 2007, when she was fifteen years old, a recent arrival at the Tasaru Rescue Centre. Her elder brother had recognized his sister’s longing for education and a different life than her sisters and the generations of women before her. As the time of her cutting ceremony drew near, he knew that she had to flee the home and family she loved. He heard there was an “Alternative Rite of Passage” being given in a nearby city by Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai visionary and politician who had spent her life educating her tribe about the dangers of FGM. The brother brought young Regina to the gathering and gave her into the hands of Mama Agnes, as the girls call her.

Regina was one of the first S.H.E. students, entering her diploma program in 2011. In Kenya, college is often divided into increments: Certificate, Diploma, Degree, Masters and so forth. The duration of each program depends on the school. Regina was supported in her Diploma program by the Bostian family. The three teenage daughters in the family considered Regina their sister. They skyped with her regularly and sent emails and texts. When I went to Kenya, I carried personal gifts from each of them -- fuzzy socks, handmade cards and a framed picture of the family. Regina wept as she pointed out each family member by name to me. When I returned home to the Bostians I carried a beaded gourd and traditional beaded necklaces - one for each of the daughters -from Regina.

Regina graduated from her Diploma course and immediately got a job teaching preschool. Though the pay was minimal, Regina was able to not only make an independent life for herself and her toddler son, but also save enough to build her mum a house.

Two years later, Regina applied to the S.H.E. College Fund to enter a Degree program. This time she joined an intensive program designed for those already working as teachers. She excelled in her schoolwork and made a deep and enduring connection with her new funder, Maureen.

Regina is one of the 48 students who has received funding from the S.H.E. Fund. Yet the giving and receiving in both directions has been far beyond any dollar amount. The trans-planetary, cross-cultural connection between Regina and those of us who have loved and supported her from afar has been life changing for all of us. To discover (again and again) that what matters most to all of us, no matter how different our lives are on the surface, is love, truth and connection is a constant source of faith and wonder in these tumultuous times.

Jacinta, Executive Director, S.H.E. Fund Kenya

Yesterday, Jacinta, Executive Director of the S.H.E. Fund Kenya, took Mercy to enroll in Nursing College, a two-day journey which included buying books and nursing uniforms on the way, and standing in line for 12 hours to get housing and pay tuition. Earlier that week, she sent funds to all S.H.E. students for their next semester in school. On Friday she will go with Linah to Teachers college, then take Joy shopping for all her needs and deliver her to a different Nursing program in a distant part of Kenya.

I had no idea when I received a desperate email from Jacinta in 2010 asking me to find the money for her college education, that she would be the inspiration for the S.H.E. College Fund. I also had no idea that it had been her mother, two years earlier, who had taken me aside in a remote village in the Great Rift Valley, to beg me to help her daughter who was living at the Safe House. The eldest of her 10 children, this daughter was her only hope. At the time Jacinta’s mother was living in a mud hut with her other children, working single-handedly as a farmer to feed her family. It was only several years later, well after I was engaged in funding Jacinta, that I realized the connection between them and that by some mystery and grace I was fulfilling a request I had no idea I could respond to!

At the time I’d never raised funds for anything but my own rent. I had no idea if I could do it, but thanks to the generosity of my friends, we managed to put Jacinta through college, then university. In 2015, she graduated with a 4-year degree in business. She was the only Maasai woman in her graduating class of hundreds.

Today, Jacinta runs the S.H.E. Fund in Kenya. She is the “big sister” to all the girls to whom the fund grants scholarships, helping them find the right college, making sure all their needs are met, checking up on them by phone, visiting them at school, helping them buy computers or find housing, and communicating with their professors. She is also part way through achieving her license as a CPA. The S.H.E. College Fund is changing the world one visionary student at a time. Jscinta was the first.

Mercy and Agnes

Mercy and Agnes are sisters who will be entering college in 2019 through the S.H.E. Fund program. This is their story, as told by Mercy, about how they arrived at the Tasaru Rescue Centre.

I came to Tasaru when I was 12 years old. I had been living with my parents and my six sisters in a manyatta with one entry and two beds. I and my younger sisters were looking after the young ones of the cows, carrying water and firewood, and helping with the children.

One Sunday our parents came and informed me and my younger sister Agnes that Wednesday would be our circumcision (FGM) day, and we should get prepared! We said, “We are still young! We don’t want to go through this!” But they told us we were grown up now, and we had to go through “the Cut”.

Our parents bought food for a big ceremony, like a party.  Family were arriving from all over. On Tuesday, the Pastor told our parents that we should not be cut. But they would not listen. So he called the Chief of the village, who was against FGM. He told us to go to the Chief’s house that night.

When it was dark, we left, one after the other, and went different ways so they would not find us. But back at home they realized we’d gone and everyone began looking.  Finally they found us in the Chief’s home. They threatened his life, and he gave us back.

Since I was the eldest, they thought it was my fault. They really beat me with anything they could find. It was terrible!

I told my sister, “Since you are the one they trust, you must convince them that we will not try to run away again.”

They woke us at six the next morning, so we could be cut before the sun rose. They sent us outside with few clothes so the cold would get into our bodies, so that we would be stiff for the cut and it would not bleed so much.

There is a belief that if you are cut before the cows are milked, you will bleed to death. At that time, we only had three cows. We knew we would be cut as soon as the third cow was milked.

We watched them milk two cows and start on the third.

Half way through the milking, a police car arrived. I was outside, still accumulating the cold. I ran for the car. But the police had to go for my sister, because the family would not let her go.

They took us to a police lady’s house. We were so scared. We didn’t know her. We didn’t trust her. But she took care of us. We remained inside her house for three days, hiding, so our family would not find us.

Finally the police took us to the Safe House where we were welcomed by all the girls. They were so kind! They gave us clothes and showers. We really felt so safe and happy!

Mercy and her sister Agnes lived at the Safe House for seven years, until they graduated high school in December, 2018. That month, Kim traveled to their family home to meet their parents and to ask for their blessing on their daughters’ college education. Gratitude flowed in all directions through the tears they shared.

Nelly

Nelly Sopiato is a miracle. Currently in college to become a teacher, she has been funded by the S.H.E. College Fund since 2015. This is a photo of her as a student-teacher with her class just after they won first place in Mathematics in a competition against teams from all over Kenya. Can’t you feel her joy and love for the students?

Nelly’s journey to that moment was a duet of misery and miracle. Born to a very poor family, her parents both died when she was five. Although a friend of the family promised to support her as his daughter, soon he took her to an orphanage in Nairobi where she was forced, with the other children, to carry heavy stones at a construction site. She writes, “I grew thinner and thinner. I suffered there for almost a year.” One day, miraculously, a friend of her parents happened to recognize her. He brought her home to her village, where eventually she found a sponsor to pay her school fees.

In Nelly’s village the Maasai still practice Female Genital Mutilation. Usually the ceremony takes place when a girl is between 8 and 16. When Nelly graduated 8th grade, she knew she had to run away, or she would be “cut” and married off. It was then she fled to the Tasaru Rescue Centre. Tasaru sends all the girls who live there to school until they graduate from High School (Form Four).

At the end of Secondary School all Kenyan students are given a standardized test. Their grade on that test determines their future. Although Nelly was a diligent student and worked hard in all her classes, she did not do well on the exam. No longer protected by the law, Nelly couldn’t stay at the Safe House. And when she went back to the village where her remaining relatives lived, she was excommunicated from the family because she refused to be sold off into marriage. She writes, “That was where I faced the hardest life and I almost committed suicide. I lost hope completely. Only God knows what I passed through. I had only the clothes on my back and I wore them for a week without washing. Often I would go for days without
eating.”

There are many unsung saints that make our work at S.H.E. possible. One of them is Emily Ketter, the secretary at the Safe House. Emily knows every girl at the Safe House intimately. She knows her grades. She knows her attitudes. But she also knows each girl’s heart, and her strengths as a person. Emily wrote to us on behalf of Nelly and some of the other girls who were graduating High School. Because of Emily’s recommendation, we were able to find Nelly funding to go to college in spite of her poor test results.

Now Nelly is thriving in her Diploma program at the University of Eldoret in Nakuru, Kenya. She is majoring in Early Childhood Development and Education. She went from a D+ GPA in Secondary School to receiving B’s in her college courses. Some of her classes are: Child Growth and Development, Children with Special Needs, Child Psychology and Health and Nutrition. Her first internship as a student teacher was so successful (see those photos!) that the head teacher of the school promised her a job when she graduates.

Nelly speaks and writes English well now. She also knows Swahili and her native Maasai tongue. When she’s not studying, Nelly enjoys playing soccer, learning how to use her new computer, creating beadwork, going to church, dancing and singing. She has made a recording of Gospel songs.

Nelly wrote in a recent e-mail, “I really appreciate you people for the love and care you have for me. I am thankful and happy to know that Judy [one of her funders] has been behind my success all the way through her support. Judy, all my days have been full of joy and laughter since you and your friends started supporting me.”

Nelly has a unique resilience and drive for life. Through the donations of her group of funders, the S.H.E. College Fund has been able to give Nelly the opportunity to transform her life and become a model for other girls in her culture. Now she is becoming a proud teacher and making us proud, too. We all can learn from Nelly.