Cost of Traditions

Every community, tribe ,society has a significantly distinctive  function from the rest ,a function that when you see it or hear about it, you simply have an idea of what that group is.Welcome to Africa and Kenya in particular, a beautiful land with a composition of upto 42 different communities, what a blessing! With so many dishes across, different modes of dressing, different songs, different dialects and so many more. We call it diversity of culture.

Well a sack cannot carry only good potatoes, in relation to this despite the fact that we have good practices among our diverse communities practices like male circumcision which reduces the chances of contracting HIV/AIDS among men, Bull fighting which creates harmony and unity among the Luhyas tribe just to mention a few, we also have destructive practices in our cultures. Practices like Female Genital Mutilation popularly known as FGM, early and/or forced marriages.

FGM being a practiced culture among the Maasai ,the Somali and some other tribes has proved to have adverse effects to the victim than its benefits.FGM can lead to excess bleeding which eventually can cause death and also causes difficulty during giving birth.Early and/or forced marriages among communities like the Maasai and Somali has contributed a lot to illiteracy among the girls and women in the respective societies.

It is very painful, yes very painful to see girls of 10years old and below being forced to undergo FGM all in the name of traditions claiming that they are reducing the sexual feeling of the girls. These girls are usually still in primary schools therefore these automatically means that after the practice the girls will be forced to drop out of school and therefore get married at a very young age.

DWB Foundation under its program Community Mentorship Camp(CMC) reached out to girls’ rescue center, AIC Kajiado. African Inland Church(AIC) in Kajiado stepped in to rescue the girls who are usually lucky to escape from home and avoid the vice.

This centre holds and has been a home to many girls who have been rescued from FGM, early marriages and sexual harassment from their parents and guardians. Girls who had sad narrations about their lives in their young ages, forced to flee and seek safer place for living. They could still afford to smile even in the darkest hours of their lives.The AIC church and DWB foundation have partnered in order to see both the girls mentored and empowered and awareness is created among their parents on both the short and long term effects of  FGM and early marriage.

Naserian who is in standard standard six narrated how she narrowly escaped the practice. ' On that fateful day Naserian saw village elders especially old women had a meeting in their home compound, when it reached at the midnight her in-law, the wife to his brother told her that ‘wanataka kukufanyia kitu mbaya utoroke' (They are going to do something bad to you so you should run away) She sneaked stealthily from home without being noticed and slept in a bush which seemingly was a safer place than meeting people who wanted to marry her off. She was rescued in the morning and that how she narrowly escaped the barbaric practice and she was now happy that she will finish her education and fulfil her dreams.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb7aE8hQhrg&t=1s

In addition, Mrs. Caroline Ncharo an international justice award winner, advocate for girls against FGM and early marriages and a survivor of FGM and the founder of Tawanga organisation and Kajiado chief narrates how the traditions has caused pain in her life. She is a maasai woman who  did not escape from the hook of FGM.She is a courageous and confident woman and an activist for the rights of a maasai girl. She protects the girls from Undergoing FGM, early marriages and rape and his actions foster her alot including being denied opportunity to be chief in Kajiado. Because of her good work of protecting girls from the barbaric cultural practices in the society she was honoured internationally and awarded, it is from this that the county of kajiado saw that the woman was honoured internationally and at the local she was not honoured and she was given the position of chief automatically without her application. Caroline is now using her powers and indeed she has full powers to protect the girls.

She narrates this ”different men were brought home to marry me but I refused until the 3^rd which I accepted because he was literate and a policeman.However when we married ,the marriage turned to hell with physical violence from the so-called husband,I had to escape and save my life.Having gone through FGM I experienced a lot of difficulties during giving birth.I have endured a lot just to rescue these girls from these painful traditions ,accidents,rejection  from my society and many more but I will settle for less to ensure no girl goes through what I went through.”

We carried out various activities with the girls, and they proved to be intelligent, wise ,confident, determined and so much outgoing.  One of the activities was group discussions on topics like why suicide, peer pressure, kindness and giving back to the society, hook up culture, drugs and alcohol, anxiety, self –esteem and girl child empowerment. Through these topics, the girls were able to learn and express their views and thoughts on various issues.

Let me say Kenya has talents, Kajiado got talents! Kudos to these amazing young girls whom despite of  prevailing situation, they are living against the odds, with their amazing talents and performances   as dancers, models, singers, actors, poets they moved the audience. This was impressive, Kajiado is a rich land of abilities to be explored.

We also held a debate on girl child and boy child empowerment, who should be empowered? The responses from the girls were thought-provoking. A question was posed by one of the girls “if we only focus on empowering girls, who will marry these girls?” Food for thought dear reader. This is how smart these young girls are.Work with no play makes jack a dull boy, well then we didn’t want to be dull Jack and Jackie, we also had games, which was an opportunity for the girls and the team to entangle their minds from the long day’s work.

Most of these traditional practices usually persist because of lack of knowledge, awareness and empowerment of the community members, both the recipients and perpetrators of the vice. This is why Do It with Boldness (DWB) foundation came into being to impact knowledge, awareness and empower the members of the communities on the dangers of some of the cultural practices such as FGM, rape and early marriages so that the communities can be knowledgeable and aware of the destructive cultures and discard them and adopt new ones so that sustainable communities can be attained.

Be part of the change that you want to see in your society. Join us in our next escapade at Kajiado.

Kajiado, we are coming back #AICseason 2.Don't miss out.