Letter from Kenya
In a Kenyan school, Masai child brides find new world

Girls who flee find a welcome

By Declan Walsh, Globe Staff, 12/10/2000

AJIADO, Kenya - Three years ago, Josephine was due to get married. It
didn't matter that she was 13 years old, or that her future husband was in
his 40s and had two other wives. She had been circumcised, and she was
a woman, her father noted. So he negotiated a price for marrying her off:
six cows, $130 and some bed coverings.

Under Masai custom he was perfectly within his rights. But his daughter
dreaded the prospect of life with a stranger. ''I didn't even know that man;
he was so old,'' Josephine said. ''Then I heard there was a safe place for
girls like us. I wanted to escape.''

A few weeks later, Josephine's chance came. On market day in the nearby
town of Kajiado, she waited until her older brother turned his back, then
she ran. A mile and a half outside town, the breathless child came to a set
of rusty schoolgates, turned, and sprinted up the long driveway and inside
a girls' boarding school.

It has been her home since.

Josephine, now 16, has swapped the beads and blood-red shawl of her
tribe for a frayed green uniform with gaping holes. She lives in a dormitory
with other girls from similar circumstances.

''One day I will become a nurse,'' she said, ''and maybe I can help save
others, too.''

Many other young Masai girls will face similar traumas over the coming
month or so. In annual year-end celebrations, children as young as 9 will
be circumcised, and then their fathers will try to marry them off in
exchange for cattle and money.

But for six years Kajiado AIC, the boarding school 55 miles south of
Nairobi in Masai country, has been housing scores of child brides who had
escaped families. Some had been spirited away by teachers, tribal chiefs,
and police officers. Others, like Josephine, made their own way. At the
school they get a bed, a uniform and a chance to make their choices.

''It's inhuman to give any young child away at such a young age,'' said the
school chairman, Daniel ole Sapayia. ''Some of our traditions are very rich,
but this one is all about greed.''

Some of the girls are broken when they arrive. One 9-year-old girl was
''married to a man in his 30s and forced to sleep with him. The poor girl
was scared,'' said a teacher, Phyllis Leinah. The school sent her to a
gynecologist for treatment.

Sometimes furious parents stomp into the school looking for their children.
Then they come up against the formidable - and unyielding - school
headmistress, Priscilla Nangurai.

Nangurai said her pupils are on the front line of the Masai struggle to
modernize. ''These girls are fighting their own culture,'' she said. ''We
don't have a tradition of education in our tribe. Instead, parents see their
daughters as a source of wealth.''

Nangurai acknowledged that the school's plan, removing custody of a child
from her parents without their consent, is of questionable legal standing,
but she added that police chiefs and education officials have given their
approval and have even assisted. Thirty-four girls found refuge at the school
in the past school term.

Upon arrival, the child brides are often disoriented by the separation from
their families, but seem to sense that it's for the best. ''If I was married
now I would have many children and not enough food,'' said Agnes Nailantei, a
14-year-old who tiptoed past her sleeping father two years ago as she fled
to Kajiado.

The school's attempt to give a new home to the escaped girls met with
fierce resistance at the start.

''If I stood up to speak at a meeting, the men would turn their backs in
protest,'' said Nangurai. Since then, key community figures, such as
Kajiado's senior chief, John ole Sappur, have come on board. ''Everyone
else is getting educated,'' he said. ''We Masai fear we will be left
behind.''

But many other men insist that Nangurai and her staff should mind their
own business. ''What is happening is wrong. The girls' fathers are right;
their mothers will only misdirect them,'' said Nchue ole Matau, a father of
four.

Turning their backs on families, at a traditional early mothering time,
comes at a price, he warned. ''Later in life these children will be nobodies
- adults without a past or a future,'' he said.

Masai mothers often secretly encourage daughters to escape. In a bush
village known as Mile 46, Konina Tarayia explained how her husband had
married off their first three daughters, but drank most of the money the
family received in the contract. ''Sometimes,'' she said, ''he only brought
home a kilo of sugar.''

So when 10-year-old Evelyne was promised to a 50-year-old, she was
spirited off by her mother to Kajiado.

''I wanted a better life for Evelyne than I had,'' Tarayia said in her house,
a low-roofed, dark hut fashioned from sticks, mud, and cow dung. ''Now I am
very happy she is in school. Maybe she will get a good job and her father
will realize he has thrown away the lives of his other girls.''

Among the 600 or more girls sheltered by Kajiado AIC are those fleeing
circumcision. As always in Kenya, money is a problem. Abandoned by
their parents, the children depend entirely on well-wishers for their $215 in
annual fees, not to mention uniforms and books. ''I'm always keeping my
fingers crossed someone will come,'' Nangurai said. ''We continue by the
grace of God.''

As the school broke in late November for the end of term, the school's
deputy head, Nicolas Muniu, had a special word for the older girls.

''These are long holidays ahead,'' Muniu said. ''Take care of yourselves. If
you want to get married - fine. But if you don't, remember that we are here
for you.''

This story ran on page 42 of the Boston Globe on 12/10/2000.