My first teaching job straight out of college was on the other side of the mountain from my village, the second-highest mountain in Africa after Kilimanjaro. Mount Kenya separates two ethnic communities. The Samburu on the leeward side and the Kikuyu on the windward side. The land of the Samburu is endless savanna perfect for pastoralism. The windward side is characterized by heavy rainfall, dense forests and high-quality agricultural land; we are tillers of the soil.
Children on my side of the mountain grow up hearing wild tales of the people who live on the other side. How they only eat cattle blood mixed with milk, how a young man has to kill a lion to prove himself a true warrior and the like. How they move often with their livestock chasing after the rains. I found it quite fascinating. That's why when the one-year contract teaching job arose in Samburu land, I accepted it quickly. I believe experiencing another people's culture is the highest honor there is.
The Samburu people are a proud people who have clung to their culture despite "civilization" happening around them. They are also a very handsome people. The Samburu women in particular are quite graceful and charming.
Most of the teachers in the school, and in the entire Samburu land, came from the other side of the mountain since literacy levels are very low in Samburu land. Eighty-three percent of the Samburu cannot read or write while literacy levels are high at about ninety-two percent among the Kikuyu.
The year was 2015, and I quickly noticed how underdeveloped the area was as compared to the other side of the mountain where I'm from. They were decades behind. All the classrooms in the school were made of mud. A single room made of iron sheets served as the administration block and office for the teachers. We all had to cram into it. There wasn't a library nor a laboratory and the latrine floors were a sea of urine. There was no lunch program. Yet the little children would sometimes bring teachers milk in old soft-drink bottles which I found quite touching.
One of the girls in the school was fifteen-year-old Nashipai who was in her second last year of primary school. She was a brilliant student. I taught her class English. She wrote poems and short stories which she often handed to me for critique. Her literary deftness was many years ahead. I still remember the last poem I received from her, about the never-ending tribal crashes in Kenya. A lovely, sad, melodious poem. I still have it to this day and hold it dear. She handed it to me on a Friday; on Monday she didn't show up to school.
I asked her classmates about her absence but they were tight-lipped. Ntoye, a close friend of Nashipai, came to me secretly during break.
"Nashipai got married on Saturday," she said. "To an old man as his fourth wife," she said, shaking her head. "She ran away on Friday night but her elder brothers caught up with her and beat her badly."
I was a few weeks in the school and quite naïve about Samburu culture. I and two other teachers marched to the chief's office not very far from the school. If it was any other girl, maybe they could have accepted it, they said. But Nashipai seemed like a girl who could light up the world someday. There's a law against child marriage, but it is rarely implemented. I believe the law only exists as one of the conditions to get funding from the West.
The chief listened keenly.
"But if the ceremony has already taken place and the ceremonial bull slaughtered and eaten, then there's nothing I can do," he said.
"She's fifteen, chief," we begged, "and one of our best students."
"She's someone's wife now," he said with finality.
We cycled to the nearest police post eight miles away. The police weren't of any help either. They said they would look into it, but we knew they were going to do diddly-squat. We trudged back to school defeated. The teachers who had been in the school a long time laughed at our ignorance. They had seen it many times before, even with girls as young as eight.
Speaking to the girls in school I realized how tradition meant everything to them. It was who they were. They couldn't imagine not marrying a man picked for them by their fathers. Nor not getting circumcised, which has to be done before marriage.
The next day in the afternoon I walked to Nashipai's home alone, secretly directed by Ntoye. The other teachers didn't want to get involved anymore. There were several manyattas encircling a huge thorn enclosure where the animals slept, for safety from wild animals. Nashipai's mother was home with a few small children. The men were out herding.
"It wasn't my will," she said. "It was the men who arranged it and besides, her husband paid double the usual number of cattle for her bride price."
I remember talking about her daughter's potential and capabilities, and that she could get many more cattle if Nashipai could continue with her studies. She could make something of herself which would be much more beneficial than being an old man's fourth wife, but I was basically flogging a dead horse. We ended our conversation on a sore note. She reported my meddling to the chief who came to the school the next day huffing and puffing and basically said teachers from other tribes should mind their business.
I later came to learn that the chief himself had been a guest in Nashipai's wedding ceremony. Actually, it was an open secret that his second wife was harboring a girl who was about seven years at the time. The girl was not schooling and had been "booked" by her eldest son. The girl was living with her and the woman would teach her all the ways of being a good wife. When she grew a little older, the son would then officially marry her. It is a common practice especially with girls from extremely humble backgrounds whose families find it difficult to take care of them. Ntoye, Nashipai's friend, was married off a month later.
The next time the chief came to our school was a few weeks later, to settle a major scandal. A young male teacher had eloped with a Samburu girl to the other side of the mountain. She often grazed her father's goats near the school and had been betrothed since she was a little child. It is big taboo that she run away with another man. The aggrieved man whose bride had been "stolen," his and her family members, their villages and many warriors of the tribe known as Morans stormed the school. They were singing war songs, brandishing weapons and baying for blood. The headmaster tried to calm them down. I learnt the girl was about twenty years old, and when I asked the aggrieved man why he hadn't married her yet, he tearfully said he was still amassing the bride price. I felt sorry for him.
I remember all this happened during the rainy season. Half the students had to cross a dangerous bridge to get to school. The bridge was made of two long tree trunks placed side by side. The brown water had flooded the banks and the children had to wade through, sometimes up to waist high to reach the bridge. There the water was racing and roaring at terrifying speed an inch or two underneath the trunks. One drunkard did lose his life trying to navigate the bridge. We would advise the students to stay at home at such times, sometimes up to two months before the waters subsided.
I wondered who or what was to blame for the state of schools and infrastructure in Samburu land. Two presidents have come from my side of the mountain. None from the pastoral communities. In a nation notorious for not sharing government resources equally. Maybe that's one of the reasons. I visited the school ten years later and sadly not much had changed.
I met the teacher three years later. By then the couple had been blessed with a little boy. He, accompanied by elders from his village, took some cattle as bride price and as a fine to appease his wife's people. The Samburu girl seemed to be assimilating quite well to life on the other side of the mountain. She even spoke our language quite fluently.
Intermarriages and illicit affairs between the two tribes on both sides of the mountain have increased in recent times. We see each other as exotic. Samburu women love Kikuyu men because they seem less tyrannical since Kikuyu men are more educated. Kikuyu men on the other hand love Samburu women because of their submissiveness and slenderness. Kikuyu women love Samburu men because they say they are more masculine and have bigger appendages. The Samburu men on the other hand love Kikuyu women because they have a lighter skin tone and are believed to be better in bed than their women as they are not circumcised.
Female circumcision, or Female Genital Mutilation as some human rights groups call it, is practiced widely in East Africa. In one form or another, thirty of the forty-three ethnic groups in Kenya practice it. The practice was outlawed in 2012 but the law is rarely enforced. One in five Kenyan women is circumcised, nine in ten women from pastoral communities such as the Samburu, Somali and Maasai are. It involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, sometimes only the nicking of the clitoris.
Female circumcision is a rite of passage from childhood to womanhood. An uncut woman will forever be seen as a child no matter her age. The cut is also a prerequisite for marriage. It is done without anesthesia. The girl is held down in a hut by elderly women and one of them cuts her with an unsterilized blade. An outcast woman who used to hand wash my clothes by the river was circumcised at around twelve, and the wound got gravely infected which rendered her infertile. Married at thirteen and kicked out at eighteen by her husband's family for her bareness, she now did odd jobs to make ends meet.
Female circumcision is mostly carried out to control female sexuality. A cut woman is believed she will never stray out of her marriage since she is sexually inhibited, but that is not always the case. In my illicit affairs with Samburu women, I have noticed it is definitely different for women who are not circumcised. The Samburu need more time getting started and rarely reach their destination. For the typical man however, it doesn't really matter. It gets the job done.
I toured neighboring Uganda and I found it quite fascinating that the Baganda community does the opposite of female circumcision. Instead of cutting off the lady parts, they elongate them, specifically the labia minora. This practice is called okukyalira ensiko (visiting the bush). It is also a rite of passage into womanhood. It is done before the girl reaches puberty since her body is more malleable. The paternal aunt guides her on how it should be done. The girl rubs local herbs that soften the skin, and performs manual stretching. She will pull until the labia is the length of the middle finger. The whole process takes a few months. The elongated labia are believed to offer more stimulation during intercourse for the husband, "more warmth and sweetness" as one woman put it to me. Ugandan men find these women quite desirable.
I recently visited an old friend I went to college with in next-door Tanzania. It was difficult tracking him down with no cellular network and his lifestyle of following the rains. Meitamei (not his real name) is Maasai and his community has a very similar culture to the Samburu, even sharing a common language, Maa. He is one of the few Maasai boys that has made it to higher learning.
Meitamei has hundreds of cattle and goats. He wears a comfy red shuka and sandals made from old car tires that are handy in the thorny terrain. He walks around with a spear and a short sword by his waist to protect his animals from marauding lions and hyenas. Meitamei has three wives despite being in his early thirties.
He is an accountant by trade but wants nothing to do with town life. I envy him. He lives in the expansive wild, with his devoted gorgeous wives catering to his every need and nobody to tell him what to do. I on the other hand live in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi. It is jampacked, noisy, smelly, slave wage jobs, high rent, endless jams, floods, "flying toilets," high crime, you name it. I hate it in the city. I feel like Meitamei is a true African, while I am failing miserably to live like a white man in a third world city. He genuinely seemed happy, a king in his own kingdom while I couldn't remember when last I was truly happy.
In his manyatta his wives bring us milk and hot ugali, and a basin of water to wash our hands. The wives are clean shaven and heavily decorated in beaded necklaces, bracelets and anklets that communicate identity, marital status and social standing. The meal is delicious. I tell Meitamei I'm writing a book about female circumcision and child marriage.
"Oh," he says, "But don't portray us as barbarians like those so-called human rights groups do."
"I'm sure your wives are circumcised," I say, going straight to the point, "but will you circumcise your daughters when they come of age?"
"Of course," he says, "It's our tradition. I will take them to school though, middle school at least. They should know how to read and write, and I will not entertain any marriage proposals until they're well into their teens."
The mention of school reminds me of the little poet, Nashipai. I had met her again eight years later in the largest town in Samburu County. I was there for the town's camel derby event which is hosted every August. Nashipai was selling kienyeji chicken by the roadside.
"Mwalimu," she called at me, meaning teacher.
I was so glad to see her. I thanked the gods for our paths crossing again. I had often thought of her over the years. She looked different from how I remembered her. She was now taller than me, shabby and her honey-brown skin seemed to have lost its luster.
"You still remember me?" she asked.
"Of course I remember you, Nashipai."
We spoke dearly for what seemed an eternity. She had a baby strapped to her back, her fourth child. I also learnt that her husband had died recently and she seemed quite beat up about it.
"He was old," she said.
Two potential customers approached. After much haggling they left without buying any chicken.
"You still write poetry?" I asked.
She shook her head sadly.
"I still have some of your poems," I said, "I truly treasure them."
I saw her face beam. I asked about her chicken business.
"I rear these myself and sell them on market days," she said.
I bought a hen from her, but she wholly refused to take my money. I thanked her and we parted ways as I pondered the life that was stolen from her. I wished I had done more for her, fought more for her, and for all those girls that got plucked from my class to be someone's wife while I looked the other way. The guilt and shame will haunt me to my grave.
Meitamei called to one of his wives, the youngest. We had finished eating. She brought water in a basin and we washed our hands.
"Your article should not be derogatory or condescending towards our culture like others have done," he says. "And tell off those organizations that want to erode our culture, they should not tell us what to do. Change has to come from within us, not from them."
"My tribe no longer circumcises the girls," I say. "And everything seems to be faring well."
He laughs heartily, "Fairing well? Your community has the highest rate of single mothers in East Africa. One in three women." He laughs some more. "And more so, most of the prostitutes in Kenya are from your community."
He is statistically right on both accounts, but there is more to it, like severe alcoholism among Kikuyu men, hence many single mothers.
"If you didn't stop circumcising your women they wouldn't be selling their bodies, and too much book has made them think they are equal to men. That's why they can't maintain a home," he says.
"Don't you think we should move with time? Cultures evolve with time."
"Why should we move with time? The trend today is women undergoing unnecessary procedures such as insertion of breast implants to increase sexual desirability. Should we move on to that? Should we do away with a practice that is steeped in culture for butt implants? Mind you many women have died from these procedures and no girl has ever died from circumcision unless her mother is a witch. Yet those procedures aren't as vilified as our traditions."
As I leave on my old motorcycle, I notice his wives are building a manyatta with branches and mud for one of them. I have always admired how some men are able to maintain such harmonious living among their multiple wives. I can tell the wives are saying something naughty about me by the way they keep looking at me and giggling. Meitamei tells me they're talking about my pot belly, that they want to find me a nice Maasai girl, preferably one of their sisters. In East Africa a plump man is associated with wealth and prosperity.
To end female circumcision and child marriage will take some doing. A few people from those communities severely affected are fighting day and night to see that it becomes a reality. One is Josephine Kulea who is the founder of Samburu Girls Foundation. She herself was saved from child marriage at the age of nine by a priest who took her in and paid for her education in a boarding school three hundred miles away from her village. Her father died a year later and all through her teenage years she faced further pressure to marry from her uncles but her mother fought to keep her in school until she was able to earn a nursing degree.
Josephine's foundation has rescued and educated over 1,200 girls. Many are now nurses, teachers, engineers etc. Elders of the tribe led by her uncles have cursed her for what they view as her attempt at killing their culture. Her foundation is now also helping vulnerable boys whose parents would rather see them herding than go to school. Josephine, who is now in her early forties, vied for a political seat during the last general election and lost. She's vying again in the next election and I fear she'll lose again. A political seat would give her more reach and power to help the Samburu girl child. But in Kenya, and Africa at large, we rarely elect forward-looking leaders.
I am a big advocate of maintaining our African cultures. We shouldn't just adopt Western culture and discard our own. Let's pick what's good from both and do away with some outdated customs: We no longer abandon twins in forests like in the old days when we considered them unnatural and that they could bring misfortune to societies. This practice has been done away with completely.
Child marriage rates still remain alarmingly high in many places in East Africa. In the Samburu and Maasai communities, child marriage is at thirty percent while female circumcision remains very high between women aged fifteen to forty-nine.
We have to come up with alternative rites of passage that allow the girl to transition to womanhood without physical harm. Men have to be engaged as well because even if a girl doesn't want to get circumcised, the men swear they wouldn't marry an uncut woman or even pay a bride price for her, and marriage is very important in African communities. Keeping girls in school also protects them from early marriage, and existing laws should be enforced strictly instead of being merely ornamental.
