Most people agree that 12-year-old girls are still children and should get an opportunity to live as such. But often poverty and some local traditions force even 12-year-olds into premature adulthood. Let's look at Selina for example. Before she was even
Most people agree that 12-year-old girls are still children and should get an opportunity to live as such. But often poverty and some local traditions force even 12-year-olds into premature adulthood. Let’s look at Selina* for example. Before she was even 12 years old she became the fourth wife of an 80-year-old man. This story resonates with many girls of the Masai tribe in Kenya. By age 10, Christine was already married to a 60-year-old man.
As members of the Masai tribe, girls often must abide by the tribe’s customs such as genital mutilation and early marriages. These girls are married off as early as 8 and 9 years of age, said Mrs. Jecinta Loki, the project administrator and head teacher at Kajiado Adventist Education and Rehabilitation Center, which now houses 85 such girls in Kenya.
As hard as it is to believe, Christine and Selina are lucky. They have been fortunate to discover this center, a combination school and home for rescued girls. The center provides food and shelter, along with education, counseling services, and spiritual nourishment. It also provides social and community services that extend to the families of the children and the community as a whole. [See ANN May 1, 2001 story http://news.adventist.org/data/2003/05/1055857015/index.html.en]
Loki has worked for the center for five years. “I love my job very much though it is very challenging ... God helped me become who I am today. So working here is the best way to thank Him,” she said.
The school was started in 2000 with 14 girls by a group of women from the Women’s Ministries department of the New Life Adventist Church, a large and dynamic congregation which meets in Nairobi. The women first started a center for street boys, then wanted to move the home to a Masai village where the center is now located. But the district children’s officer did not want them to bring the troubled boys to their village. Instead he asked them to build a home to help girls.
“The Masai community [has] a low opinion [of] women. Hence they believe educating a girl is wasting [a family’s] resources because she will one day be married off and end up being of benefit to another family,” Loki explained. “If their parents die, their lives become a living hell since their relatives who are supposed to care for them end up taking advantage of them.”
Loki tells the story of fifth grader Teresia : “She is an orphan and her uncle wanted to marry her off so as to get back the amount of money he had spent on her hospital bill when she was ill.”
“The work the Center is doing is sensitive and dangerous,” says Heather-Dawn Small, Women’s Ministries director for the Adventist World church. Following a recent visit to the center Small said, “They have to deal with angry fathers trying to get their girl children back, abusive fathers and even ones who threaten them.”
Because the girls might get abducted if they attend local schools they attend school at the center. So far the center provides schooling up to the eighth grade. The girls live at the center all year round. They never go to visit their families for fear they will not be allowed to return to the center. Instead, the families—usually the girls’ mothers—come to visit one Sunday a month.
The center, which has been around since March 2000, is looking toward not just providing for the girls now but also for the future.
Where do the girls go after they leave the center? Eight girls will be graduating this year and should attend high school next. Loki and the staff would like to send those who graduate to Adventist schools but that costs about US$500 dollars.
They are also trying to build dormitories, bathrooms, buy sewing machines so the girls can learn a trade and build water tanks so they don’t have to walk long distances to get water.
Loki said the home is a haven to those in the community and surrounding area, providing a place for girls to run to. One girl ran away from her home and walked about 31 miles (50 kilometres) with her baby to escape marriage to an 80-year-old man. Despite her rape at age ten and child from the resulting pregnancy, her father was still determined to marry her off.
“She had been subjected to female genital mutilation and now wanted something better for herself,” Loki said. “She had heard of our rescue center and walked with her baby there…She is a beautiful young girl now (of) 16 years old.”
*The girls’ last names have been dropped to protect their privacy.