GoPhilanthropic donor Cathleen Burnham’s reflections and images on her time with GoPhil partners Maji Moto and the Entikeng Lepa school in Kenya.<\/i><\/div>\n
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“My father had already received the three cows for me.\u201d<\/b><\/div>\n
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“My father was very happy because the old man brought the cows.\u201d<\/b><\/div>\n
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\u201cI was traded to a man about forty when I was a little girl.\u201d<\/b><\/div>\n
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\u201cI was traded to an old man about sixty years when I was a young girl.\u201d<\/b><\/div>\n
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The girls\u2019 stories open with these words.\u00a0 They sit in wooden chairs, in soft lavender school uniforms and with shaved heads or tidy corn rows.\u00a0 They speak quietly but with confidence, unflinching as they talk about frightening solo flights across the wilderness, angry fathers chasing and mothers rejecting. Of starting over at the ripe old ages of six or nine or twelve. The girls run to escape female genital mutilation and childhood marriages, but they drive back so much more:\u00a0 poverty, dawn-to-dusk labor and the lack of basic human rights that is the lot of a traditional Masai woman.<\/div>\n
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Now the girls cannot go home.\u00a0 Their bride price had to be returned angering their fathers.\u00a0 So they live at school. Enkiteng Lepa School is in the middle of pastoral Masai Land, much of its population living in traditional mud huts.\u00a0 The occasional settlement with a tiny store, home-grown bar or government school can be seen, but it\u2019s mostly a land of low acacia, gently sloped hills, flowing red shukas, cows and goats and their accompanying jingling bells.\u00a0 Then, all of a sudden there is a tall, manicured hedge and a pink metal gate. Within the school grounds is a long, modern building housing several classrooms for the 190 students, largely girls, but 48 of them boys, from pre-school to eighth grade.\u00a0 Inside one classroom posters line the walls listing irregular verbs, global warming facts.\u00a0 Children yell teacher Ben Gibson\u2019s name, arms either straining toward him or shaking enough to throw out an elbow, begging to be called on.\u00a0 Mr. Gibson is patient and speaks gently.\u00a0 The children\u2019s enthusiasm, happiness and interest in their subject (Swahili) can only be called rare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Life As a Traditional Masai Girl<\/b><\/div>\n
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Some people equate offering western style education to Africans with forcing religion and believe we should leave well enough alone.\u00a0 But FGM and childhood marriage deny a woman her basic human rights:\u00a0 the right to control her body, the right to choose whom and when to marry, the right to express an opinion, the right to pursue a calling.<\/div>\n