The Women of Meyagari
A lone female voice resonates across the arid Samburu desert from within a mud hut, while an unforgiving sun scorches the red earth, turning it fiery hot. Outside, men sit smoking in the sweltering heat under the shade of acacia trees, waiting for their wives to emerge from the hut. There is much work to be done: there is water to be fetched up to a two-hour walk away, more than 50 kg of firewood to be cut and carried back to the village homes, cows and goats to be milked, children to be fed and new huts to be built. But the men sit and wait. This is women's work.
In this East African nation of 30 million people, women remain the possessions of men, as they have been for centuries. Their primary functions: providing children, comfort and pleasure for men. In the majority of the country's 40-odd ethnic groups, women endure a wide range of discriminatory practices. Spousal abuse and rape are considered disciplinary measures that, through customary law, husbands are free to use as punishment on their wives. Girls are forced out of school early to get married, or they don't go to school at all because priority is given to their brothers. According to the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices, over 50 per cent of women continue to be genitally mutilated, in what is traditionally considered a rite of passage. These are just some of life's harsh realities for Kenyan women. But today, women across the country are coming together and challenging long-held attitudes, behaviours and traditions. By forming groups to support and educate one another, women are slowly achieving a level of freedom that was previously non-existent in this male-dominated country. Together, women are pulling themselves out of their traditional world of oppression and entering a realm of modern education and self-sufficiency, which promises to transform not only their lives but also the lives of their daughters and granddaughters.
As Jane speaks, her cracked hands move in front of her, revealing the back-breaking labour she has endured for most of her 32 years. She is a lucky woman, though. At her mother's insistence she was educated in a nearby community and now has her own food store in town, where she earns enough money to feed her six children. None of the other women crammed into this hut — which they collectively built with their bare hands — is educated. But they are here today, as they are each week, to change their destinies together.
Ranging in age from 25 to 60, the 45 women are members of the Meyagari Women's Group. Jane's mother founded the group in 1980 to help the women of this area get themselves and their families out of the cycle of poverty that had afflicted their community for too long. Kenya's overall rate of poverty is 56 per cent, and almost every man in this Samburu community on the outskirts of Archer's Post — a blink-and-it's-gone-town seven hours drive north of Nairobi — is unemployed. But thanks to their wives, who as members of Meyagari created a training program in 2000 for operating small businesses, the men do not go hungry. Today, each member has her own business. Some operate vegetable stands, some raise livestock, some grow herbs and spices. All the members collectively sell their stunning beadwork to tourists stopping in Archer's Post on safaris.
"We have a saying in our community," says Jane. "If you educate a woman, you educate the whole community. If you educate a man, you educate only his family." Seventy per cent of illiterate people in Kenya are female. According to a 2001 World Bank report, countries that promote women's rights and increase women's access to resources and schooling have lower poverty rates, faster economic growth and less corruption than countries that do not.
In 2001 the group approached the government, which is a democracy, with a business plan and a request for land. Remarkably, they were granted a piece of property that now houses the main school hut, a workshop, a craft centre and a playground for their children — all of which the women built with their own hands and a lot of determination. Today, the same children who had almost starved to death three years ago are healthy and happy. They are also all in school. The schoolhouse, which their mothers also use for business meetings, serves as the classroom where boys and girls sit side-by-side learning to read and write in Samburu, Swahili and English. Teacher Inos Aurora, who received her education in another town, says, "I am a schoolteacher because I want to give the children, especially girls, the opportunity I had to improve their lives."
Since 2000, the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, an international agency devoted to social development in Asia and East Africa, and the Canadian International Development Agency have supported the Kenyan Professional Development Centre — an innovative teacher-training initiative designed to improve the subject knowledge and methodology of teachers like Inos and, in turn, benefit all students. Initially, many members endured a backlash from their husbands in the form of severe beatings and rapes, but once money started rolling in, men began to accept the changes in their wives' roles. Besides business training, the women are taught about the serious health risks associated with female genital mutilation — something this tribe has practiced for centuries. All of the members have undergone the painful procedure. But because of their increased knowledge, they are starting to question whether to subject their daughters to it.
The women of Meyagari are not alone in their struggle to improve their quality of life. Many other groups of women are also taking steps to effect positive change for themselves and their daughters.
