Jumat, 12 Maret 2010

Cewe kepengen


Booking gilrs Education Journalism Award for the following article. Ombuor is the first Kenyan journalist to win the award. Cry, Maasai girl, cry! For before you left the warmth and safety of your mother's womb to fill your lungs with the first gasp of the life-sustaining air, a man, probably older than your father, had already proclaimed you his wife!
What if the child born was a boy, or even a freak? No regrets, for whatever happens, the "booking'' of young brides puts men on a privileged pedestal in the family. He can still make another go for a wife.
Fifteen-year-old Narinoi Puruo is lucky to be in school at a time when she would have been a wife in a loveless marriage. She struggles to control tears forming in her eyes as she narrates her story – the destiny for many Maasai girls:


"When my mother was about six months pregnant with me, a man my father had promised to give a wife to perpetuate their friendship came over and smeared fresh cow dung on her belly. From then, the contract was sealed. I was to be born his wife.
"My father and the man were overjoyed whenI was born a girl. God and the ancestors had granted their prayer. My mother had to play ball. Mothers in our community have no voice.
"Occasionally, the man came, gawped on his 'baby wife' as she was breast-fed. The man and my father quaffed calabashes of beer together, hoping that I'd grow up faster.
"I am told that on the day I was born, the man brought a fat he-goat that was slaughtered."
At this point Narinoi breaks down and sobs. My colleague with whom we had gone out for this assignment, Rebecca Nandwa, sobs too. But wait! The worst for Narinoi was yet to come:
"I was about seven. My breasts had not formed when news started circulating in the neighbourhood that a school was to be established in Mosiro location for girls to learn free. It was said all school-age girls would be targeted. My father panicked and fast tracked my circumcision to prepare me for marriage before it was too late. I was eight when the circumciser's cruel knife ate into my flesh."

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