Quest to curb early marriages earns Kenyan CNN Heroes Award nomination

By CHARLES NGENO

 

A Kenyan has made it to the list of ten shortlisted candidates for this year’s CNN Hero of the Year Award.

Dr Kakenya Ntaiya from Enoosaen in Transmara, Narok County, has been shortlisted because of what has been described as “inspiring change in her native Kenyan village”.

After becoming the first woman in the village to attend college in the United States, she returned to open the village’s first primary school for girls.

Today, Dr Ntaiya helps provide education for 155 girls.

Dr Ntaiya and George Bwelle from Cameroon are the only contestants from Africa. The CNN Heroes Award recognises people who are changing others’ lives.

Dr Ntaiya is a beacon of hope to many girls. She turned down lucrative job offers at various universities to return to her village, where she began the school.

The Kakenya Centre for Excellence is unique because pupils are admitted in Standard Four. (Kakenya in Maasai means a new dawn).

“This is a critical age when society is telling girls that they need to be circumcised and married off. But I chose to tell them that they are still girls, just learning about their adolescence,” says Ntaiya, who is the director of the centre.

When she sat her Standard Eight exams at Enoosen Primary School, she was one of the two girls left in her class. She proceeded to Sossio Secondary School and by the time she sat her KCSE in 1999, her promised ‘husband’ was still waiting.

“But I was not ready to give up my studies. With the help of one of my church elders, I managed to get a partial scholarship to study at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, US. I studied political science and international studies,” she says.

Whenever she returned home for vacations, she would engage villagers by asking them what she could do for them. Mothers would tell her to build a school for the girls so that they could find a refuge from forced circumcision and marriages.

“I knew I had no money but I had the network to raise it. I fundraised by holding talks where I spoke about my life and the lives of other girls from Enoosaen. I got over Sh850,000, which we used to erect iron-sheet structures with mud floors. Our efforts and partners have seen us put up a storey block,” she says.

She has received many honours, including a Vital Voices Global Leadership Award and a National Geographic Young Explorer nomination.

Dr Ntaiya was awarded a doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. Her thesis was titled Warrior Spirit: The Stories of Four Women from Kenya’s Most Enduring Tribe.

You can vote for Dr Ntaiya on heroes.cnn.com.