Girl defies dad’s dowry plan to pursue dream

By Pascal Mwandambo

The first thing that strikes one on meeting the 14-year-old girl at Voi’s St Jude Education Centre is her confidence. Her poise and agility set her apart from her Standard Seven classmates.

Unlike many of her classmates, she has undergone an experience that nearly extinguished her dream of becoming a doctor one day. It was an experience that made her stand up to her father — an odd thing for a girl her age to do. Behind her humble and shy facade is a spirit of steel.

In May, the girl — let us call her Anne to protect her identity — stood firm against a retrogressive culture that is prevalent among her people in Taita-Taveta County. Here, some fathers marry off their young daughters to elderly men after being given some gifts including livestock and money as bride price.

Many girls accept this turn of events even if it is against their wishes and aspirations because it is the ‘normal’ way of life — their mothers were married off when they were in their early teens and so were their grandmothers and other women before them.
But Anne was not going to walk this path.

An elderly man

“It was on a Friday evening when my father called me to his room and introduced me to an elderly man whom he said was to be my husband. I was shocked. I had never seen the man before and I wondered why my father wanted to trade me off as a commodity despite my young age,” Anne told The Standard in the presence of her new guardian, Rosinah Kitatu, the director of Voi’s St Jude Education Centre.

As she looked at her father and the ‘husband-to-be’, her mind started working fast.

Anne had to do something to get out of the web but she had to do it so cleverly that she did not hurt her father in front of his guest. At the top of her mind was her fierce desire to continue with her education and eventually become a doctor.

“I was bold enough and told my father that I wanted to remain in school and would not leave with the man. He became furious and said that I had to start sleeping with the man even as I attended school. He said the man, who was to be my husband, had already paid part of the dowry.”

Excused herself

She weighed her father’s words and anger and realising she was trapped, she excused herself to go to the toilet.
Since she is an obedient girl, her father did not suspect his daughter was up to something.

Once she was out of the two men’s presence, Anne ran like lightening across the Nairobi-Mombasa highway to her girlfriend’s home.

“I asked her for her mobile phone and luckily she had some airtime. I called Miasenyi (within Voi town) chief but he could not be reached. I tried calling the Marungu chief but he was also out of reach. Before I gave up, I called the Maungu assistant chief and I managed to get her.”

The assistant chief, Dricila Ngele, told The Standard how the tearful girl called her and begged her to rescue her.

“She said her father wanted to marry her off but she wanted to continue with her education,” said Ngele.

Ngele immediately embarked on a rescue mission and within two hours, help came her way.

Security officers along with Voi District Education Officer, Kennedy Machora, arrived at Anne’s home but the two old men fled on seeing them.

Ngele and Machora decided take the girl to St Jude’s for shelter as she is traumatised from the experience.

Anne says she is afraid to go home as “I fear my father will still want to marry me off to his friend”.

Kitatu says her new student is good in academia and she is likely to perform well in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams next year.

“She has acclimatised and is showing remarkable improvement in her continuous examinations. When she came in May, her mean grade was 260 points but she has risen to 306 points,” says  Kitatu.

She says she is optimistic that  Susan will score more than 400 points in KCPE. Kitatu says she will nurture Anne through motherly love. And Machora has promised to give Anne Sh150,000 if she scored 400 points and above in next year’s KCPE examinations.

The girl has every reason to excel.