Today was a very interesting day. I had my meeting with the head priest of the congregation in Barsaloi. Father Guillermo (Memo) and the two seminarists Jorge and Steve (both Colombians). The objective of the meeting was the presentation of my Project called EMPOWERING THE SAMBURU WOMAN. At the beginning, Father Memo corrected some parts of the context, like that now it is more common for women go to school and that not all women are forced to marry and some ask to be married because in the Samburu tradition having family and children is very important for both men and women. This is true, although I disagreed that they themselves ask to marry because they wantto be married, because since they don’t have an education there really is nothing else for them to do. Father Memo also said that some women want their husbands to hit them because it is a way to show that they have command over the woman (wow I really have a hard time believing that, but I don’t know). The other clarification that he made is that now the Samburus are less polygamic: most men have gone from having 3 or more wives to only two of them (wow that good!) because now they are more conscious about how many women they can support. Little by little, love marriages are being respected. In this Samburu tradition, parents are the ones that look for a husband for their daughters, who in most cases are young women without education. The man must pay a dowry for her (usually goats) and the marriage is celebrated by sacrificing a bull. If the man does not have money, he must earn some before he can marry.
After all the clarifications of the context I presented the topics to be discussed in my workshops, among them leadership, violence and 5 other topics of importance. Father Memo liked my project very much and assigned me different groups to work with, from school girls to adult women. I will also be working on some financial concepts for a productive project that the women of the community have. What a joy!! I see how my purpose of empowering women is being carried out!!
After all this I was with a beautiful baby, a young girl called Satila. Women carry their babies on their backs all the time, but Satila’s mom let me carry her for a short time. How cute right? The language here is Samburu and those who go to school speak English. Satila’s mother speaks English so I was able to ask her to let me carry her. In Kenya, whites call us musungos and some children are scared of white people. In one of the Mayatas I went to, a 2-year-old girl was so scared that she did not stop crying until I left. But most of them take you by the hand and want to be with you all the time.
