My first day in Barsaloi started with a 7 AM mass. I’m staying with Catholic priests and nuns!! After mass I had a very nice breakfast… I really needed it because I didn’t eat too much last night. I had tea, fried eggs and momosas (fried with flour…yummy).
After breakfast I talked to Samuel, a recently circumcised 23 years old Samburu. He is currently studying computers in Nairobi and he is a very intelligent young man.
In the Samburu tradition a male is considered a child until he is circumcised. After he is circumcised, the boy becomes a man and he enters the next stage of his tribal life as a “Warrior.” After becoming a Warrior, the new man cannot eat with his mother, instead he has to go hunting with other warriors in the nearby mountains. However, Samuel told me that he is not going to follow this rule. He lives with his grandmother who is 80 years old and who is very weak, and he cannot leave her alone. Father Memo and the seminarist think that he told me this just to seem brave, and they say that he is likely going to be forced by the rest of the warriors to leave her. We will see….
Samuel’s dream is to finish his studies and come back to his tribe to teach the others about computers. For me, this is the way the Samburus are going to change; through their own people and not through us mussungos (white people). He also told me that he does not agree with his tribe’s practice of Female Genital Mutilation. He said that his people know the effects of this practice (like infections and often death) but it is a tradition so it seems almost unavoidable. But he told me that when he gets married and has his own daughters, he is not going to force them to do it. However, when we spoke about male circumcision, he was very determined. I told him that just like women have all the right to say no to the practice of FGM, a man has also a right to not be circumcised. Samuel said “NO”. He explained to me that the Samburu tradition is to circumcise boys when they are ready to become a man. Still a lot of work to do…
Samuel also told me of a situation that happened last month in the Samburu territory. A 10-year-old girl was forced by her parents to get married with a 50-year-old man. The story made the news on TV because her 23-year-old brother “stole” the young girl and took her to a rescue house in Maralal, a small county 3 hours far from Barsaloi. Thankfully, this story had a happy ending but Samuel said that this is a common practice in his community. If a young girl has had her first menstruation, fathers can marry them off in exchange for cows or sheep because they are “already a grown woman.”
After getting to know Samuel a little more, I had lunch with all the priest and seminarists. I had the opportunity to talk to Father German, the general superior, and I asked him one of my favorites questions: “Why did you come to this world?” His answer was to enjoy this life. He told me that life is like “the best party I’ve been invited and my father (God) prepared it for me.” When I asked him how I could enjoy the very hard moments of life he said that those are opportunities to clean my mind and start to see life with different eyes.
After lunch I went to a catechism class. There were around 150 boys and girls. I had the opportunity to read a book in English to small kids and young teenagers. In Samburo the kids between 2-6 years old just speak Samburu. After that, the majority (but not all of them) go to school and learn English, the second official language of Kenya. By tradition families are big, and it is not rare to see a family with 10 kids. Because the families are so big, only some of the children are chosen to go to the school but others must stay at home to help with the pasture. The Yarumal Missionaries has a program to give education to these boys and girls that are left behind, but the only problem is that they receive these classes after 7pm when they have finished all the housework. Anyway I talked to these kids about human rights, self-esteem and how our thoughts create our realities. In Samburu culture they don’t give kisses so they were laughing when I hugged myself and give myself kisses in each one of my shoulders.
It’s 4pm at is really hot. My phone said 82 F but for me it’s like 100 or more!! I went to the soccer field to play with some of the kids after they finished their catechism class but the beating sun and all the kids around me trying to touch my fan, or my phone or my hat or my hair made me feel uncomfortable so I went back to the priests’ house. I will try another day.
Every Saturday night is movie night. The mission place has a projector and some kids bring movies they like. Tonight, they chose a Hindu movie that is narrated in Samburu. I asked the priests why they hadn’t picked a movie in English, but they told me that the kids don’t like those movies. I told them that watching movies in English is a great way of learning the language. I hope that little by little the children can add some English movies to their collection.
