The Many Roles of Women in Healing Community

For the past three months I have been traveling throughout Kenya and Uganda exploring the role women play in community healing/peace-building.

My questions to them were:
What words would you use to describe peace?
How do you know when there is peace in your homes/community?
What do you do to build peace in your home/community?

What follows are some examples of what I was told by the women I met in both rural and urban settings. What you hear is the women singing prayers at the start of the meeting. Singing is very important in Kenya and is used as a ritual to bring calm and ease tension in difficult times. There are many different voices, many stories, many lives, many conflicts - coming together with one voice! Unity, Love and Calm - these three words were used most to describe what peace means to these women.

view on youtube at http://youtu.be/AHxXW5iPtx8

Widows' Village Tepesua

The notion of peace-building is broad. At its best, it involves diverse processes that contribute to building positive relationships, healing wounds, reconciling differences, restoring self-esteem, rebuilding communities, instilling feelings of security, and empowering agency. This past week, I visited one place that is a manifestation of peace-building. 

Tepesua is a widows' village on the road between Narok and Maasai Mara Game Reserve. It was established by Hellen Nykuraiya a Maasai woman who at the age of nine years, underwent female genital mutilation (FGM), was married at 11 years to a man much older than herself, and ran away to finish her education. She was shunned by her family and community. Within her cultural traditions she will never be allowed to remarry, nor has she any rights to inheritance. (Below is a photograph of Hellen and some of the other widows in Tepesua).

Early marriage is common in this community and girls are frequently traded for two or three cows and are not able to return home unless with the cows (and any of their offspring) are also returned. Due to the large age gap between husband and wife, women are widowed very young and have no inheritance rights - frequently cast out by the husbands relations leaving them to fend for themselves. But with no education, they have little skills to support their children and frequently turn to working in the sex trade to put food on the table. Hellen purchased some land and has created a village for widows to live who have been widowed or cast out by their families in some other conflict.

Hellen adheres strongly to her Maasai culture but believes even more strongly that giving a girl an education is important. FGM is a typical practice and a right of passage into womanhood in the Maasai community. Although illegal in Kenya it is still promoted by mothers and grandmothers throughout the country. It is a part of the culture. Hellen has begun to reconcile differences within the community by opening a boarding school where girls who have been brought to the authorities can live free from fear of FGM and early marriage. The children wear school uniforms on Mondays and Fridays and the rest of the week, they wear traditional Maasai clothing - a balance between traditional culture and new ideas of educating girls. To help with conflict within the community about what she is doing, the "rescue centre" is known as a school inviting boys in as well as girls. The only difference between the girls who are rescued and the other children is those rescued continue to live at the school when there is a break. Returning home would result in their circumcision and early marriage.  

Here are some of the children walking to school in traditional Maasai clothing . . .

And some of the rescued girls in school uniform

By providing these girls with an education and by challenging the traditions of her community the girls will gain agency, self-esteem while at the same time, instill knowledge and respect for their culture.