Kakenya Ntaiya’s story is one that should make you weep. But her telling
of it is powerful, strong, passionate, and defies pity. Despite recounting
her traumatic experience of female genital cutting, her story is one of
victory, education, empowerment; not that of a victim.
On Wednesday, October 2, 2014, the U.S. Embassy and Women’s
University in Africa (WUA) based in Mount Pleasant, Harare, hosted the
fifth lecture in the Hope/Fay Lecture series for gender equality. Dr.
Kakenya Ntaiya, founder and president of Kakenya’s Centre for
Excellence in Enoosean, Kakenya, delivered keynote address titled “The
Role of Women in Child Marriages and Gender Based Violence.”
Speaking to a packed auditorium, filled mostly with young women from
WUA and surrounding high schools, Kakenya told her story the way it
should’ve gone: engaged at age 5, she was to be circumcised by the time
she was a teenager. This would be followed by marriage.
“When you don’t have an education, you are locked out of the system,”
says Kakenya, explaining her motivation for starting Kakenya’s Centre for
Excellence. This would’ve been her fate too, had she not taken some
extraordinary steps to change the path of her life.
However, Kakenya did something unheard of in her village; she negotiated
with her father, telling him she would go through with the circumcision
only if he promised her she could delay marriage until she had completed
high school. Explaining that it was too shameful for a Kenyan father to
have an uncut daughter, her father agreed to her proposal.
She went through the cutting and was allowed to complete high school.
Kakenya told the audience that only 29% of Kenyan girls transition to
high school, and she estimates that in her village that percentage is closer
to a shocking 1%.
Also shocking is how the story of her cutting is such a negligible part of
her narrative. Kakenya explains that female genital cutting is something
expected of Masaai girls, and is something anticipated from a young age.
The trauma she experienced, however, was something she did not want
another girl or sister of hers to live through.
During her high school years, Kakenya noticed that young men returning
from America and the UK had a level of sophistication and worldliness to
them, which she found attractive and wanted to develop for herself. She
took another unusual step; she negotiated with the village elders to do
what no girl had ever done: leave her Maasai village of Enoosaen in south
Kenya to go to college in the United States.
She promised that she would use her education to benefit Enoosaen. She
told of the struggle to get villagers to contribute to her education, as they
did for boys. But she achieved her goal received a scholarship to do her
Bachelor’s degree at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia.
Kakenya described her horror when, in America, she discovered that there
were international laws that protected girls like herself from female
genital mutilation. “Where had this information been hidden?” she asked.
“Why didn’t we have access to it?”
After some years working at the United Nations, followed by a Doctorate
in Education from the University of Pittsburgh, during which she also got
married and had children, Kakenya decided it was time to make good on
her promise to give back to the village of Enoosaen, Kenya.
In 2009, she opened the doors of Kakenya’s Centre for Excellence, a girls’
primary boarding school. Kakenya believes that education will empower
and motivate young girls to become agents of change in their community
and country. The centre currently has 170 students in grades four through
eight, and has become a beacon of hope to the girls and parents in
Enoosaen.
Kakenya is determined her school will empower and motivate young girls
to become change agents, and that education will help fight against
practices such as female genital mutilation and cutting. She explained she
founded a boarding school because she didn’t “want the girls out there
washing clothes. The girls must be in the classroom!” She also spoke to
the dangers girls face when walking to and from school.
Kakenya believes that education will empower and motivate young girls
to become agents of change in their community and country, and she
encouraged the young women (and men!) in the WUA audience to
continue to fight against practices and stigmas that hold women back, both
in Zimbabwe and around the world.
Other participants at Thursday’s event included Women’s University in
Africa Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Hope Sadza; lawyer and women’s rights
advocate, Rumbidzai Dube, who delivered an equally passionate response
to Kakenya’s keynote presentation; Karen Kelley, the U.S. Embassy
Counselor for Public Affairs.
Kakenya’s time in Zimbabwe also included a discussion with students at
the Crossover Literacy Centre; a 263 Chat fireside discussion with Sir
Nige at the Hypercube Tech Hub; visits to Chiedza Child Care Centre and
UNICEF offices.
Source and photo credit:Zimbo Jam Network
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