Susan McClelland JOURNALIST – WRITER | ||
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The Merry-Go-Round Reader's Digest |
Forty-eight-year-old Jane Marindany pushes open the outhouse door and peers inside the small wooden building. “Before I built this,” she says, “my five children would go to the washroom anywhere: in the bushes, in the trees, right in the fields.” Marindany, a Kipsigi tribeswoman living in the hilly Kenyan region of Maasai Mara, moves on to the family vegetable garden she planted after building their outhouse. “I grow carrots, squash and peppers,” she says, her black rubber boots sinking into the moist earth. “Our diet used to be beans and maize. Now we eat balanced meals of mixed vegetables and grains. “But my greatest victory,” she says, beaming, “is my house.” She points to the rectangular cement home a few feet in front of her. “In our old mud hut, we did everything: cook, eat, sleep. We were cramped and tripped over one another. My children often had to wait until 10 p.m. just to start their homework because there was no room while I prepared our meals. Now they can spread out and do their school assignments while I cook.” Like many women of her generation, Marindany attended school through Grade 6. After that, as a girl, she was expected to stay home and help with chores and raising her younger siblings. Married at 18, Marindany became her husband’s second wife. (Polygamy is widespread in Kenya.) He had control over the household finances and their children’s schooling. “He was the boss,” says Marindany. “Whatever he wanted, I did.” Today, four years on, Marindany and other Kipsigi women have developed economic independence from their husbands, lifted their families out of poverty, put healthier food on their tables and stopped the spread of disease in the area. Several women even support themselves through the small businesses they started with their portions of the shared funds. “All of us had the same story: lots and lots of children, and having to ask for every shilling from our husbands,” says Marindany. “We never used to share our struggles because we didn’t want to burden others. But when we did share, we learned we are not alone. We are all suffering.” With more than 1,000 women in 68 different merry-go-round groups in the area, the initiative has become a powerful regional force, raising thousands of Kenyan shillings to help buy livestock, allow families to switch from grass-thatched roofs to tin roofs and assist in paying hospital bills. FTC’s sister organization Me to We even distributes some artisans’ products from its headquarters in Nairobi and Toronto. Program funds have also helped pay for toilets and showers in members’ homes, thereby eliminating typhoid fever and cholera in their communities. “We are very happy with the progress of the merry-go-rounds,” says Robin Wiszowaty, FTC’s Kenya project director. “Women decide their priorities per group: a goat for every family involved, or replacing thatched roofs with iron sheets. The merry-go-round gives women the opportunity to choose their own goals and watch them happen.” |
Other Kipsigi women have used their merry-go-round funds to embark on even more ambitious ventures. Christine Tue, 49, grew up in a poor farming community, married young and bore children—and never set foot in a school. Today, she manages a small honey farm that she built with Merry-Go-Round money. Tue also raises goats and sells their milk. “I help my children to access the best quality education and support themselves better,” she says. Earning more allows these businesswomen to contribute more—sometimes as much as 1,000 shillings each—when the merry-go-round pot comes around. And with the communal pots now growing, the groups have started earmarking funds for loans in situations where members cannot get credit from traditional banks. Naturally, the Kipsigi men have mixed feelings. “Some are coming around and really supporting us after seeing what we are able to bring to our families,” says Marindany. “Others are a little bitter. But they’re not stopping their wives from taking part. We are all learning and becoming better people because the women are being liberated.” Some husbands are so taken with the idea, they have established three of their own merry-go-rounds. Marindany acknowledges the profound effect on the younger generation. By raising the community’s standard of living, merry-go-rounds have changed ideas about what is possible for Kenyan women. “School, dreams, having your own money and jobs—these were not part of a girl’s life,” she says. Joyline Cherono, Marindany’s 14-year-old daughter, has high hopes. “I don’t want to get married until I have made something of my life by helping others as a policewoman,” says Joyline, a Grade 8 student who attends one of the 16 schools FTC has built in the region. “My mother changed her future and my future,” she adds. “She inspires me.” HARAMBEE: PULLING TOGETHER The first stirrings of the idea of “merry-go-rounds” occurred in 2004, when Free The Children (FTC) began building schools in the Kipsigi region of Kenya. Girls were encouraged to study. But it soon became clear that getting girls to school, and keeping them there, required educating their mothers as well. “We were empowering the children, but their mothers were still passing down traditional values,” says Joseph Munyao, an FTC program manager who watched as families regularly sent their boys to class, but opted to keep the girls at home to do household chores. The situation turned out to be a little more complex. Many mothers were acutely aware of the value of the education being offered and wanted to participate, but felt trapped. Unable to take control of their own subservient lives, they could do little to help their daughters. They depended on their husbands for the money to pay for everything—including fees for school uniforms, books and high-school tuition. (Elementary school is free in Kenya up to Grade 6.) “We began by offering the mamas literacy programs,” says Munyao, “which led to them asking for tools so they could be proper gatekeepers of their daughters’ futures.” So the nonprofit group turned to an ancient Kenyan tradition called a harambee (Swahili for “all pull together”), in which members of a community pool their resources to help those in need. In the past, harambees have been held to assist families who had lost their livestock due to drought, or to send a bright child to university. But FTC quickly grasped that the custom—already adopted by more than 40 of the country’s tribes—could be used for much more. “What we didn’t want to see were Canadians coming and imposing a solution on the problem,” explains Marc Kielburger, co-founder of FTC. “Instead, we helped guide the mamas to evolve the harambee into a tool for development for themselves.” The transformation among the Kipsigi—which is patriarchal, like all tribes in Kenya—has been profound. Today, most families associated with merry-go-round programs delay their daughters’ marriages, and make school a priority. Reprinted with permission from the August 2011 magazine.
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