After four years of hell married to a nearly 80-year-old man, a young Kenyan girl is finally emancipated after walking barefoot to her freedom.
Younis, now 13, was married off by her parents as part of tribal custom according to her Samburu tribe, a tribe that also still enacts the archaic practice of female genital mutilation.
“When I was about nine years old, my father married me off to an old man who was 78 years old,” Younis explains, still obviously traumatised from her ordeal. “I went to his home and I stayed with him one week.
“He told me that I will be a wife but I was just innocent, I wanted to come to school. But that man wanted me to be a third wife. I told him, I will not be your wife, and he caned me,” an emotional Younis told CNN.
“Then I heard that there is a woman who helps children. I came from Baragoi barefoot, I didn’t even have shoes that day. I came to Maralal … Kulea took me to [the] children’s office, she rescued me.”
Josephine Kulea is a Samburu girl herself.
She now fights against tribal traditions and aspires to change the ancient ways and save the girls from their fates by taking them into her Samburu Girls Foundation boarding school.
Kulea helps the girls deal with the physical and emotional trauma of being disowned, abused and mutilated by their family, and by people their families force them to go with.
“I realised we are the only ones doing FGM, female genital mutilation, the other communities are not doing it,” Kulea said.
“I came to realise that there are things that are not right and I need to make a difference, that’s how I started rescuing girls.”
Addressing tribal customs such as genital mutilation and forced sex at very young ages is not an easy road to take, but Josephine is hopeful she can make a significant change for her tribal sisters.
“There is hope,” she said, “and I know when we take more kids to school in future there will be a difference in my community.”
