The Last Poem Nashipai Gave Me: The Cost of Child Marriage in East Africa

My first teaching job after college was on the opposite side of Mount Kenya from my village. Mount Kenya, Africa’s second-highest mountain following Kilimanjaro, stands between two ethnic communities: the Samburu on the leeward side and my own people, the Gikuyu, on the windward side. The land of the Samburu constitutes endless savanna, perfect for pastoralism. The windward side is characterized by heavy rainfall, dense forests, and high-quality agricultural land. We, Gikuyu, are tillers of the soil.

Children on my side of the mountain grow up hearing wild tales of the people who live on the other side. They hear about how the Samburu only eat cattle blood mixed with milk; how a young man has to kill a lion to prove himself as a true warrior; how they move often with their livestock, chasing after the rains. I was always fascinated by these stories. So, years later, when I learned about a one-year teaching contract in the Samburu land, I accepted it right away. I believe closely experiencing another culture is among the highest honors there are.

“She handed it to me on a Friday, but on Monday she did not show up to school.”

The Samburu people are a proud people, who have clung to their culture despite “civilization” arising all around them. They also tend to be a very attractive people, and I found their women typically quite graceful and beautiful.

Most of the teachers in the school, and in the entire Samburu land, came from my side of the mountain. This is because literacy rates are considerably lower where the Samburu live. In Samburu County, a majority of women and a substantial minority of men cannot read a whole sentence, while literacy rates are around ninety-seven percent in Gikuyu areas such as Nyeri and Murang’a.