Send her.
I’m sitting on a small, somewhat rickety, classroom chair. It’s turned away from the desk it usually accompanies. She’s facing me, this girl of 15 years, perched on a similar hand-made but ultimately sturdy little chair.
“I will prove myself”, she says. “I will prove myself when I become a doctor and help other people like me.”
Later, I sat with another girl.
“I want to become an optician and I want to treat and know the health and the diseases not being treated” And then she exclaimed, “I love biology so much!” She went on to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that she wants to help society, she wants to teach people how to protect themselves from disease like HIV.
Then, so knowingly, she said to me, “Life is knowledge. Without knowledge you can’t have a good life.”
And then the next girl. She wants to become a nurse and help people who are like her — parentless, no siblings, vulnerable, critically impoverished.
There is another girl here from the village of Kitenga who did not pass the school’s entrance exam, she does not know what she wants to be. After not initially being accepted into the school, she cried for three days and stopped eating. Her mother called the Sisters who run the school and asked “What should I do? All she wants is to come to the school.”
Sister replied, “Send her.”
If they weren’t sitting in these chairs — at times hands seemingly gripping the sides of the seat as if it were a lifeline — Where would they be? Of course, no one knows for certain. The future optician? She said she would be at the government school because her father doesn’t want to marry her off and supports her dream to become an optician and told her, “Study hard. Life is hard.” At the poorly equipped government school, there may be 80 students in one classroom with limited or no learning materials, and under-prepared teachers. Students sit on rocks or bricks and have no books. Would this girl, ready to soar, have the support, guidance, quality teaching, safety and enrichment to help her on her journey? Not likely.
The girl working to ‘prove herself’? She told me she would probably be doing nothing. She has no money.
“Not even enough for government school fees.” She would not be attending the Kitenga School for Girls without tuition support (which GEC provides); none of the girls whose stories I’m sharing would be.
Not only would this girl be at ‘home doing nothing’, but the Immaculate Heart Sisters also shared that before her current situation, she lived year round at her primary school so that her father wouldn’t marry her off while a child. He wanted the bride price. In this region of the world, bride price is typically when a girl is sold as a commodity to an often older man for a certain number of cows, depending on the family’s wealth. She does not want that for herself. She wants to get her hands on more books about biology so she can read at night.
She told me, “I can do even more than the teachers are asking.”
These are just a few stories, but they echo the stories of many of the girls here at the new Kitenga School for Girls. Not all of the new students — some come from middle and upper income families across the country.
Yet, as one of the young, bright, male teachers said to me, “In Africa, if you are born a female, you are born disadvantaged.”
Yet does the feeling of “I can’t because: I am a girl/poor/an orphan” loom through the soft air of Kitenga? Quite the contrary. The girls work so hard at their studies, from seven each morning until lights out each night. While work and studies alone do not generate the wind to set you soaring, hope does. A dream does. A plan to cure HIV does. People surrounding you to keep you lifted do. That’s what makes for a successful launch pad.
Maybe that’s why, at Kitenga, the singing is so loud and joyous, the dancing so fun and lively, the new friendships so strong. The girls are surrounded by hope and they embody it.
I can feel it in every squeezing hug I get when I say goodnight. Hugs of joy. Hugs of hope.
Girls Education Collaborative (GEC) feeds social change by supporting, leveraging and amplifying locally led initiatives centered around the education and empowerment of girls. We believe that communities know what they need — but especially in the most impoverished and under-served areas — usually lack access to resources, expertise and thought partners to help make their visions spring to life. Through the enhanced power of collaboration and partnerships, GEC acts as a portal, connecting communities for the common good. Our first project is with the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa where we’ve partnered to create an outstanding school for marginalized, impoverished and underserved girls in Kitenga, Tanzania. Learn more here.
