Sometimes a Girl's Best Friend Is Not Her Father - Examining How Time Affects Cultural Values
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/featured_articles/990303wednesday.html
Location: Naataosim went to a school on a dusty plateau in southern Kenya. The school was circled by a chainlink fence with barbed wire, meant to keep out the fathers of the girls from sneaking them away.
Quote: girls go there to escape early marriage. they all give up nomadic life. and live the Masai culture. Masai families do not understand why that change should extent to their daughters. some say that "I think there are more problems than successes," due to most feel that girls who go to school feel as if they are eduacted enough as men and people dont think women and men are supose to be equal. but they arent supose to make their own decisions. "To them that is like you are an outcast. A woman should get married. She should have children." these are quotes that represent how the people lived in those days, and how they should do what their fathers want and get married, because that is how they are supose to live.
Ancedote: Families can only visit their children two times eacho term. the school is well known for taking in girls in trouble, such as victims of sexual assault. students had also cut themselves. Now many kids done listen to their elders and they were better in the olden days. From 20 girls at the start, the number had grown to 412 by the time Mrs. Nanguria became headmistress in 1981. still many had gotten suspended.
Key Vocab:
Haven: Any place of shelter or safety.
Dowry: The money, goods, or estates the wife brings the husband before marriage
Female genital cutting (FGC):is the collective name given to traditional practices that involve the partial or total cutting away of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genitals, whether for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons. Historically, it has been also called "female genital mutilation" or "female circumcision."
headmistress: a women in charge of a private school
Masai culture: African people inhabbiting from the highlands, Kenya and Tanzania
Nomadic Life: A person with no fixed residence who roams about,aka a wanderer.
Story line: this was a about how girls went to be educated instead of getting married by who their father had chosen for them. This was a culture where you married when you were young and you were to marry who your parents choose. The girls could be even 9 years old when they were suppose to get married. And those who went away to school didnt get married at that time, and the men didnt think that was right because women aren't supose to be educated at school, and they are supose to be mothers. Female genital cutting was a common thing then, the headmistress was accused of trying to stop it, and yet all of her students have gone through it, in some sort of way.
katelyn dorey, Samantha Vunk, Amber de Rochemont
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