In 2008 I had an opportunity to make a difference but I missed the chance. I have a passion for empowering Maasai women by seeking to get them scholarships or money to start small businesses. The Amboseli in Kenya is my childhood homeland and over the years, during my seminary studies and now as a professor, I have returned many times. Almost three years ago an American church partnered with myself and the tribe to build a high school at the base of Kilimanjaro so that any girl rescued from undergoing female circumcision (female genital mutilation) or from an early marriage would have a safe place to go to school. On this particular trip, I woke up in the morning and went for a walk as I did when I was little boy growing up near Amboseli National Park. My grandfather, a spiritual leader of the Maasai, used to bring me along at sunrise to greet the morning in prayer, and survey places for our cattle to roam.
As I walked down the road past the village I could hear the cries of a young female voice screaming "they will come!" I knew what it meant: the cries came from a young woman whose family had agreed to early marriage and circumcision. We have an agreement with the village elders that any girl for whom we can pay the $150 a year for school will not have to go through female genital mutilation. If we can pay, she will go to school. That morning I wanted to meditate and remember the good old days. I thought to myself, "I will be back after watching the sunrise and doing quiet time, then I will go to the village and help the girl." I was on a mission to do my religious thing.
When I went back to the village the girl was gone and her mother was crying. The girl was sixteen and at the top of her academic class, but her family was poor. If she would go through female genital mutilation and be married off, they could sell the cattle received for her dowry. Then, her brother could afford to go to school. I lost a chance to make a difference because I waited for too long to make my life count. Every time I travel to the village I wonder what happened to her.
Do not wait to make your life count.
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