Page 19 - Desk of the Imam

Desk of the Imam Magazine April 2018
Their diet comprises mostly of milk and
occasionally blood from their cows. The very
interesting part of the Samburu culture is that
they have maintained a strict patriarchy for over
500 years in northern Kenya. Patriarchy is a
term used to describe a system of society or
government in which men hold the power and
women are largely excluded from it.
The women of Samburu have been living under
a harsh patriarchy system for over 500 years.
They undergo rituals like the female gender
mutilation also known as female circumcision
after which girls as young as 12 years are given
away in an arranged marriage to men old enough
to be their grandfathers. This was until 25years
ago when a group of women decided to stand up
for themselves and leaving home and
abandoning tradition, created their own village
where
no men were allowed. Rebecca Lolosoli (born
1962) is the founder and matriarch of the Umoja
village in the Samburu County of Kenya. The
village is a refuge for women fleeing sexual
abuse, and men are banned from the
village. Lolosoli was born in the village
of Wamba in 1962 and was one of a family of
six brothers and sisters. She was married at age
18 and her dowry consisted of 17 cows. She
Masjid Al-Hamdulillah | Desk of the Imam 19
created her own business and in the village,
stood up for the rights of other women. When
she was beaten by four men and her husband did
nothing to help her, nor object she left him. In
1990, she and a few other women founded the
village of Umoja, and made it a woman-only
space.
Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite
literally a no man's land, and the matriarchal
refuge is now home to the Samburu women who
no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital
mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of
men. Throughout the years, it has also
empowered women in the districts surrounding
Samburu to start their own women-only villages.
Meet Rebecca
Rebecca
Lolosoli is the
matriarch of
Umoja Village,
an all-women’s
community
located in the
Samburu
District of
Kenya. She founded the village in 1991 to
support women and girls, orphans and widows –
those who were facing social and economic
difficulties and had been abandoned by their
families, or were fleeing domestic violence,
forced marriage or female genital mutilation
(FGM). They had no land, no guarantee of
human rights, and no protection under the law.
Often, they were victimized over and over as
they lived on the streets, vulnerable to continued
violence and maltreatment. Rebecca saw the
need to gather these women together and work
collectively to find strategies for survival, and to
begin to change the way families and
communities in Samburu treat women.
With the help of other women, Rebecca has
been able to provide a safe haven for the women
in her community who have been tortured,
beaten, and raped. What started in 1991 as a