U
nder the Kenyan sun, 30-yearold Margaret Akalali tends cowpeas in one of four small farming plots, each measuring 10 × 10 meters. Known elsewhere as black-eyed peas, cowpeas are a drought-tolerant legume that matures quickly, and local demand for them is high. As they grow, Margaret will prepare her other three plots in the hopes of increasing her potential for the upcoming harvest. “This will go a long way to helping me put food on the table, and even generate income from the surplus,” said Margaret, who received her farming plot in October 2013. Farming is a way of life in Kenya, but in this, the country’s isolated northwest, frequent droughts are a constant challenge to the local residents. Margaret is one of 700 women who, through a sustainable agriculture project called the Aminatoi Nazarene Irrigation Scheme, is improving her farming skills—and by extension her financial stability, her autonomy, and her sense of self-worth. But like the plants she cultivates, Margaret’s story goes deeper than a lack of resources. She and the other women in the sustainable agriculture project are all survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), actions against women on the basis of socially ascribed differences between males and females. In Kenya, 45 percent of women ages 15 to 49 have experienced some form of physical or sexual violence, and 90 percent of the reported cases of gender-based violence involve women, according to a public statement made by Kenya’s devolution secretary, Ann Waiguru in Nairobi on Nov. 25.
Margaret’s Story “My life has been full of battles,” said Margaret, a mother of four. “Most of the violence I faced was directly as a result of alcohol.” Her eldest daughter is now 15, the age at which she first became a mother. Sitting outside a mud-thatched house,
she talked with Brian Ombaka, GBV field officer for Nazarene Compassionate Organization in Lodwar. “I was never at peace in my home with my alcoholic husband,” she said. “Every day he came home drunk, throwing everything around in the house, including food, only to ask later for something to eat. Failure to provide would always end with me receiving a thorough beating.” To cope, Margaret sought out places where she could also drink illicitly, hoping alcohol would give her the courage to stand up to her husband.
Hardships like these make women and girls even more vulnerable. During famine, husbands may take money from the sale of personal property and leave their families. It did—but the violence in her home soon took on another dimension. “It was no longer a case of being slapped on one cheek and turning the other,” she said, “but an eye for an eye. Things got worse, and our children are the ones who suffered most. I was not available to provide for them as I used to, because I was busy with my drink.” At one point, after spending several days away from home in an effort to drink away the pain, Margaret returned home to find that everyone was gone. Her husband had left and taken their four children with him. It’s been more than two years since she has seen any of them. “Her story represents that of thou-
sands of other Turkana girls whose childhood and teenage is stifled away by culture,” said Ombaka. “Sometimes, women carry the world on their shoulders in silence, yet inwardly their spirits are breaking.”
Binding Up the Brokenhearted Survival in northwestern Kenya is a difficult proposition. Turkana, Kenya’s largest county, lies in an isolated, drought-prone basin. Most residents rely on farming as their means of survival, but with an annual rainfall of less than 10 inches, adequate harvests are hard to come by. When even less rain than normal fell between 2010 and 2011, crops that had been planted did not make it to maturity. Families sold personal property to buy maize, the country’s staple food, at inflated rates. Hardships like these make women and girls even more vulnerable. During famine, husbands may take money from the sale of personal property and leave their families, according to Samuel Oketch, NCM Kenya field coordinator. “When [the men] come home, they expect to find food every day,” Oketch said. “Women resort to casual labor jobs in order to sustain the family and avoid a beating from their husbands. Failure to provide also means children are sent home from school due to lack of fees and other school necessities. So women are forced to work extra hard to take care of their families.” During the severe famine that spread across east Africa and the Horn of Africa in 2011, the number of cases of reported violence against women and girls quadrupled in six months, with theft, assault, rape, and kidnapping becoming all too common during the long, unattended journeys many women and children made to refugee camps, according to a 2011 CBC News report. Gender-based violence can be expressed in a variety of ways, from
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