Around the World with CFCA

The following letter was written by a sponsored child in CFCA’s Nairobi, Kenya project. She writes about her life experiences, and about how sponsorship allowed her to go to school and change the direction of her life. We hope you’ll take a minute to read her touching words.

My name is Sylvia. I was born on 8th December 1989 in a family of six, two brothers and two sisters. I am from the Maasai community, a pastoralist community in Kenya. Maasai tribe is a very unique community in Kenya. This tribe has preserved its culture and some of the things we do are outdated. There is high preference of early marriages, female genital mutilation, use of traditional dressing, lives in Manyatta (traditional houses), moranism (where young people are trained in the forest to be courageous), less value of education and traditional drinking of raw cows’ blood.

Despite being born in the Maasai community – a tribe which migrates due to its pastoral practices in search of pasture, my dad took me to school at a tender age of 5, which was very rare. At that time, girls of my age were being taught how to manage their own homes. My dad was not educated but he wanted all his children to be educated. He had a vision and he knew education would empower his children. Schooling was exciting but not all that fun because my school was a bit far from home and at times the weather was not conducive for schooling because our place is semi-arid.

One Saturday morning, my dad woke me up so as not to be late for school. Pupils in higher class level (6-8) were expected to go to school on Saturdays but only for six hours. After classes that day we started heading home. A big crowd had formed near our homestead. What is it? What is happening? Many questions lingered in my mind. (more…)