One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [57]
“This is what I have seen. There was a lot of starvation; there was no food. Many people died in the river Gilo. They drowned; they were dragged under by animals. My father was there and paid so we could use a boat to cross. Then we were attacked again at Pochalla, where the Red Cross gave us some food. My uncle died; my older brother was wounded. My mother fled with my older brother, and I remained with my father and the younger brothers. We fled to Bor.” In Bor, the birthplace of SPLA leader John Garang, the massive group of refugees came under attack again. Amnesty International estimates that, in what became knows as “The Bor Massacre,” 2,000 people lost their lives. Thousands more fled the killing. Patience and her family arrived in Kakuma in 1992. Her father died in the camp. She does not know what happened to her mother or older brother (Figure 15).
“Now, things for me are very bad. You see, many of the girls were taken in by foster parents, but they do not care for them. The interest is always wealth,” she said. She is referring to the practice of the dowry a family receives when a daughter marries, which, since the traditional age for a daughter to get married is fifteen, looms over the heads of young women on their own in the camp.
Wealthy men offer between 20 and 100 cattle to a family in exchange for a girl of marrying age. Amid the deprivations of life in the camp this offer is hard to resist, especially when the girl is a foster child. The welfare of the bride becomes a much lower priority. If the girl resists, she is beaten.
“The family may not tell the girl what is happening,” Patience explained. “They make an arrangement with the man and then send you to fetch some water. While you are there, the man will come and take you by force, whether you cry or not; that’s where your life ends.”
Young women who have no parents fear being forced into marriage. In an ideal Sudanese marriage, the woman’s father and brothers would act as a line of defense against abuse. The bride could go to her father if she suffered physical abuse from her husband, who is supposed to take over the role of protector. Without parents, women like Patience and Charity had no options at all.
“If you want to go to school, your husband can say ‘No, fetch water now’ or ‘Wash the clothes,’ and you must. If you complain you will be beaten. You must do what you are told if you are a woman. You must keep quiet,” Patience said. Yet when asked about the dangers of rape and abduction for girls who have no parents in the camp, an officer from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the organization responsible for protection of the refugee population, responded that the threat to girls was lessened by marriage.
In preschool in Kakuma camp, the ratio of boys to girls enrolled is roughly one to one, according to figures provided by Lutheran World Federation. By secondary school, when girls are of marrying age, the ratio is seven boys to every girl. Girls at school often suffer harassment from the boys and from the male teachers, said the same official from UNHCR.
I met many outspoken young girls, caught between the traditional practices of their culture, in which women work to support the family in which they live, and the desires for education and independence they see women embracing around the world.
Many girls care for their younger siblings if the parents are not present or able to do so. While they would like to go to school, they feel obligated to protect their families. Patience, who is sixteen and therefore marriageable,