Kalanga Boy meets a female friend from Kenya

The author and friends pause for a photo before the conference

It’s not like I was not looking forward to any surprises here, no. I had always known that by landing here in East Africa I would definitely enjoy new sights, friendships and experiences. But as to who exactly I was going to meet I had no idea.

We were at a conference in Uganda where close to 100 youths from different countries all over the world met for a four day workshop at Speke Resort, one of the high class hotels in Kampala the capital city. There were a lot of girls here, and let me hasten to admit they were stunningly beautiful, all of them.

For those male youths who were on the prowl it was quite difficult to narrow down your choice because on top of the fact that we were out there where we could meet new people, freely chat and share as much as we could especially in the evenings after the activities, everywhere your eyes landed on beauty. Like anyone else, I was also on the lookout.

Scenes at the great conference where the author met the friend

The moment I was waiting for finally came during one of the sessions on the second day of the conference. The facilitator of that session had divided us into different groups and allocated us different topics for discussion after which we were supposed to give feed back to the rest of the delegates. One of these groups had a mixture of girls from Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya. Let me ignore all the other groups for now, including mine and focus on only this one, where my newly discovered treasure was.

One after another, the presenters from this group gave us their feedback until the turn of one Kenyan girl arrived. It is not like I was always eyeing this Kenyan young lady all along, no. But like I earlier on said, my eyes were always on the lookout.

“When we are busy empowering women, let’s not forget to empower the boy child as well,” said my friend from Kenya. That did it. I knew I had found a friend who looked at the world objectively, like I always felt. I wanted to chat with her, to befriend her and finally to hear her story. To me she was a leader, worth to be associated with.

For the rest of the period that remained till the end of the conference, I made sure that I did not lose sight of her because the following day we were checking out of that hotel, going back to our respective work stations. Of course I know that she had no idea that someone from Zimbabwe, the Kalanga Boy was dying to speak to her.

It was during the final lunch, just before departure that I finally stumbled upon her, having been looking for her all over the hotel. I approached her and after an exchange of “hie hie”s, I hastened to tell her the mission of my looking for her. She was indeed surprised. I could see this by the way she remained stunned as I explained my mission to her.

“Alright, we can start,” she said, granting me the green light to interview her. I switched on my recorder, and applying all my interview skills I had learned while I was with Radio Dialogue back home in Zimbabwe, off we rolled and below are the contents of that 7 seven minutes recording…..

“Like I said yesterday, I still insist that as much as we are striving to empower the girl child, let us not forget to empower the boy child as well,” Sharon began, for that is her name.

“Basically there are many activities in Kenya that have been done to empower the girl child, even at a very young age. It all starts at home and extends to church, that is to Sunday school. For example, I know of a group of ladies who have contributed so much to empowering the girl child in my country. These ladies came together to form a Current Needs Circle to help empower women in Kenya and today they are doing pretty much well.

“This organization was founded by just three ladies who started off by making homemade soap and selling it to their neighbourhood. They went on to train other women on that skill and as a group they sold their products and kept on saving the profits. Thereafter they went on to establish what we call in Kenya the “charmer” a system whereby you loan off money to someone and then they return it with a certain amount of interest on top. This scheme is also known as table banking here.

“This money has been used to pay school fees for the girl child and to buy sanitary pads for them. This has made the girls to excel in their studies because unlike in the bygone times where the girl child used to skip a lot of lessons especially during her periods when she could not go to school for fear of being laughed at, she is now freely attend their lessons.

“As I speak right now, girls’ academic performance in Kenya is superior to that of their male counterparts and that is plausible.

“However, a very disturbing outcome has surfaced up for the Kenyan community concerning the boy child. Of course, there are also activities for example sports, that is soccer and athletics tournaments that are specifically for boys but even if they excel, nobody recognizes them. This has affected their self-esteem and most of them have even lost hope in life because they know that whatever happens, all the privileges belong to the girl child. 

“In reality, what I have often seen is that when a boy child excels yet he needs assistance, he receives none but when a girl child excels, even if she does not need any assistance it is always offered. For example, if boys are organizing for instance a tournament to raise funds for their welfare, they go through a lot as compared to their female counterparts. Therefore, they are slowly giving up as they see no sense in themselves and in what they will be doing because no one recognizes them.

“In my opinion there is more than an urgent need to empower the boy child in Kenya because our society now is highly imbalanced and consequently unsafe and dangerous. The boy child has grossly been demeaned because since they are not that educated, they are not employable and as a result, they resort to crime to make their needs met. That is why you realize that that there is high crime rate in Kenya. It is caused by the failure of society to address the plight of the boy child whom they neglect and leave for the dead. 

“Because the male is not empowered enough to be able to establish and support a family and let alone to fend for himself, there is also an increasing number of ladies who do not want to get married to these men yet they want to have children with them. This has increased the number of children who do not know their fathers and in my own view, that is unfair to the children because unless if there are serious circumstances preventing it, normally a child needs to grow up in the custody of both parents so that he or she receives physical and emotional support from both.

“Right now, Kenya is forced to start all over again to empower the boy child because the girls are already empowered. They are far off. Doing things this way, the cycle will never end. It will go on and on and on.

“In a nutshell, if you ask me, there is no need to struggle with one gender leaving the other one behind. Just hold their hands together and then you walk them through the empowerment process,” concluded Sharon.

Readers of this blog, those were the contents of the recordings of my conversation with Sharon. I am sorry for disappointing you for I know that you were probably suspecting that we chatted about something else other than this.

Moving on, of course I had realized, before that day, that several Kenyan women were married to Ugandan men but I had not taken any much notice of it. I thought that it was just inter-country marriage like that which was happening back home between Zimbabwe and Botswana because I myself am a product of cross-border marriage: my father is a Zimbabwean and my mother is Motswana from Botswana.

But still, I am not about to hasten to conclude that Kenyan women are marrying men from other countries because their men have been disempowered and therefore cannot attract them, no. This is still subject to debate, needing further research. 

But at least according to Sharon and my own independent observation and research several facts remain: first, that in Kenya the girl child has been highly empowered and the boy child disempowered and therefore cannot sell that much in the economic and social market; secondly, that Kenyan women, like any other from elsewhere, marry outside their country; thirdly, that a considerable number of Ugandan men are married to Kenyan women and finally that while the whole world is advocating for the empowerment of the girl child only, there is a section of the global society that feels that both sexes should be empowered to avoid the social imbalance and antagonism that rises from this one sidedness as is currently the case with Kenya.

By the way, Kenya is just one example of a country but not the only one. So next time I will be coming to you with the example of Sychelles, closer home in Southern Africa. This will however not happen before I bring to you my next blog, detailing something else but which I feel is a must read for everyone.

Sharon (it is her real name but I deliberately leave her surname behind) is a young Kenyan woman aged 21 and is already a lawyer by profession. As far as I could see, she is a great leader in her own outright.

See you in my next blog. It will be very interesting, that I promise. Just watch the space…..