impossible reconciliation

My heart hurts and my spirit is heavy. These are my peers. These are my friends, my sisters, me. And I am furious. I am deeply, deeply sorrowful.

Those who know me well (or who have read my writing) know that the aspect of my experiences in Kenya which has pained me, challenged me, overwhelmed me most is child death. It is something that I cannot ever figure out how to handle.
A few weeks ago, a little girl, a second grader, in the community died. They had just finished repairing the tarmac road – it was smooth and clean and pot-hole free. They hadn’t yet put in the speed bumps to slow the ever-hurrying vans and lorries that fly down the road. She was walking home from school, beginning to cross the road, when a truck sped around the corner and killed her.
I didn’t know the child, only knew other members of the community who were friends of the family, knew teachers at the school which she attended. And after that Thursday when she died, my heart hurt. My soul felt and feels heavy, for the little girl with lost dreams, lost spirit, lost life. For the family missing a daughter, a sister, a friend, a light.
Child death has been and is something I cannot reconcile, cannot comprehend, cannot recover from. Previously, it was the sole experience in Kenya over which I became simultaneously furious and sorrowful.
Until this trip. Until three students became pregnant this year. One raped by a member of her immediate family. One forced to sleep with a man in return for him buying her school supplies. One, in seventh grade, who is too terrified to reveal the name of the baby’s father.
The first, a girl whose quiet smile fills her face with dimples, ran away from school for fear of the stigma, for lack of options, for desperation and hasn’t been seen in months. The second has also left school and is unlikely to return, now having a baby to care for on top of the myriad of responsibilities which she already held at her home. The third is no longer in school, coming so close to finishing primary school only to instead become a mother at thirteen.
We tell the girls to make smart choices, to abstain while in school. To use contraceptives. To know their partner’s status. To make sure, if one chooses sex, that it is with a trusted individual, that it is safe. But what happens when a girl is raped? What happens when she is assaulted by a member of her own family? By the person who is supposed to be caring for her?
We tell the girls that they are more than the 50 shillings it costs to buy a notebook or a pen or a protractor. We tell the girls they are more than school supplies. And it’s true, they are. But we also tell the girls that education is everything, that they must stay in school so that they can see success in their future. So what happens when their teachers send them home from school if they don’t have their supplies? What happens when they don’t have 50 shillings to purchase a notebook? What happens when the man who says he will pay for the pencils decides later that the girl must pay him back in sex?
And what happens to the thirteen year old who is caring for a baby? What happens to the girl who once told me she wanted to become a lawyer? What happens now, to the girl who may never even finish secondary school?

How can any of it be reconciled?
Mariah and I visited a girls’ boarding school this weekend and took a trip to Lake Victoria with some of the students. I watched as fishermen (notorious for their use and abuse of prostitutes and vulnerable girls) came up to the students, talked to them, flirted. My heart hurt for them. I wanted to run over and kick the men and hold the girls, protect them. I wanted to take them away, sit with them, cry with them.
These are my peers. These are my friends, my sisters, me. And I am furious. I am deeply sorrowful.
Furious that uncles and fathers and brothers feel they have the right to destroy members of their family. Sorrowful that to even acquire a pencil, a girl must let her body, herself, be reduced to 50 shillings. Furious that the shy yet strong primary school student who I once knew, who I have carried with me since 2009, is now somehow a mother. Furious that the problem is so great, so deeply set and unwavering that it seems impossible to know where to start, to know what to do. Sorrowful that these girls seem to realize the unchanging ways of reality so succumb to stigma and pressure by running away, dropping out of school, disappearing. Furious that this is the norm. Deeply, deeply sorrowful that so many girls, in Kenya, in the United States, in my own high school, are victim to this brutal, relentless vulnerability.
I do not know how to reconcile this. I do not know what to do. I do not know how to recover.
I want to kick the men who have hurt them, who continue to hurt these girls — these girls with dreams, with spirits, with life. Again, the truck has sped around the corner and I want to protect them, to hold them, to cry with them.
My heart hurts and my spirit is heavy. These are my peers. These are my friends, my sisters, me. And I am furious. I am deeply, deeply sorrowful.