Why school is a sanctuary for girls in Kenya

Mary and Rehema sleep in adjoining bunks at a girls’ dormitory built by ChildFund at a school in Samburu County, Kenya.

They’re both 14, and when they get a little older, they both want to work in healthcare. There’s something empowering about the idea of becoming a professional healer. Where they’re from, girls don’t often get that opportunity .

In the pastoral communities of north-central Kenya, the pace of life rises and falls with the seasons.

The sweltering blue sky of the dry season grows gray and heavy when the rains come, first the short rains and, later, the long.

Livestock — the basis of the local economy — are born, have their own babies and die. Most children grow up helping their families look after cattle, donkeys, camels and goats.

But for girls — who often aren’t encouraged to go to school — livestock sometimes becomes the inherent, inadvertent purpose of their lives, the limit of their learnings about the world.