PART 1 ~ REDEMPTION STORY

Today we are beginning a three part series highlighting a true REDEMPTION story. 

We begin in Samburu country, home to many St. Clare students.   The Samburu people live north of the equator in the Rift Valley of northern Kenya.  The community has preserved its ancient cultural practices, which include early marriage, female genital mutilation and beading.  With beading, a man presents a girl’s extended family with a necklace of red Samburu beads, which is placed around the girl’s neck.  The red beads indicate an engagement or an early marriage promise and are retrogressive especially to the young girl. 

Samburu woman with red beads.

Though a Samburu cultural practice, it is against Kenyan law to have intimate relations with a minor.

Samburu women

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