A village women can call their own

Northern Kenya is an unlikely setting for a feminist experiment, but in one small patch, women rule, reports Rob Crilly in Umoja

Everyone remembers the day 12-year-old Nchekiyo Lembwakita arrived. All the women of Umoja, a tiny village in a remote corner of northern Kenya, raced out of their cow-dung plastered huts to see the commotion.

"She was running as fast as she could to get away from her brothers and her father's brothers," says Margaret Naseko Ejejo who runs the village school. "She was crying and just trying to escape."

Some women grabbed Nchekiyo and helped her through the thorn-branch fence that keeps wild animals from the scattered huts of Umoja.

That was two years ago. Today she squats on a goat skin in the gloom of her small home and tells her story. "My father wanted to give me to a husband but he was an old man and I refused," she says quietly in her native Samburu tongue.

She talked her dilemma over with her mother, who sympathised. But women hold little sway in traditional patriarchal Samburu culture. "My father would not listen to us. I was just worth goats, cows and camels to him."

After a month deliberating, she left her family home and set out on the 15km hike to Umoja. She was within sight of the village when her brothers and uncles finally caught up. "I was so scared. I just wanted to get away. Now I am very happy. I can make my own choices," she explains, "and find my own husband."

Nchekiyo, along with her mother who has been thrown out of the family home, has found a safe haven among the four dozen or so women of Umoja - named after the Swahili word for unity. The village was established 10 years ago on a dusty plot of unwanted land by a handful of "unwanted" women. They had all been raped, and as a result were cast out by their husbands.

Margaret (27), who arrived seven years ago, takes up the story. Like many here, she says she was raped by British soldiers stationed at a nearby training ground. Those cases are being investigated by the British military and a London lawyer is acting for many of the women.

"Traditionally, if you have been raped then you are considered unclean. Our husbands chased us away for bringing shame on the community," says Margaret. "In the end we decided it would be easier to live together without men, somewhere where we could work together to support ourselves and our children."

Today the village just about manages to support itself. The women make traditional jewellery from beads which they sell to safari buses on their way to the neighbouring Samburu National Reserve.

A simple campsite overlooks a meandering river where elephants come to drink in the evening cool.

Every so often one of the vast overland trucks that criss-cross Africa stops at Umoja, disgorging European and Australian backpackers to spend the night under canvas.

A handful of goats are fattened each year and sold on. The income goes on food, hospital fees and the village school, explains Margaret.

"It is not very much so we all help each other out," she says. "If there were men here then they would spend it on miraa [the green twig chewed for its amphetamine-like properties] or getting drunk." As word of the village spread, it began to attract women who had been beaten or girls promised as brides. "We take in anyone now," says Margaret, "whether they are Samburu or not."

Northern Kenya is an unlikely setting for a feminist experiment. Many of the tribes here view daughters as the property of their fathers, to be exchanged for cattle or goats.

Girls spend more time fetching water or gathering firewood than attending classes.

Umoja has become one small patch where women rule. Its residents go door-to-door in the neighbouring villages to promote women's rights and to campaign against female circumcision - still practised widely in rural Kenya.

Their work has won international recognition. In the past year their leader, Rebecca Lolosoli, has travelled backward and forward to address United Nations workshops and university conferences.

Faiza Jama Mohamed, of Equality Now, a rights group based in Nairobi, says: "As an initiative it looks great because it is a collective decision taken by the women to say that they have had enough, we do not want to live like this any more, and we are going to take control of our own lives."

However, she points out that separating men from women should only be seen as a temporary solution until traditional attitudes are changed.

"They have been forced into this drastic action by the level of abuse they have received," she says, "but now, as the men realise that they cannot get by without women, perhaps it opens up an opportunity for dialogue."

Not everyone is impressed with the success of Umoja. The women tell tales of being beaten when they leave the village by men searching for their wives or daughters. They say they frequently suffer verbal abuse from the spurned menfolk.

Sebastian Lesinik, chief of the region, says: "It is not a good thing. In our culture we believe we should always exist as two people - a lady and a man. I would like to see all the women go back to their men.

"That is what we are fighting for - not beating people but working with all the leaders to try to get people back together."

A man's world - what the women left behind

The village of Nkang Elpayani - village of the men - stands a couple of miles along a sand track from Umoja.

These are the men who forced their wives from home. Other men have joined from surrounding villages, keen to ape the success of the women by building a cultural centre and providing a camp site.

But where the women's homes are neat and tidy, with smooth, rounded roofs of cow dung, the men's have an unkempt look. Their roofs are patched with plastic sheets and cardboard to keep out the rain.

Kerina Lenatowana squats on a stone outside his wattle and daub home.

"It is difficult with no women - we have to collect firewood and we must cook for the children. Sometimes our sisters come here and they help us, but we do most of the work," he says.

"I don't want them to come back. We don't know if they are sick and affected by bad diseases like HIV."

He explains that the men sell a few pieces of jewellery or letter openers shaped like traditional Samburu knives, but most tourists are whisked straight to the women's village.

"We are jealous of the women - they are wealthy now."

To add insult to injury, the women of Umoja sometimes hire the men to haul firewood or to dance for tourists.

The women can hardly contain their glee when they talk of their neighbours."They don't know how to do things - not like us," says one old lady, giving a broad gap-toothed grin.

Beside her is a small pile of beads that she is turning into an intricate head dress. "No one wants to visit their village and buy crafts so they have started to stop the cars that are coming to us and they tell the drivers not to come here, that we are not clean people. The truth is that they don't work hard enough to earn money. They are lazy."