Runaway Bride

She woke up in the Narok District Hospital, sixty miles east of Nairobi. She had nearly drowned in her attempt to cross the river. A nurse explained to Lydia that she had been found unconscious on the shore. Lydia begged not to be sent back home. She had heard Catholic missionaries who passed through her village speak about the importance of education. She wanted to go to school.

The nurse, who was not Masai, but was familiar with the culture, put Lydia in the care of the Tasaru Girls’ Rescue Centre, an organization that works with young Masai girls fleeing from FGM and forced marriage. The Tasaru workers arranged for Lydia to attend St. Mary’s, a Catholic boarding school in Narok. During her weeklong stay at the hospital, Lydia trashed the engagement necklace that she had worn for three years.

Lydia stayed at St. Mary’s over school breaks, afraid that if she returned home, she would never be able to leave again. When she was in sixth grade, the men from her family discovered where she was and arrived at the school. The head mistress intercepted them. Lydia hid as her father demanded that she return home to fulfill her marriage obligation. He left without Lydia, only after the head mistress, bluffing, assured him Lydia  would return when she completed her studies.

The man who had given cattle as a dowry pressured Lydia’s father to fulfill his part of the bargain. He wanted the wife promised to him. Lydia ’s father had no other daughter to offer in her place—his oldest was already married. He had no way to save face other than to retrieve Lydia. When she decided to continue her studies at St. Terige High in Lessos, his patience was at a breaking point. Again, he traveled to bring her home. Once again, she hid. This time, a teacher turned away Lydia’s father.

Lydia’s departure had damaged her family’s honor; her disobedience had humiliated her father. Worse, it had caused him to break his word, an egregious breach of the Masai cultural foundation. “He was angry that I had betrayed my family and Masai custom,” says Lydia. Nevertheless, she stayed at the high school and graduated in 1996. After graduation, she moved into the apartment of an older woman who had befriended her. She did not let her family know where she was. Knowing how unusual it was for a Masai woman to live in a non–Masai household outside of a Masai community, she feared that other Masai would recognize her by her Masai name or physical features. “The Masai are a clan that works together, so I was afraid if I came to know anyone that word would get back to my family about where I was staying and they would come to take me back to my village by force,” she says. “I felt like a prisoner.”

In 2000, she enrolled in Utalii College in Nairobi to study the hospitality industry. Very few Kenyan women attend college; it is almost unheard of for a Masai woman to do so. Other students teased or ridiculed her, saying, “What are you doing here?”

After a year in Nairobi, she was accepted for a tourism internship program at the American Hospitality Academy on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. When she boarded the plane in Kenya, she planned not to return. She would find work after finishing her internship and stay in the United States. Her escape would finally be complete.