A group of about 50 women in northern Kenya have formed a women-only commune and live there with their children, without having to put up with many of their society’s patriarchal attitudes.
Writing for The Guardian, Julie Bindel traces their lives since a group of 15 women led by Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja, in the Samburu grasslands of northern Kenya in 1990. The women were survivors of rape by local British soldiers. It later expanded to include any woman escaping child marriege, female genital mutilation(FGM), domestic violence and rape.
Currently, 47 women and 200 children live in the village. The women are from several Samburu villages who have come to Umoja seeking refuge.
Like all communities, this village of women in Umoja come together under the "tree of speech" to make their decisions.
The village runs on a business of handmade crafts and ornaments that they sell to tourists in the campsites located close by.
“I have learned to do things here that women are normally forbidden to do,” Nagusi, a middle-aged woman with five children tells The Guardian. “I am allowed to make my own money, and when a tourist buys some of my beads I am so proud.” she adds.
The women propagate the ills of early marriage and FGM to women and girls from surrounding Samburu villages, where there is a long tradition of girls entering into early "temporary" marriage forced by the community. Pregnant girls in this "temporary" marriage are forced into abortion.
“I was traded for cows by my father when I was 11 years old,” she tells me with the help of an interpreter. “My husband was 57.”Memusi one of the residents of the village tells Bindel.
Men from the next village however, appear to look down on the women, who have often faced threats for choosing to live the way they do. One of them says “They think they are living without men, but that is not possible. Most of them end up having babies”
Read the full story at The Guardian