Teen Tells Story of How She Fled 78-Year-Old Husband When She Was Just 9
In a most painful and heart-melting interview, a 13-year-old girl told the story of how she was forced to marry a 78-year-old man when she was only 9 years of age.
Younis told CNN that her parents arranged for her to marry a man who was 69 years her senior, and while she did not agree to the marriage, she was literally forced to submit to the local Samburu tradition.
Marrying off young girls, female genital mutilation (FGM), and beading, a practice that allows for men in the same clan and family to have sex with the young girls in the brood, are all supposedly illegal in Kenya. However, an ancient tribe called the Samburu, still defy the law and stand by their ancient traditions of child marriage and incest.
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Looking back on the pains of the past, Younis said, "When I was about nine years old, my father married me off to an old man who was 78 years old. I went to his home and I stayed with him one week." She recalled how the old man told her she will have to be a wife to him and when she refused, the man supposed to be her husband hit her with a cane.
In a twist of fate, she learned about a woman named Kulea who was known for taking in children who suffered the same fate as hers. She recounted the long and arduous journey as she fled her old husband and walked barefoot to the place she called "children's office," where she was taken in by Kulea's Samburu Girls Foundation.
Kulea said she realized that her community was the only tribe that had girls undergo FGM and she started questioning her own culture. "I...came to realize that there are things that are not right and I need to make a difference, that's how I started rescuing girls," she said.
"Mama Kuela," as referred to by the more than 200 girls she had rescued from the wiles of the Samburu tradition, first rescued her two cousins and later on looked around her community for other girls who needed to be taken out of their grief.
Younis is now attending a boarding school, along with eight other girls who went through the same hell as she did.
