Ascent of Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

that the state owes her certain things by virtue of the fact that she’s a citizen of that state. She can claim an education, livelihood and shelter. She can claim that she has the right not to be marginalized. Once the state is held accountable for its obligation to promote women’s human rights and to protect women and girls from violence, a climate of intolerance for violence against women follows. There’s more likelihood that people who talk casually about violating women and girls will be censured by their friends and that women themselves will speak out, bring charges, demand justice.
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    It’s a four-hour drive from Nairobi to Meru (population 1 million) and the shelter where the Kenyan girls are staying. We drive through banana farms and tea plantations, past dark umbrella-like acacia trees, inhaling the dry scent of the savannah. Bleating goats and signs declaring “Jesus Saves” dot the landscape. Mango trees and roadsides drenched in pink, orange and red bougainvillea smack up against fluorescent green billboards advertising Safari, the country’s mobile phone provider. When we cross the equator on the way to Meru, the heat intensifies but the traffic remains the same—heavy and fast, a series of near misses for both vehicles and pedestrians.
    The rutted red dirt road into the Ripples International shelter is shaded by a canopy of lush trees that offer refuge from the heat of the equatorial sun. Hedges of purple azalea and yellow hibiscus camouflage the fence that keeps intruders away from this bucolic place that is a refuge for the 160 girls who are poised to cut off the head of the snake that is sexual assault.
    I’d been briefed in Nairobi about what to expect when I met the girls whose cases have been selected for the lawsuit. The first one I’m introduced to is Emily. The size of the child takes my breath away. Emily is barely four and a half feet tall, her tiny shoulders scarcely twelve inches across. But when she sits down to tell her story, her husky eleven-year-old voice is charged with determination. “My grandfather asked me to fetch the torch,” she explains. But when she brought it to him, it wasn’t a flashlight he wanted. “He took me by force and warned me not to scream or he would cut me up.” Along with thousands of men in Kenya and indeed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, Emily’s grandfather believes that having sex with a girl child will cure HIV/AIDS, a belief that led him to rape his own granddaughter to presumably heal himself. What’s worse, men believe that the younger the child is, the stronger the cure will be. Now she is taking the old man to the high court in Nairobi. Even Emily knows the case is likely to be history making. This little kid, along with the other 159 plaintiffs, knows that they may be the ones who strengthen the status of women and girls not only in Kenya but in all of Africa.
    “These men will learn they cannot do this to small girls,” says Emily, who, like the other girls I met, balances the victim label with the newfound empowerment that has come to her from the decision to sue.
    Charity is also eleven and her sister Susan only six. Their mother is dead. Their father raped them—first Charity, then Susan—after they came home from school one day during the winter months. Charity says, “I want my father to go to the jail.” Her sister is so traumatized that she won’t leave Charity’s side and only eats, sleeps and speaks when Charity tells her it’s okay to do so. Perpetual Kimanze, who takes care of these girls and coordinates their counselling and therapy, keeps a close eye on Susan when the little girl begins to talk to me in a barely audible voice uttering each word with an agonizing pause between, and says, “My … father … put … his … penis … between … my … legs … and … he … hurt … me.”
    It’s six days since Emily was raped; she still complains of stomach pain. She can’t sleep. She says in