Meet Mary: She Is Enough
We are sharing Mary’s story in conjunction with our ENOUGH campaign. She is enough reason for all of us to say, “Enough is enough!” Together, we have more than enough resources to eradicate FGM, child marriage, and gender-based violence.
Learn more at flourishkenya.org/enough.
Earlier this year, Flourish Kenya’s Administrator, Christine Lemiso, was heartbroken by the news of people suffering due to near famine conditions caused by severe drought in a neighboring county. She helped organize a food drive in Kilgoris and other parts of Narok County. When she went with her team of volunteers to a remote school in Kajiado to deliver the truckload of food they had collected, she had no idea it would turn into a rescue.
*Mary’s name, story, and images have been shared with permission from Mary and her parents after careful explanation of their use.
That same day, a 15-year-old girl named Mary visited a nearby school to see if there was a way for her to enroll. When she arrived, she was told that there was a food distribution happening at another school. Knowing her family’s struggle at home, she set off for the event. She approached a teacher who listened with compassion as the girl shared the challenges she was facing. Familiar with societal norms, the teacher knew with near certainty what would become of Mary if no one intervened.
Mary’s parents would arrange for her to be married off in exchange for a dowry.
Immediately, the teacher thought of Christine. She knew about Flourish Kenya’s Vulnerable Student Sponsorship Program, and that Christine was at the event, so she brought the girl to share her story with the team. Mary revealed that she was living in extreme poverty with her parents and siblings. Still, she was somehow able to complete her upper primary classes in 2022. Not only that, she performed very well on her national exams. However, her family lacked the resources to send her to high school.
The family’s hope for survival was now pinned on Mary’s dowry. The exchange of food, household supplies, and perhaps even livestock for their daughter’s hand in marriage, would sustain them a little longer… and with one less mouth to feed.
If 15-year-old Mary were to continue on this path, any hope of reaching her full potential as a bright young woman would be lost.
Mary would be forced to:
1. Undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
2. Marry a much older man in exchange for a dowry
3. Suffer serial acts of Gender-Based Violence (GBV)
4. Begin childbearing immediately
With this knowledge, Christine secured permission from Mary’s parents to bring her back to Kilgoris and seek enrollment in secondary school. At the time, Christine had no idea how she would make this happen— logistically or financially. With an over-filled scholarship portfolio and five students waiting for sponsors, Christine’s options are limited. But Christine is a courageous woman of great faith, and she knew that God would work things out for Mary.
At this point, you might be asking,
“Why didn’t Christine know how she would be able to help this girl? Isn’t that what Flourish Kenya is about?”
Even though the grassroots movement Christine helped form in 2016 is seen as the local authority on what to do when girls are in crisis, funding restraints have prevented her team from formalizing systems and programs that support crisis intervention.
In fact, in recent months, she and her staff have been facing increasing pressure from peers and community leaders, whom they turn to regularly with requests for contributions for crowdfunded rescues.
”WHY IS THERE STILL NO PLACE FOR THESE GIRLS TO GO?!”
Her response is simple.
”Because the money hasn’t come. We have a model, a place, and a plan… but we are still waiting for funds to build a rescue center and expand our programs. But at least we can help this one girl.”
Thankfully, by God’s grace and with the help of community members back in Kilgoris, Christine was able to enroll Mary in school with a full sponsorship! She collected money and supplies for Mary’s uniforms, undergarments, toiletries, and school supplies. Mary settled into her new boarding school, but soon it was the half-term break.
During breaks, dorms close, and students return home for a few weeks or up to a couple of months between school years. The FK team, now taking it upon themselves to follow Mary and look after her, met to decide where Mary could go during the break.
Even though FK Facilitator, Linus Keriako and his young family were already housing a teen mother and her baby who had fled home because of abuses brought on by her unplanned pregnancy, they welcomed Mary into their home. During that time, Linus, also a part-time pastor, helped lead a church conference in his village of Oltikampu. Mary attended the conference with Linus’s family, and it was discovered that Mary and her entire family had fallen into involvement with the occult.
Caring and dedicated church leaders surrounded Mary with love and prayer, determined to see her released from this bondage. We thank God that Mary received freedom through Christ at the conference! But Linus and his fellow pastors couldn’t stop with Mary.
The very next day, a team was dispatched from Oltikampu that included pastors, FK staff, and board members. The group traveled with Mary for several hours to the place where she had been living in Kajiado.
When they arrived at her home, they found that Mary’s parents and siblings were living in a makeshift shelter constructed from tree branches and plastic sheets.
The group asked questions about their story without judgment. They showed caring curiosity about how they came to live this way. The parents were resistant at first, but as the group listened with love, gently counseled the family, and helped them see how their daughter had been transformed, the team was able to begin praying for them. Through this process, and to the Glory of God, Mary’s parents were delivered from satanic influence as well!
Moved by their desperate living situation, Linus offered to bring the entire family back to Oltikampu to live on his family’s farmland. He took on the weighty responsibility of not only providing for these people but caring for them spiritually. This meant integrating them into his church community and leaning on his neighbors for support, which he knew he would receive from loving followers of Christ.
His village is very remote, located in a difficult-to-reach mountain bowl high above Kilgoris town. This secluded area of Kenya is mostly populated by the Maasai, a largely neglected people group. Corruption in the Kenyan government causes resources meant to bring clean water, electricity, and other infrastructure to their area to be misused. This means that many citizens, including the bulk of Linus’s church community, suffer as a result. Nonetheless, they have rallied around Mary’s family.
Mary’s home in Kajiado
Linus and other church leaders, along with the entire Flourish Kenya team have been discipling the family in their new faith for several months now, and Mary is flourishing in her studies.
And that is how these stories go— the stories that end with a girl being rescued. Many more end in FGM, child marriage, and a life of desperation that perpetuates the cycle of harm. Girls are forced to grow families who suffer violence and oppression and live only to survive. Generation after generation, parents put children in harm’s way because it has become culturally acceptable to do so in areas that remain cut off from resources, education, and opportunities to thrive.
As of now, if a girl in rural Kenya stands a chance of escaping the cycle, her only hope is that good people will help her escape dangerous circumstances. And that means the good people who help are giving from their own already limited resources. All the while, doing so without the support of systems and services that can give these girls the help they really need. And that is why we are saying,
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Enough families barely surviving.
Enough girls in harm’s way.
Enough scrambling for solutions.
There are MORE THAN ENOUGH resources in the Kingdom of God to bring about long-term, sustainable solutions that not only rescue girls, but that eradicate the evil practices of FGM, child marriage, and GBV.
Will you take action right now so that more girls just like Mary can find safety, dignity, and hope?
Will you give today? For Mary?
