Thirteen-year-old Nawi (Michelle Lemuya Ikeny) is a super student in a remote Turkana village who earns the highest score in the county on a year-end exam. Her achievement is such a big deal that it is covered by the local TV news. She can enter the high school of her choice, and she chooses a prestigious school for girls. But there is a problem. A wealthy older man, Shadrack (Ben Tekee), wants to marry her and add her to his stable of wives. Nawi’s father, Eree (Ochungo Benson), sees Nawi as nothing more than a revenue opportunity, a chance to escape his financial problems by selling his daughter for 100 goats, 60 sheep and six camels. Nawi’s mother, Rosemary (Michelle Chebet Tiren), is proud of Nawi, but Turkana tradition is Turkana tradition, so she feels she has no choice but to go along. Nawi’s only ally is her brother Joel (Joel Liwan).
The wedding takes place. As Nawi waits for Shadrack to arrive for their first sexual experience, Nawi cuts herself and smears the blood between her legs. Falling for her trick, Shadrack says he can wait until she finishes menstruating.
Nawi immediately escapes. This is not easy, as the landscape is harsh, and Shadrack and his lackeys pursue her. Along the way, Nawi encounters a variety of sympathetic men, women and children. Shadrack and Eree hassle about the dowry, but then find a solution. Rosemary is pregnant again. If the baby is a girl, Shadrack will, as soon as she comes of age, accept her as a replacement for Nawi.
At the screening I attended, two of the four co-directors, Toby and Kevin Schmutzler, spoke to the audience, as did Michelle Lemuya Ikeny. But the really moving presentation was the one given by screenwriter Milcah Cherotich. Having arrived in Los Angeles from Kenya just nine hours earlier, she was bursting with the desire to tell her story. She kept apologizing and asking if she was talking too much. Quite the opposite. We were all riveted and wanted to hear more.
When Cherotich was fourteen years old, she and her best friend went to the local marketplace. They put sparkles on their faces because it made them feel good. Suddenly, a group of young men approached them and grabbed her friend, marriage by abduction being common among the Turkana. Her friend screamed, as did Cherotich. But no one intervened. Cherotich ran after them to save her friend. The thugs grabbed her too and pretended to haul her away. But really they just wanted Milcah’s friend. They threatened Milcah with punishment if she continued to follow them. Her last view was of her friend’s pleading look of desperation. Years later, Cherotich tracked down her friend, who now had seven children. “She looked,” said Cherotich, “four times older than rest of us of the same age.”
Cherotich was forever haunted by that final look in the marketplace, and the guilt she felt, wondering if she could have done more to save her friend. What she did do was to write a story about the curse of child marriage. She entered her story in a competition run by an NGO called Learning Lions with the goal of making a film about Turkana culture. The judges voted unanimously for Cherotich’s story, and it became the film Nawi.
Learning Lions and the NAWI fund has created a girls’ high school, the Wakanda Girls Senior High, on the shore of Lake Turkana.
The excellent Ethiopian film Difret, based on a celebrated incident, deals with a case of child bride kidnapping that led to a change in the law in Ethiopia. Child marriage is illegal in Kenya too. However, as in Ethiopia, enforcement is not consistently enforced.
