Maasai Girls Lutheran Secondary School at Monduli, Thursday, February 2

On Thursday, we first visited the Maasai Girl’s Lutheran Secondary School in Monduli. The Maasai school was especially interesting for me since Concordia College (Moorhead), my undergraduate college, has a relationship with the school. Every year, two graduates from this school are given full scholarships to come to Concordia. It’s interesting and shocking to learn about the situations from which girls at this school come. Many of them can’t go home over school breaks because their families would force them to marry their pre-arranged husbands. If a girl becomes pregnant in any secondary school in Tanzania, she is sent home, so many women at the Maasai school can’t risk going home ever. There is much opposition by many parents about this school (though less now than a few years ago) because parents can lose the dowry paid to them when they promised their young, infant daughter to a man. Prior to this education, these women had no choice but to submit to their husbands’/families’ traditions. The Maasai girl’s school gives them a choice and a voice. Social justice begins with education.

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