New Podcast Release: Kakenya Ntaiya

In the latest episode of Lives Well Lived, the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, we talk to the Maasai girl who demanded to go to school.

Kakenya Ntaiya is a globally recognised activist and educator dedicated to empowering girls and women, particularly in rural Kenya. As a child growing up in a Maasai village, Kakenya made a bargain with her father. She would undergo the female genital mutiliation (FGM) customary among her people, if he would allow her to go to high school, instead of getting married as soon as she reached puberty.

After succeeding, not only at high school in Kenya, but getting a degree in the U.S., Kakenya founded Kakenya’s Dream, an organisation focused on ending female genital mutilation and child marriage, while providing access to education, leadership training, and safe spaces for girls.

Below are some highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.

On Pride in Culture:

Kakenya: "I think there's a sense of pride of just belonging to a community of people that hold dear to some of our greatest traditions. I love the way we dress with our bright colors. I love some of the ceremonies we do."

On Cultural Practices and Change:

Kakenya: "Culture should be positive, should be able to build and not destroy. FGM definitely destroys."

On Education and Opportunity:

Kakenya: "I believe so strongly that education really opens up a whole new world when people are educated and informed.”

On Empowering Women:

Kakenya: "We realize that you can't just empower a girl. You have to empower the entire community. So we work with the fathers. We have dialogues, we have scholarships for girls to go to high school, to go to college and just trying to create a better world. I love our mission and our vision. Really creating a better world where women are respected and given opportunity to excel in every way.”

On Measuring Success:

Kakenya: "I think that’s a life lived well, if you can make someone's life better than yours. We all want the best for our children. We want the best for our siblings and what about somebody who you don't know and you have never met in your life and you bring a better life for them? It's like, wow, that is, that's worth living. That's a life that is so well lived because joy is all about impacting people's lives and bringing joy to the world and whatever form that you can. Making someone else smile and have a better life than you have.”

On Leadership:

Peter: “What are the specific styles of leadership that have been most important for you in sustaining your vision for change?”

Kakenya: “I would think my leadership style is more consolidated or more collaborative because I believe so much that I don't have the answers for everything and if I'm leading a team, they have answers. This goes even for the community. We are trying to solve issues of child marriage or FGM. I don't have answers. I know it is bad, but I don't have answers on how to do it. So collecting the community to own it, I feel like that's what becomes really sustainable. It's not about me, it's about us coming together, so collaborative, community-driven where we work to solve the problems together or create the solutions together.”

On cultural values and ethical truths

Kasia: “I truly believe that FGM is objectively bad. So, my question would be, would you agree with me or do you perhaps believe that there is something in your culture, in other different cultures, that we cannot value or that we cannot imagine, because we are outside the culture?”

Kakenya: “So, FGM, I agree with you. It's not good. I feel that anything that subjects someone to pain is wrong. You're talking about ten year olds being surrounded by people in the community, being held down, and her clitoris being cut in a knife. That's horrific. That's terrifying. You cannot justify that. Most people would hide behind culture and say this is how we've been doing it for generations and who are you to tell us that it's wrong. I am saying it's wrong because I went through it, and I know it's painful. I know what I felt was not right, and what I experienced, I shouldn't have experienced, and no child should experience that. And that's not culture, because culture should not harm. Culture puts people together. Like, I enjoy sitting down with my grandmother and sharing stories and laughing and, That is culture.”

Final thoughts:

Peter: "You're an example of how one person can make a difference. A lot of people feel powerless in the face of bad things that are happening in their community or in the world In a larger way, but you're not the only one among the people we've been interviewing for Lives Well Lived, but you're another one who is starting from different circumstances and a different background who has clearly, been able to make a difference as an individual.”