It's NOT OKAY with me...

It's Not Okay with me that girls are traded for cows.

During one of my visits to the Mully Children’s Family home in Kenya I was out in the bean processing building on the farm and saw a strange poster on the wall that made me laugh. It said “Don’t exchange girls for cows. Give them an education.” What a silly poster. Who would exchange their daughter for a cow? I didn’t quite take a moment to think it through, but rather asked if I could take the poster. I was sure that no one in North America would have ever seen something like this before. When I asked if I could have it I was met with some surprise and disbelief. My hosts politely shook their heads and explained that it is important that it stay up here to remind the local workers that they shouldn’t trade their daughters for cows. This poster was not created by the Mully’s, but rather was a government produced and distributed poster that was designed to address a growing problem in the country.

What did they mean? I probed as I was sure I had heard them incorrectly. It seems that often when a family runs out of food and does not see a solution, they will take their daughter to a neighbour who has cows and exchange their daughter for a cow. That’s right, “Hey, I need some food – I’ll give you my daughter if you give me one of your cows, and I’ll throw in a couple of cabbages to sweeten the deal.”

The girl is then pulled out of school (if she was lucky enough to be in school) and is used as a house servant and sexual slave by the man who purchased her. This is crazy! This is absurd! This is happening in our world in 2007. We stand and wonder why 75% of all girls between the ages of 15-24 don’t know that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease and I propose that this is one of the reasons. If a girl does not get an education she will never know the truth about AIDS. She will never have a hope for her future. She will live and die and become one of the terrible statistics we read about.

This is NOT OKAY with me. Is it okay with you? If not, what are you prepared to do about it? Come with us to Africa in 2007 and help us bring hope to families so that they don’t have to exchange their daughter for a cow. Help bring them hope so that they CAN give her an education. Will you join us?