Editor’s note: HSN Person Of The Year is a series of articles recognizing the contribution of outstanding African men and women in their community and the world. This year the candidates were chosen by our team after looking at the impact the individuals had in our society.
For at least five years, Domtilla Chesang has trotted up and down the undulating terrain of West Pokot County. Her calling is, responding to mayday calls and distress signals of girls and women staring the face of gender-based violence, female genital mutilation, and early marriages– life’s destiny-shattering practices in some African communities.
Since 2017, the woman trained to be a high school teacher has yet to practice her bachelor of education degree. She says her efforts of weeding out the abuse of rights of womenfolk have paid off handsomely, which gives her immense pleasure, more than the several national and international accolades she has won, thanks to her community work.
“I have at least 200 girls and boys who I have directly rescued from early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation and taken them to school,” Chesang said. “Today, those girls and a few boys are at school courtesy of my efforts and my partners. I know their lives will never be the same again,” she adds.
Chesang grew up in the rural pastoral villages of West Pokot and witnessed how young girls were forcefully taken through FGM and married off shortly after. When her time to face the cut came, she ran away from home and went to live with a relative, who fortunately housed her. She was lucky enough to have an understanding mother who didn’t pressure her to conform to the prevailing cultural practice.
She escaped unscathed.
Chesang would go on to high school and later university, where she studied to be a teacher. However, her mind seemed set against being a classroom teacher but serve as a community educator and human rights advocate. She wanted to save the vast majority of Pokot women and girls, whose lives were condemned to obscurity at puberty by a long-held retrogressive cultural practice.
Having been born and raised in rural areas, she had witnessed it all and elected to be a voice for the many young girls who were helpless and hapless. Upon graduation, she returned to West Pokot, her home, and started teaching the community about the adverse effects of FGM, early marriages, and, generally, suppressing girls’ rights.
“I was being diplomatic, and sometimes I could be radical, such as when rescuing the girls,” she says.
She signed a deal with the headteacher of her former primary school, a boarding school, to host the rescued girls and offer them education. She then sourced (still does) funds for school fees and the girls’ basic needs on social media. Gladly, her online friends and community played ball. Currently, she has about 60 girls in primary school.
Initially, Chesang had formed a self-help group to push her agenda in the community, but the reception was cold because of its course.
“The community stepped back and left everything to me. Of course, I could not sustain the campaign alone. To make them involved, I registered the movement with the name ‘I-Rep’ as a community-based organization (CBO). I-Rep means I am responsible, and I wanted them to know that it was every community member’s responsibility to protect our girls’ future,” she says.
The first cohort of her rescue efforts is almost graduating from universities and colleges. Besides taking the girls to various schools in the county, she also lives with several others in her house. She says her ‘I am responsible’ mantra has paid off.
“I used to go to look for them in the villages. Now they come to me. They run to me because they have known their rights and that FGM and early marriages are wrong and against their rights,” she says.
To replace the FGM initiation rite of passage, she and her team are now offering an alternative initiation ceremony. They take the girls to seclusion for a week, where they teach them about community values and heritage, human rights and responsibilities, and the growth and development of their bodies. After the week of teachings in seclusion, the girls graduate and are considered to have passed puberty initiation.
Despite the CBO being girl-child centered, it occasionally rescues and admits vulnerable boys in the community. Chesang believes that “you cannot empower one child and leave the other.”
“We work with boys and men. I can’t leave a vulnerable boy who needs my help. Some boys are denied an education because they are either firstborns or their married brothers have died,” she said.
She gives two November incidents where young boys were victims of early forced marriages and were forced out of school to attend to families.
In the first incident, she says, a boy in form two was taken out of school to go and inherit his late brother’s wife to continue the family lineage. The first brother had been killed by the bandits who are synonymous with the valleys of West Pokot county.
In another incident, a standard eight boy was forced to marry because he was the firstborn. His parents forced him to marry and get children to nourish the family lineage.
Besides responding to such cases from boys, Chesang says that I-Rep also creates awareness among the boys and men “because they are equally susceptible to early marriages and gender-based violence.”
Chesang believes that education is critical in eradicating GBV in the county.
“My community has 67 percent illiteracy, and education is a critical factor in the war against GBV and early marriages, and that’s why after rescuing girls, we take them to school,” she says.
In 2018, the then West Pokot County Governor, Professor John Lonyangapuo, launched adult literacy classes to counter the county’s high illiteracy rate.
“Illiteracy levels in West Pokot are alarming and stand at a staggering 67%, according to statistics provided by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics,” Lonyangapuo said. “It is on this basis that my government took an elaborate decision to spearhead massive investment in education, including adult education,” the governor wrote on his Facebook page on September 7, 2018.
The I-Rep Director says she is pleased that FGM has “greatly reduced” in her community. She attributes her success to working with community leaders and people of similar interests at the grassroots.
“I live in the village, and I, therefore, get firsthand information and act in time,” Chesang said.
In July 2020, when Covid-19 was rife, and the air was charged with coronavirus, FGM and early marriages were taking the village of Masol by a wave that matched coronavirus’. Chesang took her campaign there, and he stirred up the sleepy town.
“The village had no health facility nor a school. No one from that village had ever gone to school,” she said.
“Today, there is a CDF-built school in that village, courtesy of my lobbying. In addition, 36 girls from the village joined a boarding primary school. I’m sure Masol will never be the same again,” she adds.
Her work in defending and advocating the rights of women and girls has won her national and international recognition. In 2017, at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II conferred her with the Queen’s Young Leaders Award, thanks to the work that she was doing in the West Pokot community.
In 2018 she was recognized as the Pan African Youth Leader of the Year in South Africa. In 2019, during the national Mashujaa Day, she was recognized as a Shujaa (heroine) by former President Uhuru Kenyatta. In 2019 still, she was awarded the Human Rights Defender (HRD) of the Year Award. In 2021, she was awarded the Head of State Commendation by President Kenyatta.
“I appreciate the recognition, but still, there is work to be done. What I celebrate more, however, is the impact my work has brought in my community,” Chesang said.
To make her campaign sustainable, she has mentored a team of young people working with the I-REP organization as employees and volunteers.
“They are doing a great job, and even if I quit the calling today, the movement will continue. Some of them have even won awards on their own,” she said.