Sonyanga Ole Ngais
is Captain of the Maasai Cricket Warriors, coach of the Maasai Cricket Ladies team, and one of the stars of the highly
acclaimed ‘Warriors’, a powerful documentary
directed by Barney Douglas. Through the vehicle of cricket, these young Maasai men have found a voice – and are taking a stand in the fight against FGM.

 

The film follows the young sportsman and his team from his birth place in Laikipia, north-east of the
Great Rift Valley, Kenya, as they
train and travel to England, to
compete in the 2013 Last Man Stands World Championship. However Sonyanga’s story is about much more
than cricket: “the
ball is the spear, the bat is the shield”; If you look a little deeper, this
is a story of a group of young Maasai brothers and their nephews, taking a stand against discrimination of
the girl-child. It’s
about collective protection; for their sisters, their daughters and their
future daughter’s
daughters. This is about the war on FGM.

The Ngais
brothers: Saidimu (the eldest), Paraga, Sonyanga and Lesikito, have five sisters. Four of them were cut, married off at an early age, before their brothers were
mature enough to help put a stop to the suffering.  As these young men watched traditions repeat
themselves again and again, they became traumatised. For each of them,
their elder sisters were their ‘little mothers’; taking care of them when their mother and father
were away searching for food, grass and water for the animals.  The Ngais brothers are the visionary bearers of the
idea behind the Maasai Men Against FGM (MMAFGM),and their story is one of a cultural
revolution; of the questioning of discriminating and harmful traditions that steal
the freedom and dreams of young girls.

If current trends continue, about 86
million additional girls worldwide will be subjected to the FGM practice by
2030 – however the Ngais brothers believe in change. They have chosen to fight
to eradicate FGM from the surface of their own land and to try to influence
other societies to do the same.

Sonyanga speaks to us of his vision for the Maasai
community: “Female genital
mutilation, early marriages and lack of equal rights are among the
retrogressive practices in our Maasai way of living. If we look to eradicate
these practices then I see a future where everyone enjoys equal rights.  A healthy and well educated society with a
positive focus on life. I believe that we don’t have to physically mutilate a
girl for her to realize that she is now an adult. Rather she needs to be
empowered mentally, she needs to understand the reality and get to know about
the repercussions that follows thereafter.” Of the five Ngais
sisters the only uncut sister is the last born. All four brothers stood up for
their sister and in time, their parents allowed them to protect her from FGM
and from being married off to an adult whilst still a child. Sonyanga’s parents allowed this under one
condition: The brothers would sponsor her schooling ensure that she gets a job
and can provide for herself, and that she does not disappoint them at all.
Their youngest sister went to a local primary school and became one of the best
pupils in her school. Now in her second year in a national level school she
passed her Kenya primary education with flying colours. However bringing about
such change and convincing the elders of a different path was no easy task.

 

Sonyanga talks of “protecting the good
part of our culture from erosion” explaining: “It wasn’t easy to convince the elders to change their
traditional perspective on this matter. I could perhaps compare it with the
peeling of an onion. For
one to reach the core of the onion you have to peel it again and again, since
there are many layers that one encounters before you get to the core. It is not such an easy task as it may appear. It
involves a tearful process, one sheds a lot of tears. The onion is like a
culture in a way. The core here is the heart of the culture and it shapes the
entire culture, which is dearly
guarded and protected by the elders. So now you can imagine how easy it is to
change the minds of the elders!”

“Maasai
are people who are deeply rooted to their culture, no one is allowed to
question an elder let alone our ways of living, so we had no voice” says
Sonyanga. “But
with the discovery of the power of sport – cricket in our case, with the
traveling and gathering ideas and bringing them back to apply them in our society,
this really shed some light of hope for us. We applied the principle of the saying that ‘the eye that leaves
the village sees further’. With our cricket we have travelled abroad several
times and we have
gathered a lot of perspective and we brought this back to let our society
realise what we have actually learned. We realised how women outside are enjoying equal rights as
men, we learned that FGM is not really that important in a girl’s life, how important it is for our girls to continue
with school rather than giving them away while they are still young. So our elders
could actually picture the whole scenario and little by little, start changing,
but they must always all agree since the culture is so deep rooted to them”.

 

With the success of the Warriors
documentary, Sonyanga talks of its message and what he hopes might be learned
from the film: “Warriors
is a very powerful documentary which is very motivating, encouraging and
educational. It
shows the power of sport and the importance of education in our societies. The Warriors film
can be utilized in schools or other organizations as a tool to spread messages
on FGM, and it can be used
to encourage other young people to stand up, to fight against FGM and fight for
gender parity in their societies,
The film can also be used to motivate, unite and to spread the message of peaceful coexistence through
sports. It can really be lovely to include Warriors film in the school
curriculums globally, because I truly believe in the power of it”.   

 

A percentage of the profit from Warriors
will go back to a trust in the Maasai community, which will be used to create
an education centre for young people in the region. “With the centre there
is a lot of hope” says Sonyanga, “since we will use it
in many ways. First
it will be a place where girls and women receive education from experts
regarding their rights. It will be a place where girls can find refuge, with
health facilities for the community, together with sporting facilities, and of course, cricket!”.

 

So what of the cricket? Sonyanga
continues: “We
have been teaching cricket in many primary and secondary schools in our regions
because that is where we can get our messages through to a good number of
children. Girls get a chance to compete with boys, hence realising that they
are as capable as the boys. Girls realise
that they actually have a space to fight for in their societies and a chance to realise their talents.
Personally with this realisation I figured out that I needed to start a ladies
cricket team, and I named it Maasai Cricket Ladies. The point here was to have a ladies team equal to the
Warriors team, and it is even more powerful! The idea here is that now girls get to stand up for
their rights, and they educate their fellow girls on the importance of avoiding
FGM, whilst using the same sport that Warriors use to spread the messages. So
you can imagine the combination, Maasai Cricket Ladies with the Maasai Cricket
Warriors? So powerful I believe. To me this is young people uniting together for a well informed and a healthy society”. 

ENDS

The #WakeTheLion campaign Share the message

Link to: http://www.warriorsfilm.co.uk/

Link to: Warriors Facebook Page

Sonyanga has started a crowdfunding page which will help towards his second year of university schooling. Sonyanga will be attending the University in Nairobi and studying a Bachelor’s degree in Communication in Electronic Media at Daystar
University

https://www.rockethub.com/projects/63840-a-journey-maasai-warrior-university-graduate-african-leader 

 

Click on the image above to go the Warriors Film website