Mary Selina Sadera
Mary Selina Sadera obtained a scholarship from Aid for Africa partner, the Nomadic Kenyan Children’s Education Fund to attend Mugumo Secondary School, where she graduated in 2006. A Maasai from Olenguruone, Kenya, Mary has nine siblings, only two of whom were in school at the time she became an NKCEF-sponsored student.
On her application to receive an NKCEF scholarship, she wrote: “Life was just terrible. Several domestic fights at home and delegates of old Maasai men who wanted to marry me at an early age. Lack of basic necessities at home. If it was not for my courageous mother and our teacher Mr. Francis Simon Batia Ndirangu I would not have gone up to this level.”
In answer to a question about someone she admires, she wrote: “My mother is my admiration. She has fought all cultural wars and through God’s wish, she has sustained me up to this level of education.”
She continued to describe her background on her application:
“I am…from a family of eight wives and forty children. In fact, the level of poverty at home is so high with limited resources. We live in typical Manyatta homesteads and lack basic necessities. Those who have attended school from this family have not gone beyond Class Five and I am considered the most learned person in our family. I have shrugged off several Maasai elders who have all the time come with intentions to marry me. In other cases I have been forced to stay at my former teacher’s residence during vacation to avoid the same.”
Four years later, in her post-graduate report for NKCEF, Mary wrote, “The NKCEF scholarship really affected my life because my family gave me respect for that level of education, since there is no other person who has reached that level of education in my family…I am hoping to join college…I am volunteering in HIV/AIDs awareness campaign in my community.”
In 2007, Mary was admitted to Narok Youth Polytechnic.
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