The Blooming Maasai

I grew up watching women disappear.

Not physically. They were still there walking to the river, cooking over open fires, sitting in church on Sundays, nursing babies, nursing husbands, nursing communities. But somewhere between the vows and the village expectations, they let go of themselves. Quietly. Without ceremony. The ambitions they once whispered to their girlfriends faded. The careers they trained for became hobbies they might return to “one day.” Their goals became his goals. Their time became the family’s time. Their bodies became vessels for children and labour and the needs of others. They gave their lives away twice: first to God, then to a husband. And nobody asked if either recipient was worthy.

I am Maasai and family is everything to us. It always has been. And I understand why because in a community where the land is harsh and life is collective, belonging is survival. Marriage is not just romance. It is an institution, an identity, a rite of passage that every woman is expected to cross. My agemates have crossed it. They are married, mothers, or single mothers. I am none of these. Not because I am special. Because I chose differently.

I chose differently because I saw my mother unhappy in a marriage nothing could salvage. I saw what women do when the union they were promised as a sanctuary becomes a cage. And I need to say this clearly: often it is not the woman’s fault. A woman can give everything; her youth, her labour, her silence, her loyalty and still find herself trapped. Because the trap is designed. The man has her where he wants her: no financial autonomy, no decision-making power, children she cannot imagine leaving, a self-esteem worn thin by years of being told her place is to serve. At that low point, when she has nothing left to give, he leaves. He sires children outside the covenant. The institutions that should protect her; the marriage certificate, the church, the community elders suddenly turn their gaze away. Who really looks out for the woman when the structures meant to uphold families are bent to serve the man?

Too often, religion is not the problem but its interpretation is. Across many traditions and many countries, the scripture has been wielded not to liberate women, but to silence them. Daughters told to obey. Wives told to submit. Their silence recast as virtue. Patriarchy wears many robes, speaks many languages, quotes many scriptures. And women are caught in a cycle that only they and the communities that choose to stand with them can break.

This is exactly the machinery that Lizzie Damilola Blackburn captures in Yinka, Where Is Your Husband?. Yinka is a young Nigerian woman who is successful, educated, faithful and yet her entire world treats her singleness as a crisis to be solved. Her mother prays. Her aunties scheme. The church sees her relationship status as a ministry concern. The book lays bare a universal pressure: it is not enough to be accomplished, to be kind, or brilliant, or devoted. You must also be married. Otherwise, your life is a waiting room, and everyone around you is checking their watch. I know that waiting room. I walked out of it.

I understood all of this early, not through books but through observation. I am a lastborn. I grew up shy, with less scrutiny, less pressure to perform the role of the perfect daughter. My parents’ attention was spread thin. So I forged my own path in the quiet, and the path I wanted looked nothing like the one laid out for me. I dreamt of a big life one that did not include marriage to a Maasai man or a man from any pastoralist community. Not because I do not love where I come from infact, I do, fiercely but because I was not going to live the same life my mother and aunts and neighbours had lived. I wanted more. I wanted different.

At the height of the femicide cases in Kenya, my mother out of love, out of fear told me that marrying a Maasai man would be wise. My family could trace his lineage back generations. If anything happened to me, they would know whose door to knock on. I said, “Okay, Mum.” But I knew. Sometimes to avoid conflict, you say yes and do what you were always going to do. African parents invoke scripture “Children, obey your parents” as though obedience means erasing yourself. I could not disrespect my mother. So I gave her a yes and kept my life.

There is another book that has walked beside me through these choices: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Amy March understood something few women of her time were allowed to say aloud that marriage is an economic proposition, and if a woman must enter it, let it at least be for her betterment. I respect Amy’s clarity. She saw the game and played it with her eyes open. But I have always been more aligned with Jo who was restless, ambitious, refusing to shrink. Jo March stayed single for longer than anyone expected. She built a life of her own making. And when she did finally choose a partner, it was not out of desperation or duty. He did not ask her to stop writing. He did not ask her to become smaller. That is the only kind of union worth considering: one where you do not disappear into it, but arrive as yourself, fully formed, and stay that way.

I want to be clear about something. For some women, marriage is partnership, growth, and joy. My argument is not against marriage itself, but against the expectation that every woman must want it and that without it, her life is somehow unfinished. The question I am really asking is older and larger than marriage: Who gets to decide the shape of a woman’s life?

Today I live in a way that no longer treats marriage as an idol. It is a chapter that may never appear in my book, and I have made peace with that. If it does come because I am human, because I crave companionship it will not come at the cost of my sovereignty. I have also made peace with the possibility of not having children, though this is a door I have not closed. A child would be a piece of me walking in the world. With so much love to give, why not pour it into someone who carries my blood and my hope? But it is not a requirement. It is not the proof of my womanhood.

What I have now is a life I love. Slow mornings. The freedom to go wherever I want, see whomever I want, be lazy when my body asks for rest. A cold bed that is mine alone. No fear of an STI, an unwanted pregnancy, a phone call from another woman dragged into a man’s chaos. A woman brings life. That power is real. Now imagine all that energy invested in herself.

Do I feel lonely? Yes, but rarely. I am an introvert who genuinely enjoys her own company; happy, in love with myself and with life, at peace, free, and stable. I am not running from anything. I am running toward myself.

I am whole. I am free. And I am just beginning.