THE Masai of East Africa count their wealth in two ways — the number of cattle in their herds and the number of daughters in their families.

So when Naipa Melita’s father lost four of his five cows to the drought that has pushed more than 11 million people to the brink of famine in the Horn of Africa, he turned to his most valuable remaining asset. “My father had someone that he wanted to give me to — a man of 60 years,” Naipa says quietly in her native Masai tongue. “I was going to be given to a wealthy man who had enough cows to get him through this bad time.”

In return for his ten-year-old daughter, Naipa’s father was promised a dowry of five cows to replenish his herd. But Naipa had learnt from other girls in her village that there was an alternative.

In January she boarded a goods train as it passed her village and travelled the 25 miles or so to a girls’ refuge in Kajiado, a small town in southern Kenya.

“I told my parents that I was going to do some washing in the river and then just came here,” she says in the simple office of the Africa Inland Church’s Girls’ Rescue Centre.

“At first I missed home, but now I am happy to be here.”

She is not alone. Priscilla Naisult Nangurai, who runs the shelter in the heart of Masailand, says that there has been a sharp rise in the number of girls seeking help.

She has taken in 15 so far this year — many more than the one or two a month she would normally expect. They are also arriving at a younger age. “Normally they come at the age of 12 or 13, just as they come through puberty,” Mrs Nangurai said. “But this was strange as they were all younger. When I spoke to parents about why this was happening they told me it was because of the hard times.”

The shelter was set up to protect girls from female circumcision, which is still practised among Masai communities. Today it looks after 71 girls, most of them runaway brides.

Droughts usually bring a halt to marriages as the herders have fewer animals to spare.

“This time seems so severe that the only way to sustain their family is to give away a girl and get something in exchange,” Mrs Nangurai said.

Years of failed rains have pushed much of Kenya’s rural population to the edge of survival. Nomadic herding tribes, such as the Masai, have been forced to roam far beyond their normal lands in search of pasture. Rains finally arrived last week, but not before 80 per cent of cattle and goats in some areas had succumbed.

It is a bitter blow to a people who rely on their animals, said Caroline Ageng’o of Equality Now, which campaigns against child marriages, supposedly illegal under Kenyan law.

“It is no exaggeration to say that they depend on their cattle for everything,” she said. “They count their wealth by the number of animals they own.”

Many girls are denied access to education. There is little point in paying school fees when daughters are destined to become someone else’s wife.

But Naipa is one of the lucky ones. She arrived at the shelter in January and has been attending school ever since.

“One day I would like to be a teacher,” she says. “I want to teach other girls like me.”

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