The bleak, partly swampy site was simply the spot where operations came to a halt while the engineers figured out their next move – getting the line up the steep slopes that lay ahead. Nairobi was initially a supply depot, switching yard and camp ground for the thousands of Indian labourers employed by the British. Although called the “Uganda Railway” there was no connection to Kampala until 1931 before that, Lake Victoria ships provided the link. Nairobi came into being in May 1899, an artificial settlement created by Europeans at Mile 327 of the Uganda Railway, then being systematically forged from Mombasa on the coast to Port Florence – now Kisumu – on Lake Victoria. In the southwest, meanwhile, a much overlooked trip to Lake Magadi takes you into a ravishingly beautiful and austere part of the Rift Valley. Southeast, beyond the shanty suburb of Dandora, are the wide Athi plains, which are traditionally mostly ranching country but nowadays increasingly invaded by the spread of Nairobi’s industrial and residential satellites. It’s a striking landscape, vividly described in Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa. For visitors, most of the interest around Nairobi lies to the south and southwest, in the predominantly Maasai land that begins with Nairobi National Park, literally on the city’s doorstep – a wild attraction where you’d expect to find suburbs, it makes an excellent day-trip – and includes the watershed ridge of the Ngong Hills just outside the city in neighbouring Kajiado County. Nairobi County, an area of some 690 square kilometres, ranging from agricultural and ranching land to savanna and mountain forest, used to stretch way beyond the city suburbs, but the city is increasingly filling the whole county. It takes about the same time to get to the far west and barely two hours to get to the great trough of the Rift Valley or the slopes of Mount Kenya. ![]() To the coast, it’s as little as six hours by road, an overnight train journey, or an hour if you fly. Selina established the Nashipai Maasai Community Project, through which she was able to rescue more than 250 girls from the surrounding villages and bring them to Naning’oi Girls Secondary School.Apart from being the safari capital of the world, Nairobi is an excellent base for Kenyan travel in general. People are hiding behind the culture, but when they look at their daughters, what they see is cows they will receive when they will marry them.” But today parents cannot wait for their children to grow older. When I was growing up, women were getting married, but a parent would wait for his girl to grow up and develop all the external organs that show that she is a woman, and after that, she will go through the cut and get married. “I will never accept child marriage being part of my culture. “Once a girl is married, her family will be compensated with cows – the most valuable asset in the Maasai Community. “It is impossible to find an adult woman here who has escaped the cut,” says Selina Nkoile, an activist born into the Maasai tribe, who in 2017 decided to quit her job at a multinational company in Nairobi to embark on a rescue mission. To avoid detection and subsequent prosecution, the practice thrives behind closed doors. Though the practice of FGM has been criminalised in Kenya since 2011, thousands of families still perform it, especially in rural areas. Lasoi’s story is not out of the ordinary in areas like Kajiado and Narok counties, both predominantly Maasai areas. She was rescued by members of Nashipai Maasai Community Project and taken to the Naning’oi Rescue Centre. She was followed by her husband while she was grazing the cows and she was beaten and left unconscious. Lasoi was found lying unconscious in a grazing field by an old Maasai herder a few weeks after marriage. ![]() She was denied food when caught playing with other children and was expected to sleep in her husband’s house every night. Tormented by the husband’s relatives and disowned by her own family, Lasoi’s life became a series of pitiless beatings and household chores. One week later Lasoi ran away to her parents for a second time, only to be beaten and turned back again. There she was beaten by her father and taken back to her husband. She escaped from her husband’s home the following morning, running back to her parent’s house. Lasoi, who is 10, is one of the 320 girls seeking refuge from female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage at Naning’oi Girls School and Rescue Centre in Kenya’s Rift Valley. She didn’t know the man she was getting married to nor had she seen him before but a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) arrived at her home to take her to her groom. Kajiado County, Kenya – Lasoi’s father told her she was getting married 11 days after she was cut.
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