Meet Stella

She is a widow and a mother of three young children living in the remote village of Ngurunit in the Kenya Drylands. She was married very young and as a result only completed school up to the eighth grade.

She is a hardworking woman who is trying her best to make life better for herself and her three children. This is not an easy task in an area of the world that is often unkind to women. Opportunities for women to advance in a patriarchal society such as this is very difficult. Men are the chiefs and the leaders. They are pastoralists who survive mainly on the herding of livestock such as goats, cows and camels.

 However, Stella has found away. She works at the KDEF Center keeping our offices and facilities clean. She also owns a small shop where she sells basic necessities such as sugar and flour. She is teaching her daughter, Marci, the importance of hard work as well as many days she can be found in charge of the shop selling her mother’s goods.

Stella along with many women from Ngurunit have mastered the art of basket making. For many, making and selling of these baskets is the only way they are able to put food on the table. The baskets are made from the leaves of palm trees and getting the leaves from these giant trees is not simple matter. The only way is to climb to the top.

The leaves are soaked in water and then woven sometimes with beads and sometimes without into the most beautiful works of art imaginable.

 Stella is a role model for other women as well as her children. She is proof that despite being born into a world made for men it is possible to make it on her own.