At 30 years, life for Gladys Cheptoo Biwott has turned into a nightmare and she is at the end of her tether.
Biwott hails from West Pokot County. She is among the few elites in her society who are privileged to have seen the walls of a classroom and even much better, defied odds and attained varsity education.
But it is her status as a woman with a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) yet jobless, that has turned her dreams into a nightmare.
In a publication by Daily Nation, Biwott states she has resulted to selling boiled eggs and potato chips for survival.
In a day, she says she earns sh100 ($1) which she uses to take care of her sickly mother and eight siblings since her father died in 2011.
“Without the capital to invest in a tangible business, I have been selling food, mainly boiled eggs and potato chips at Chepareria shopping center. I make Sh100 a day,” she says.
She has made countless trips from West Pokot to Nairobi in the last six years in search of a job but luck has not been on her side.
Not even her many applications in government and private institutions have shown a ray of hope in getting a job.
Today, she says she has become the laughing stock of her village as women troll her for failing to change her life and that of others in spite of attaining a degree.
“Women in my village say that I am educated but I am unable to bring any change since I am suffering just as they are if not more than them. This is causing me sleepless nights,” states Biwott.
She cannot mentor anyone in her village since she has no job that she can be credited for.
“In my first two years in the village, I used to counsel and mentor young boys and girls; but today, they can hardly listen to me because it is like I have failed in life. There is no way that I can pull them to aspire for success when myself I am not successful in any way,” she goes on.
Once an anti-FGM crusader, today she is branded by her community as a rebel for not undergoing the “cut” and going ahead to attain education.
They are now insisting that she undergoes the cut and gets married off to an old village man.
“The villagers say that I am jobless and useless and I have nothing to show for my education. That is part of the reason they insist that I have to undergo FGM and be married off to some old man in the village; even at 30 years of age.”
Knowing all too well the dangers of FGM, she ran off a month ago and is staying with a friend in Upper Kabete hoping to lay her hands on her dream job.
She says her mind has always been focused on settling at a research laboratory.
“If life went on the way I had it all planned in my mind, I should be in a research laboratory investigating diseases and providing solutions to some of the most pressing challenges in our health system.” she says
”I believe I will be able to win the war on FGM one day in the future. FGM does not define a woman, and cannot be used as a measure of womanhood” She concludes.