Lesson: The Daily Lives of Adolescent Girls in Kilifi, Kenya

Objectives:

Through exploring the contemporary quotidian realities for young women in Coastal Kenya, students develop insights and skills for analyzing how complex socio-historical dynamics impact opportunities and challenges.

Learning Outcomes:

Knowledge:

1. Learn about the history of Coastal Kenya with an emphasis on gender and intergenerational relationships.

Analysis:

1. Be able to discuss some of the complex social dynamics young women in Kilifi confront and better understand choices they have.

2. Compare situation of adolescent girls in this setting to other situations to consider whether processes or themes are generalizable or specific to the local place and time.

Tools:

1. Use of bibliographic tools

Directions:

Before Class Preparation

Read book by, Sarah Forde. 2008. Playing by Their Rules : Coastal Teenage Girls in Kenya on Life, Love and Football. Kilifi Kenya: Moving the Goalposts. https://www.createspace.com/3376110. and http://www.mtgk.org/?q=playing-by-their-rules
Choose other background readings as appropriate from the accompanying bibliography on Girls and Adolesence in Coastal Kenya for this lesson.
Watch the video, Mabatini.
Explore the web site of organization, Moving the Goalposts.

In class activities

Lecture using the powerpoint. Modify as needed for your classroom use.
Discussion questions – can be enhanced with further out of class research

Reflect on one’s own or community experiences
Identify other life histories of teenage girls.
Compare/Contrast similarities/differences?
How specific to place/time are the circumstances the girls face?

Out of Class Assignments

A. Use online library search tools to find books, resources

See the Bibliographic Search Guide.
Do subject heading, literature and web searches to find comparable material, such as:

Bame Nsamenang. 2002. “Adolescence in sub‐Saharan Africa: An Image Constructed from Africa’s Triple Inheritance.” In The world’s youth : adolescence in eight regions of the globe, ed. B. Bradford Brown, Reed Larson, and T. S Saraswati, 61–104. New York: Cambridge University Press.

B. Do targeted searches on the web to find comparable material, such as

Coalition for Adolescent Girls: http://coalitionforadolescentgirls.org/
Girls Discovered: Global Map of Adolescent Girls: http://www.girlsdiscovered.org/
Population Council http://www.popcouncil.org/
CODESRIA’s online publications, many of which deal with youth, adolescents, sport, gender, etc: http://www.codesria.org/spip.php?rubrique65&lang=en
International Center for Research on Women: http://www.icrw.org/what-we-do/adolescents

C. Write of a review of current research trends on the topic of adolescent girls comparing two different regions, countries.

Use as needed the Literature Review Guide

Related Material

Website: Moving the Goalposts - http://mtgk.org/
Video: Mabinti. MTGK. 2009. Kilifi, Kenya. Also on Youtube.
Presentation (PPT) “The Daily Lives of Adolescent Girls in Kilifi, Kenya” (created for teacher training; adapt to classroom needs)
Bibliography created for this unit.
Website for the workshop, Absent Voices: Experience of common life in world history, ORIAS Summer Institute for K-12 teachers, July 25-29, 2011, for which this unit was originally created. http://orias.berkeley.edu/summer2011/Summer2011Home.htm