Defying the odds, that is what Scholastica Kimaryo is all about

There are countless stories of women who have achieved the heights of success in various walks of life in Tanzania– women born into business families who have played a key role in taking their family organisation to greater heights or women who struggled in a male dominated world but made it to the top through sheer grit, determination and ambition.

Woman magazine brings you a story of a woman who was born disadvantaged and lived in physical and emotional misery, but rose above her horrible circumstances to become a beacon of hope and admiration to the girls in her village and the world.

Born in rural Tanzania, some seven decades ago, it was not deemed possible that destiny could have carved a path of any alternative to domesticity for her. In the village of Maua in Kibosho, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, education of a girl child was deemed a luxury few could afford.

Meet 71-year-old Ms Scholastica Kimaryo. As Ms Kimaryo grew, she well began to understand the disparity between boys and girls and as a young girl, she felt pained to see and experience such discrimination.

Girls were made to feel inferior

“Education was a luxury, but imagine being denied the basics. It really pained me more when a girl got sick, most families including mine did not bother to take them or me to the hospital but when boys got sick they took them to the hospital,” Ms Kimaryo explains.

As a young girl looking at those situations, she promised herself to study hard, get educated and get a good paying job runaway from poverty and to bring equal opportunities between boys and girls when it comes to education. So she ensured whatever she did in her life, she wanted to bring impact and change to women and girls.

“When I was growing up in my home village, I didn’t like the way my family and other families treated women and girls when it came to education and division of labour. Those days in Maua village, men did not have the culture to work instead they left all farming activities to women while they sat to supervise the women farming,” Ms Kimaryo explains the scenario.

When hard-work was not enough

The mother of two children stressed that such things bothered her a lot as a young girl, therefore, she decided to take life positively and promised herself to study hard so that she could get rid of poverty and cultural beliefs.

Despite her hard work, upon completing standard four with flying colours, she was denied to pursue further education.

“Unfortunately, my father and uncles didn’t want me to continue with school just because I was a girl. They didn’t support the move of me going to boarding school, instead they wanted me to stay at home and get married,” she says.

Adding, “The men of my family would say, ‘there is no point to educate a girl, she may end up becoming a commercial sex worker or get married,” Ms Kimaryo tells.

It was clear back then that the only objective of the men of Ms Kimaryo’s family was to see her as someone’s wife.

Her mother stood by her against all odds

Yet her mother, Maria Yosepha Laurenti, knew that her second of six children was destined for a world bigger than the small village and population of Maua.

Finding strategic ways to placate the men in her extended family, culture, tradition and gender discrimination, her mother and elder sister, Cecilia, succeeded in struggling to raise the money to pay for Ms Kimaryo’s hunger for higher learning, thereby making her the first girl in her village to go beyond primary school.

In the midst of all this when Ms Kimaryo was preparing to continue with studies, her father thought of her and her mother as an embarrassment and the one who brought shame to the family. But that created more fire in Ms Kimaryo’s passion to prove to her mother that she wasn’t born to be a failure.

“I knew then that this extra-ordinary blessing came with huge responsibilities far beyond myself, thereby vowing to succeed in my education not only to escape the poverty trap and gender discrimination in Maua village but also to enable me to contribute to the well being of my mother and sister, women and children wherever they may be,” Ms Kimaryo expresses.

So she continued studying hard in a difficult environment.

The change in her father

In 1963, the father of the nation, Julius Nyerere, directed the responsible ministry to make higher learning fee-free for the underprivileged. And this move enabled Ms Kimaryo to go for further studies at the University of Dar es Salaam.

After she graduated, she secured a job as a journalist and the income she received, she supported her family back in Maua. With Ms Kimaryo’s success, her father came to a realisation that he had wronged her and her mother. He realised that it was equally important to educate a girl child.

“My father apologised and he became a good ambassador to advocate and encourage communities and family members to take girls to school in the village, giving his daughter as an example,” she says.

For all the girls in her village

In order to show to the community that women can make a difference in people’s life and the community, she and her late husband made sure that her village in Kilimanjaro was equipped with awarenesss and other necessities such as electricity, books and so forth.

“In the fight for women rights and gender equality, men must not be left behind to enable to move together. If men get involved and understand what we are fighting for it will be easy achieve gender equality,” Ms Kimaryo tells.

Things turned around in her village. Parents began to push their children to go to school. “In fact, when girls were reluctant to go, their parents would force them to go saying, ‘we don’t want Scholatica to come and fight with us.’

Her life after hardships

In the 70’s, Ms Kimaryo’s journey with United Nations began. In 1978, she was appointed as Tanzania’s Executive Secretary for the National Commission for the UN International Year of the Child. Eventually, the following year, she was appointed to join United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

During her years as an international civil servant with the UN– serving in different countries in Africa and in various senior leadership positions, as well as having served as a gender activist and development journalist for a decade prior to that, she ensured that Tanzania gets enough resources in building schools, health facilities and other facilities that support children and women in agriculture. According to her, the government has made a great progress in terms of education, agriculture and gender rights. “Unfortunately, implementation is the biggest challenge,” she says.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, Ms Kimaryo stressed that it is high time we strive towards gender equality in all forms.

After retirement

Ms Kimaryo went back to school upon retirement from the United Nations, to attain additional tools and competencies for her own mind, body spirit balance as well as to establish a platform for sharing this wisdom with others, especially women leaders.

And that’s how she founded Maadili Leadership Solutions in 2017 in Tanzania, an enterprise platform for all who are interested in enriching their life journeys to higher levels of self discovery, self mastery and principle-centred leadership. She also offers pro bono services to the underprivileged.