The educationist and proprietor of Brilliant Academy in Entarara is passionate about bringing tangible development into the area, saying the incumbent MCA has been sleeping on the job for 13 years
BY ZIPPORAH SAWAINA
As is customary and as the political heat shoots up across the country, many women will be shoved aside or decide to give up the fight. Not so for Abigael Sein, the sole female MCA aspirant in the vast Kajiado County.
“I have been scandalised and called all sorts of unprintable abuses,” she says. Those hurdles have only strengthened her resolve to wrest the MCA seat for Rombo Ward from the incumbent, Lengete ole Kamete.
The educationist and proprietor of Brilliant Academy in Entarara is passionate about bringing tangible development into the area, saying Kamete has been sleeping on the job for 13 years with nothing to show for it. “The roads are in a pathetic state. He does not attend Assembly meetings and has never raised a Bill,” said Sein.
Her priorities, she says, include empowering the youth through group initiatives, improving the status of roads, ensuring healthcare facilities have staff and medicines, improving the agricultural sector, and nurturing the sporting and other talents among the youth.
Sein, 43, has for years been involved with women’s groups in her local Maasai community around Rombo, deep in the countryside. “I want to be the voice of the voiceless in my community,” she said. “Women have been my driving force.”
But women won’t be her sole concern given the poverty that afflicts all sections of the area population. “I will be focusing on the whole community of Rombo,” she says.
Her entry into the political arena in 2017 did not yield success at the polls, but she hopes to change the tide in this year’s contest, which has so far attracted 11 contestants in her ward. She will be contesting on a Jubilee Party ticket.
Even though the highly patriarchal nature of her community is not helping matters, she is thankful that her husband has been extremely supportive. “Let us assist both women and the youth to get to leadership and the opportunity to serve,” says Sein, adding that even close male relatives have gone the extra mile to malign her all because of her entry into politics.
Rombo is the place where she was born and brought up, the fourth child in a family of five. It is also the place where she has spent most of her adult life. She enrolled for her early education at Rombo Primary School, sitting for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education in 1991.
For her secondary education, she attended Oloitokitok Secondary School, currently a boys school but which was mixed at the time. After sitting for her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education in 1995, she got married almost immediately thereafter to Leonard Ntawasa, with whom they have five children — all now grown-ups.
Sein studied for a two-year certificate course in early childhood development education (ECDE) at the Anestar Teachers Training College, graduating in 2011. She later obtained a diploma in ECDE in 2014. In 2012, she also enrolled at the Kimana School of Leadership and Professional Studies.
In 2008, Sein started teaching women to save money through table banking. She has also been involved in events planning. All these skills and connections will be sorely needed as she enters the homestretch in her campaign.
As the bearer of the only hope to have an elected woman MCA in the whole county, Sein will need to use all her wit and courage if she is to become first past the post. It is a burden weighing heavily on her.
