The lost girls of covid

For 25 years, girls in developing countries have been on a remarkable trajectory of progress. The pandemic is reversing it

- By Jill Filipovic, Photography by Nichole Sobecki

At the girls’ rescue house down the quiet end of a dusty road in Narok County, Kenya, there are girls who are friends, and then there are Purity and Lucy. Sisters, they both say. Purity is 17; Lucy, 19. Where Purity is soft-spoken and shy, Lucy is gregarious and funny, with expressive eyebrows and a sardonic affect. When she smiles—and she smiles a lot—the corners of her mouth turn almost vertical, and her cheeks, still freckled with teenage acne, go full and flush. Purity is slender as tall grass, with glowing skin and a gap in her lower teeth that she habitually pokes her tongue through. Both grew up in traditional Masai communities, in different areas that are within striking distance of Masai Mara National Reserve, a game park that, in normal times, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. Neither one’s parents went to school; Purity and Lucy were set to be among the first generation of girls in their communities to graduate from high school, maybe even from college.

Lucy wants to study the moon and become an astronaut. Purity has dreams, too, but she doesn’t talk about them much anymore. Both girls left their homes years ago, fleeing forced marriages and, for Lucy, the genital mutilation that traditionally precedes matrimony in their communities. Purity was cut when she was 10. (For privacy reasons, I’m identifying them and some others in the story only by first name or a pseudonym.)