Forced marriage
Kenya 🇰🇪 "When they are 12 or 13, girls are married off to men in their forties or fifties. “Stupid girl, you were born for a man,” say their mothers. I say: “Go to class." I give a girl books and a pen. I have rescued more than 800 girls in the last 30 years and built a dormitory and a school for them next to my house. Some of them run for miles to get to me. I also have spies in the community that tell me when a girl is earmarked for marriage and we go and and rescue her. I escaped from a forced early marriage when I was 14 because a teacher let me stay with her. Today, when I reflect back, I think: “I am doing for them what somebody did for me.”
“If we were not in this safe house, we would probably already have children. Because my father wanted to get money and cows, he arranged for us to get circumcised and married. I was 11 and my sister was nine. We were going to marry men who were older than 40. I was scared because some girls die through circumcision. Then my mother heard about what was happening and brought us to this home for rescued girls. I have really changed because now I know what education is. I want to continue to study and in the future I want to become a lecturer."
