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There's a group of people in Kenya.

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People cross oceans to go see them.

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These people are tall.

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They jump high. They wear red.

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And they kill lions.

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You might be wondering, who are these people?

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These are the Maasais.

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And you know what's cool? I'm actually one of them.

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The Maasais, the boys are brought up to be warriors.

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The girls are brought up to be mothers.

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When I was five years old,

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I found out that I was engaged

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to be married as soon as I reached puberty.

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My mother, my grandmother, my aunties,

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they constantly reminded me that

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your husband just passed by.

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(Laughter) Cool, yeah?

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And everything I had to do from that moment

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was to prepare me to be a perfect woman at age 12.

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My day started at 5 in the morning,

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milking the cows, sweeping the house,

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cooking for my siblings, collecting water, firewood.

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I did everything that I needed to do

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to become a perfect wife.

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I went to school not because the Maasais'

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women or girls were going to school.

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It's because my mother was denied an education,

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and she constantly reminded me and my siblings that

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she never wanted us to live the life she was living.

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Why did she say that?

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My father worked as a policeman in the city.

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He came home once a year.

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We didn't see him for sometimes even two years.

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And whenever he came home, it was a different case.

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My mother worked hard in the farm

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to grow crops so that we can eat.

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She reared the cows and the goats

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so that she can care for us.

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But when my father came, he would sell the cows,

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he would sell the products we had,

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and he went and drank with his friends in the bars.

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Because my mother was a woman,

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she was not allowed to own any property,

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and by default, everything in my family anyway

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belongs to my father, so he had the right.

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And if my mother ever questioned him,

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he beat her, abused her, and really it was difficult.

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When I went to school, I had a dream.

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I wanted to become a teacher.

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Teachers looked nice.

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They wear nice dresses, high-heeled shoes.

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I found out later that they are uncomfortable, but I admired it.

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(Laughter)

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But most of all, the teacher was just writing on the board --

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not hard work, that's what I thought,

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compared to what I was doing in the farm.

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So I wanted to become a teacher.

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I worked hard in school, but when I was in eighth grade,

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it was a determining factor.

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In our tradition, there is a ceremony

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that girls have to undergo to become women,

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and it's a rite of passage to womanhood.

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And then I was just finishing my eighth grade,

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and that was a transition for me to go to high school.

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This was the crossroad.

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Once I go through this tradition, I was going to become a wife.

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Well, my dream of becoming a teacher will not come to pass.

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So I talked -- I had to come up with a plan

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to figure these things out.

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I talked to my father. I did something that most girls have never done.

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I told my father, "I will only go through this ceremony

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if you let me go back to school."

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The reason why, if I ran away,

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my father will have a stigma, people will be calling him

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the father of that girl who didn't go through the ceremony.

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It was a shameful thing for him to carry the rest of his life.

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So he figured out. "Well," he said, "okay,

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you'll go to school after the ceremony."

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I did. The ceremony happened.

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It's a whole week long of excitement.

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It's a ceremony. People are enjoying it.

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And the day before the actual ceremony happens,

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we were dancing, having excitement,

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and through all the night we did not sleep.

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The actual day came, and we walked out of the house

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that we were dancing in. Yes, we danced and danced.

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We walked out to the courtyard, and there were a bunch of people waiting.

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They were all in a circle.

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And as we danced and danced,

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and we approached this circle of women,

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men, women, children, everybody was there.

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There was a woman sitting in the middle of it,

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and this woman was waiting to hold us.

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I was the first. There were my sisters and a couple of other girls,

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and as I approached her,

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she looked at me, and I sat down.

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And I sat down, and I opened my legs.

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As I opened my leg, another woman came,

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and this woman was carrying a knife.

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And as she carried the knife, she walked toward me

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and she held the clitoris, and she cut it off.

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As you can imagine, I bled. I bled.

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After bleeding for a while, I fainted thereafter.

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It's something that so many girls --

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I'm lucky, I never died -- but many die.

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It's practiced, it's no anesthesia, it's a rusty old knife,

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and it was difficult.

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I was lucky because one, also, my mom did something

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that most women don't do.

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Three days later, after everybody has left the home,

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my mom went and brought a nurse.

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We were taken care of.

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Three weeks later, I was healed, and I was back in high school.

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I was so determined to be a teacher now

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so that I could make a difference in my family.

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Well, while I was in high school, something happened.

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I met a young gentleman from our village

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who had been to the University of Oregon.

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This man was wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, camera,

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white sneakers -- and I'm talking about white sneakers.

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There is something about clothes, I think, and shoes.

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They were sneakers, and this is in a village

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that doesn't even have paved roads. It was quite attractive.

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I told him, "Well, I want to go to where you are,"

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because this man looked very happy, and I admired that.

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And he told me, "Well,

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what do you mean, you want to go?

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Don't you have a husband waiting for you?"

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And I told him, "Don't worry about that part.

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Just tell me how to get there."

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This gentleman, he helped me.

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While I was in high school also, my dad was sick.

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He got a stroke, and he was really, really sick,

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so he really couldn't tell me what to do next.

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But the problem is, my father is not the only father I have.

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Everybody who is my dad's age, male in the community,

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is my father by default --

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my uncles, all of them -- and they dictate what my future is.

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So the news came, I applied to school

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and I was accepted to Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia,

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and I couldn't come without the support of the village,

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because I needed to raise money to buy the air ticket.

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I got a scholarship but I needed to get myself here.

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But I needed the support of the village,

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and here again, when the men heard,

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and the people heard that a woman had gotten an opportunity to go to school,

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they said, "What a lost opportunity.

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This should have been given to a boy. We can't do this."

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So I went back and I had to go back to the tradition.

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There's a belief among our people

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that morning brings good news.

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So I had to come up with something to do with the morning,

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because there's good news in the morning.

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And in the village also, there is one chief, an elder,

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who if he says yes, everybody will follow him.

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So I went to him very early in the morning, as the sun rose.

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The first thing he sees when he opens his door is, it's me.

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"My child, what are you doing here?"

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"Well, Dad, I need help. Can you support me to go to America?"

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I promised him that I would be the best girl,

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I will come back, anything they wanted after that,

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I will do it for them.

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He said, "Well, but I can't do it alone."

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He gave me a list of another 15 men that I went --

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16 more men -- every single morning

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I went and visited them.

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They all came together.

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The village, the women, the men, everybody came together

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to support me to come to get an education.

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I arrived in America. As you can imagine, what did I find?

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I found snow!

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I found Wal-Marts, vacuum cleaners,

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and lots of food in the cafeteria.

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I was in a land of plenty.

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I enjoyed myself, but during that moment while I was here,

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I discovered a lot of things.

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I learned that that ceremony that I went through

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when I was 13 years old, it was called female genital mutilation.

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I learned that it was against the law in Kenya.

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I learned that I did not have to trade part of my body

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to get an education. I had a right.

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And as we speak right now, three million girls

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in Africa are at risk of going through this mutilation.

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I learned that my mom had a right to own property.

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I learned that she did not have to be abused

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because she is a woman.

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Those things made me angry.

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I wanted to do something.

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As I went back, every time I went,

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I found that my neighbors' girls were getting married.

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They were getting mutilated, and here,

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after I graduated from here, I worked at the U.N.,

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I went back to school to get my graduate work,

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the constant cry of these girls was in my face.

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I had to do something.

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As I went back, I started talking to the men,

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to the village, and mothers, and I said,

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"I want to give back the way I had promised you

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that I would come back and help you. What do you need?"

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As I spoke to the women, they told me,

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"You know what we need? We really need a school for girls."

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Because there had not been any school for girls.

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And the reason they wanted the school for girls

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is because when a girl is raped when she's walking to school,

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the mother is blamed for that.

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If she got pregnant before she got married,

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the mother is blamed for that, and she's punished.

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She's beaten.

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They said, "We wanted to put our girls in a safe place."

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As we moved, and I went to talk to the fathers,

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the fathers, of course, you can imagine what they said:

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"We want a school for boys."

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And I said, "Well, there are a couple of men from my village

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who have been out and they have gotten an education.

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Why can't they build a school for boys,

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and I'll build a school for girls?"

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That made sense. And they agreed.

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And I told them, I wanted them to show me a sign of commitment.

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And they did. They donated land where we built the girls' school.

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We have.

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I want you to meet one of the girls in that school.

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Angeline came to apply for the school,

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and she did not meet any criteria that we had.

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She's an orphan. Yes, we could have taken her for that.

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But she was older. She was 12 years old,

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and we were taking girls who were in fourth grade.

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Angeline had been moving from one place --

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because she's an orphan, she has no mother, she has no father --

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moving from one grandmother's house to another one,

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from aunties to aunties. She had no stability in her life.

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And I looked at her, I remember that day,

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and I saw something beyond what I was seeing in Angeline.

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And yes, she was older to be in fourth grade.

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We gave her the opportunity to come to the class.

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Five months later, that is Angeline.

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A transformation had begun in her life.

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Angeline wants to be a pilot so she can fly around the world

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and make a difference.

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She was not the top student when we took her.

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Now she's the best student, not just in our school,

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but in the entire division that we are in.

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That's Sharon. That's five years later.

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That's Evelyn. Five months later, that is the difference that we are making.

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As a new dawn is happening in my school,

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a new beginning is happening.

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As we speak right now, 125 girls will never be mutilated.

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One hundred twenty-five girls will not be married when they're 12 years old.

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One hundred twenty-five girls are creating and achieving their dreams.

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This is the thing that we are doing,

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giving them opportunities where they can rise.

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As we speak right now, women are not being beaten

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because of the revolutions we've started in our community.

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(Applause)

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I want to challenge you today.

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You are listening to me because you are here,

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very optimistic.

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You are somebody who is so passionate.

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You are somebody who wants to see a better world.

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You are somebody who wants to see that war ends, no poverty.

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You are somebody who wants to make a difference.

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You are somebody who wants to make our tomorrow better.

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I want to challenge you today that to be the first,

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because people will follow you.

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Be the first. People will follow you.

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Be bold. Stand up. Be fearless. Be confident.

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Move out, because as you change your world,

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as you change your community,

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as we believe that we are impacting one girl, one family,

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one village, one country at a time.

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We are making a difference, so if you change your world,

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you are going to change your community,

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you are going to change your country,

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and think about that. If you do that, and I do that,

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aren't we going to create a better future for our children,

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for your children, for our grandchildren?

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And we will live in a very peaceful world. Thank you very much.

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(Applause)