Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

There's a group of people in Kenya.

People cross oceans to go see them.

These people are tall. They jump high. They wear red. And they kill lions.

You might be wondering, who are these people?

These are the Maasais. And you know what's cool?

I'm actually one of them.

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

The girls are brought up to be mothers.

When I was five years old, I found out that I was engaged to be married as soon as I reached puberty.

My mother, my grandmother, my aunties, they constantly reminded me that your husband just passed by.

Cool, yeah?

And everything I had to do from that moment was to prepare me to be a perfect woman at age 12.

My day started at 5 in the morning, milking the cows, sweeping the house, cooking for my siblings, collecting water, firewood.

I did everything that I needed to do to become a perfect wife.

I went to school not because the Maasais' women or girls were going to school.

It's because my mother was denied an education, and she constantly reminded me and my siblings that she never wanted us to live the life she was living.

Why did she say that?

My father worked as a policeman in the city.

He came home once a year. We didn't see him for sometimes even two years.

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

My mother worked hard in the farm to grow crops so that we can eat.

She reared the cows and the goats so that she can care for us.

But when my father came, he would sell the cows, he would sell the products we had, and he went and drank with his friends in the bars.

Because my mother was a woman, she was not allowed to own any property, and by default, everything in my family anyway belongs to my father, so he had the right.

A girl who demanded school

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