Escaping Child Marriage in Ethiopia

[Louisiana1976]

<snip>

Tadu, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and black T-shirt, looks like a typical teenager. Her braided hair is pulled back into a bun and small shiny earrings add a sparkle to her face. She tells me her story as we sit in Biruh Tesfa ("Bright Future"), an informal school for runaway girls in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The school receives funding from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which has sponsored my trip, is operated by the Ethiopian government and gets technical support from an international non-governmental organization called Population Council.

Tadu never formally met the man whom she was assigned to marry but she saw him in her small town in central Ethiopia. He was tall with brown skin. She does not know how old he was - only that he was "an adult."

"When I was alone, I was afraid of him," she says. "When I was with other girls, they protected me. We all laughed at him."

Tadu solicited her uncle to try to convince her mother to let her stay in school and not get married. Her mother agreed. But after Tadu's uncle left, her mother again demanded that Tadu get married.

"My mother told me, 'Either you have to marry, or you leave this house,' " she says, as she stares down at the school's metal desk.

<snip>

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hanna-ingber-win/mothers-of-ethiopia-part_b_301245.html

[UnseenUndergrad]

1. Getting in before the rush...

I'd like to point out that Ethiopia is majority Orthodox. I only mention this because someone normally comes around these sort of threads and says "relgion of peace" in a sarcastic manner.

Or maybe I'm wasting my time, but it's my 3 minutes.

[debbierlus]

2. I just read that -

....