1 Chapter 1

'Naneu" I heard my step mother calling or rather yelling. "Yes mama" I answered trying to hide the weakness that was evident in my voice.

"Have you finished taking your milk or do I have to report you to your father again" she asked opening the door to my room. I opened my eyes to look at the women who had done nothing but treat me like trash from the day that my mother died and my father remarried.

Am Claire Naneu, 12 years old. My mother passed on when I was 5 years old, leaving me and my older siblings with my father who after 3 months married my step mother.

I have two brothers, leshan and Lekishon. I also have a sister, Mary Namunyak.

My stepmother has three children making all of us seven. My father happens to be a very respected man in our village considering his old age.

My father is a drunkard who never really cares about his children. I can barely remember a day when he came home sober, if there's any.

Being a girl in my community (Masai) I was nothing but a source of wealth and even my family looked at me as such. So yes, school was no name in my vocabulary. Mothers were expected to teach their daughters all the chores and how to behave and respect their husbands when they are finally married, which was more of sold since a father only cared about the large number of cows and sheep given to him as dowry.

Now I lay on my bed after taking the sour milk my stepmother had brought me. Minutes after I finished she came asking if I had drunk it since I had a habit of not taking anything even when am hungry.

You might think she cared but no, it was now past a week since I was circumcised. This was a right of passage which symbolized that I was now a grown woman who could be given to a man for marriage.

'Yes mama, I've taken the milk,' I answered in a low but audible voice. 'Well you better make sure you eat well and heal since your to be husband cannot wait to have you' now she had a smirk plastered on her face like it was the best thing you'd tell a 12 year old.

My eyes become teary immediately that sentence reached my ears. How could they be so cruel. I hate all of them. I hate my sister for letting all this happen to us. She was married off to an eighty year old man when she was only 10. I hate my brothers for supporting my dad in everything. I hate my community for such stupid traditions.

I had dreams. Dreams that no one cared about. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to make a change to all that my community made girls and women believe. But who was I kidding, I was definitely not an exceptional. I was going to be a wife to a 73 year old man and bear him as many kids. That was all that could come out of being a girl.

My stepmother stormed out of the room leaving me to my sorrowful thoughts. I wished the ground could open up and swallow me. I wanted to die so bad. No one could save me not even my sister who was coming to visit me today.

I couldn't help but curl myself in to a ball and cry. My eyes were started to get heavy so I decided to take a nap.

I don't know how long I had been in my room but when I woke up my sister was beside me.

"Naneu, how are you?" She asked me immediately I opened my eyes.

"Am okay Mary, how are you?" I was now at the verge of crying. It had been so long since I saw her last. "Stepmother has told me that you're to be married off immediately after you heal completely" she told me sadness all over her face.

"I don't want to be married Mary, please make them stop this arrangements I want to go to schoo.." I didnt even finish the word before could put a hand on my mouth to stop me.

"What do you mean you don't want to be married Naneu? You sure don't want to bring shame to our family by going against the community's traditions" she warned me now sounding upset. "You know that school is for boys why do you keep dwelling on something that cannot happen?" I stayed quiet listening to her go on and on about the things I had heard each time I mentioned the word school.

One could easily assume that it was a taboo. Wait, it was a taboo. There's no girl from my community who had ever gone to school. I definitely was not going to be the first one. Not when my father and stepmother breathed the same air as I did.