Halima, Halima

"Halima, Halima!" she called out.
"These clothes won't wash themselves!"
she added!
and Halima had to wake up.
The lines of people at the well
by chance she got there late,
would not have her clothes
washed and on the drying lines
by the gate, by the time the sun goes down.
So she puts on her torn cardigan,
quickly fetches the jerrycans
and runs to the well.
Well, this is her life, everyday,
unlike her brothers,
who will not need to learn,
no, not in the walls of a classroom, but,
the ways of a woman,
expecting marriage by the young age of 14.

She sighed, as she stepped outside,
and walked by the side,
as was expected of every woman;
while looking down, not to lock eyes with that of a man.
The morning breeze kissed her beautiful face
and reminded her of herself,
who she craved to be in the moonlight.
The star she yearned to become
was wrapped up in dirty clouds
full of vengeful lightning and thunder.
She was scared of herself
more than the society that
tried to shepherd her into its ways,
its old ways of doing things.
She was afraid she would conform
and cease to grow.
She was afraid she'd never be
as educated as her three brothers.
And that's why every dusk, when the cattle
her father owned, as dowry,
from two previous early marriages of her sisters,
came back to the rest to rest
from the green pastures on the slopes near Elementaita
signifying the arrival of night,
she served food to her brothers
and in generous amounts,
so as they slept soundly,
she'd sneak their books out
in the faint flickering light
of a candle and try to learn.

No school for girls,
no education to the society.
See, a lamp covered
is no source of light.
A flower blooming in the dark
loses the color of its petals,
and the vibrance of the green in its leaves.

Educate a girl-child and you water
a dying species of a tree.
Educate the girl-child and you quench
the thirst of a parched nation, a thirsty nation.
Educate the girl-child and you increase
the waters in a sickly trickling stream,
which can now carve a way of its own
and explore the world.
Educate the girl-child and you save
the world.

Halima, Halima,
I'm proud of you, Halima!