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 those people?
These are the Maasais.
And you know what's cool?
I'm actually one of them. (Laughter)
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 reach puberty.
My mother, my grandmother, my aunties,
they constantly reminded me that, "Your husband just passed by."
(Laughter) Cool, yeah?
And everything I had to do from that moment
was to prepare me to be a perfect woman at the age of 12.
My day started at five in the morning,
milking the cows, sweeping the house, cooking for my siblings,
collecting water, fire wood.
I did everything that I needed to do, to become a perfect wife
I went to school not because the Maasai women all go to school.
It's because my mother was denied an eduction
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 policemen in the city,
he came home once a year, we didn't see him for sometimes even 2 years.
And whenever he came home, it was a different case.
My mother worked hard in the farm to grow crop so that we can eat,
she read 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.
Becasue my mother a women, she was not allowed to own any property
and by default everything in my family,
anyway, belonged to my father so he had the right.
And if my mother ever questioned him, he'd beat her, abused her
and really, it was difficult.
When I went to school, I had a dream, I wanted to become a teacher.
Teachers looked nice, they wear nice dresses, high-heeled shoes --
I found later that they were uncomfortable, but I admired it.
(Laughter)
But most of all, the teacher was just writing on the board --
not hard work, that's what I thought,
compared to what I was doing at the farm, so I wanted to become a teacher.
I worked hard in school, but when I was an eight grader,
it was a determining factor.
In our tradition, there's a ceremony that girls have to undergo to become a woman.
And it's a right of passage to womanhood.
And then I was just finishing my eight grade
and that was a transition for me to go to higschool,
this was the crossroad.
Once I go through this tradtion I was going to become a wife.
Well, my dream of becoming a teacher will not come to pass.
So I had to come up with a plan to figure these things out.
I talked to my father, I did something that most girls have never done.
I told my father, I will only go through this ceremony if you'l let me go back to school.
The reason why, if I ran away, my father will have a stigma, people will be calling him,
"The father of that girl who didn't go through the ceremony."
It was a shameful thing for him to carry the rest of his life.
So he figured out -- well, he said, "OK, you'll go to school after the ceremony."
I did. The ceremony happenned, it's a whole week long of excitments.
It's a ceremony, people are enjoying.
And the day before the actual ceremony happens,
we were dancing, having exceitments and through all the night, we did not sleep --
The actual day came and we walked out of the house
and we were dancing,
as we danced and danced and we walked out of the courtyard
and there were a bunch of people waiting, they were all in a circle.
And as we dance and dance, and we approach this circle of women --
men, women, children everybody was there.
There was a women sitting in the middle of it
and this women was waiting to hold us,
and I was the first, there were my sisters and a couple of other girls.
As I approach her, she looked at me and I sat down and I opened my legs.
As I opened my leg, another women came, and this women was carrying a knife.
And a she carried the knife she walked towards me, and she held my clitoris, and she cut it off.
As you can imagine, I bled. I bled.
After bleeding for a while, I fainted there after.
It's something that so many girls -- I'm lucky I never died, but many die.
It's practice with no anaesthesia, it's a rusty old knife
and it was difficult.
I was lucky because one -- also, my mom did something that most women don't do
three days later, after everybody has left the home
my mom went and brought a nurse.
We were taken care of, three weeks later I was healed and I was back in high school.
I was so determined to be a teacher now
so that I can make a difference in my family.
Well, while I was in high school, something happened,
I met another young gentlemen from our village who had been to the university of Oregon.
This man was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, a camera,
white sneakers -- and I'm talking about white sneakers.
There's something about clothes I think and shoes. (Laughter)
And this was in a village that didn't even have paved roads,
it was quite attractive. (Laughter)
I told him, "I want to go to where you are," because this man looked very happy
and I admired that.
And he told me,
"Well, what do you mean you want to go, don't you have a husband waiting for you?"
And I told him, "Don't worry about that part, just tell me how to get there."
This gentlemen, he helped me.
While I was in school also, my dad was sick, he got a stroke --
and he was really sick so he really couldn't tell me what to do next.
But the problem is my father is not the only father I have.
Everybody who is my dad's age, male, in the community, is my father by default.
My uncles, all of them, they dictate what my future is.
So the news came, and I applied to school
and I was accepted to Randolph-Macon Woman's College, In Lynchburg, Virginia
and I couldn't come without the support of the village
because I needed to raise money to buy the air ticket.
I got a scholarship, but I needed to get myself here.
But I needed the support of the village
and here again, when the men, the people heard
that a women had gotten an opportunity to go to school
they said, "What a lost opportunity,
this should have been given to a boy we can't do this."
So I went back, and I had to go back to the tradition.
There's a belief among our people that morning brings good news.
So, I had I to come up with something to do with the morning
because there's good news in the morning.
And in the village also there's one chief or person, male, an elder
if he says "Yes,"everybody will follow him.
So I went to him, very early in the morning, as the sun had rised,
the first thing that he sees when he opens his door is me.
"My child, what are you doing here?"
"Well Dad, I need help, can you support me to go to America?"
I promised him that I'll be the best girl, I will come back
anything they wanted after that, I will do it for them.
He said, "Well, but I can't do it alone."
He gave me a list of other 15 men that I went, 16 more men.
Every single morning I went and visited them.
They all came together -- the village, the women, the men.
Everybody came together to support me to come, to get an education.
I arrived in America, as you can imagine, what did I find?
(Laughter) I found snow,
I found Walmart,
vacuum cleaners and lots of food in the cafeteria.
I was in a land of plenty. I enjoyed myself,
but during that moment while I was here, I discovered a lot of things
I learned that, that ceremony that I went through when I was 13 years old
was called female genital mutilation.
I learned that it was against the law in Kenya,
I learned that, I did not have to trade part of my body
to get and eduction, I had a right!
And as we speak right now, three million girls in Africa
are at risk of undergoing through this mutilation.
I learned that my mom had a right to own property,
I learned that did not have to abused because she was a women.
Those things made me angry.
I wanted to do something.
Every time I went back, I found that my neighbours' girls
were getting married, they were getting mutilated.
And after I graduated from here, I worked at the UN, I went back to school
to get my graduate work, the constant cry of these girls was on my face.
I had to do something.
As I went back, I started talking to the men, to the village, and mothers and I said,
"I wanna give back the way I had promised you that I would come back and help you.
What do you need?"
As I spoke to the women, they told me,
"You know what we need? We really need a school for girls
because there has not been any school for girls."
And the reason they wanted the school for girls
is because when a girl is raped when she's walking to school
the mother is blamed for that.
If she got pregnant before she got married,
the mother is blamed for that and she's punished, she's beaten.
They said, "We wanted to put our girls in a safe place."
As we moved, and I went to talk to the fathers,
he fathers of course, you can imagine what they said,
"We want a school for boys."
And I said, well, there are a couple of many men from my village who had been out
and they've got an education
why can't they build a school for boys and I'll build a school for girls?
That made sens and they agreed.
And I told them, I wanted them to show me a sign of commitment
and they did.
They donated land where we build the girls' school, we have.
I want you to meet one of the girls in that school.
Angelene came to apply for the school
and she did not meet any criterias that we had.
She's an orphan, yes. We could have taken her for that,
but she was 12 years old and we were taking in girls who were in the fourth grade.
Everybody were telling us Angelene had been moving from one place,
because she's an orphan, she has no mother, she has no father,
moving from one grandmother's house to another one
from aunties to aunties, she had no stability in her life.
And people said, and I looked at her I rememberd that day,
and I saw something beyond what I was seeing in Angelene
and yes she was older to be in fourth grade,
we gave her the opportunity to come the class.
Five months later, there is Angelene.
A transformation had begun in her life
Angelene wants to be a pilot so she can fly around the world and do a difference.
She was not the top student when we took her,
now she's the best student not just in our school,
but in the entire division that we are in.
She's showing different, that's Sharon, that's five years later,
that's Avaleen, five months later, that's the difference that we are making
As a new dawn is happening in my school
A new beginning is happening,
as we speak right now 125 girls will never be mutilated.
125 girls will not be married when they are 12 years old.
125 girls are creating and achieving their dreams.
This is the thing that we are doing - giving them opportunities so they can rise.
As we speak right now, women are not being beaten
because of the revolutions we've started in our community.
(Applause)
I want to challenge you today
you're listening to me because you are here very optimistic.
You are somebody who is so passionate
You are somebody who wants to see a better world.
You are somebody who wants to see the war end.
No poverty.
You are somebody who wants to make a difference.
You are somebody who wants to make our tomorrow better.
I want to challenge today to be there first --
because people will follow you.
Be the first - people will follow you
Be bold - standup.
Be fearless.
Be confident.
Move out because as you change your world, as you change your community,
as we believe we are impacting one girl, one family,
one village, one country at a time.
We are making a difference.
So if you change your world, you're going to change your community,
you're going to change your country.
And think about that, if you do that and I do that,
ain't we going to create a better future,
for our children, for your children, for our grandchildren,
and we will live in a very peaceful world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)