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Rescuing Masai girls from early marriage

Priscilla Nangurai of Kajiado, Kenya, retired as a teacher in two thousand five. Today, at the age of sixty-two, she could be living a quiet life in retirement. Instead, she leads an organization at her home called GRACE -- the Girls' Rights, Attention, Care and Rescue Center. She tries to rescue Masai girls from early marriage and make sure they get an education.

She has rescued more than 700 girls since 1986. She now has fifteen girls at her center, and she is building a dormitory to house up to eighty girls.

In the traditional culture of the Masai people, fathers often promise their young daughters in marriage to older men. Most girls are between the ages of twelve and fourteen, with some even younger. Their bodies are not ready for sex and childbirth. But that is not the only problem. Most of them must also leave school.

Priscilla Nangurai's older sister was forced into marriage at a young age, but demanded that Priscilla receive an education. She says the problem begins when a girl gets "booked" when she is very young, or not even born yet.

PRISCILLA NANGURAI: "Booking is when a parent or a man wants to marry from a certain family. So he can go to the family, and if there are little girls there, he will book. If one of the wives is expectant, he will say, 'I want something from this womb.' And he's allowed to do that."

A fourteen-year-old girl named Roseline has been at the rescue center since two thousand eight. At the age of four she was booked to a man who she thinks was about sixty to seventy years old.