Beginning

Well....here I am deciding on how to approach this blogging opportunity...

How real and how deep should I be on this...should I approach this like I would a journal?...knowing that others might actually read my thoughts, opinions, and perhaps any feelings I decide to write about.... hmmm...this will be a work in progress ....ok here goes!

I was up very late last night...watching a documentary on child brides in Ethiopia with Lisa Ling.

I had so many mixed feelings and thoughts going through my mind. There were thoughts about o yeah...that's a voice over and that's a b-roll!...yes am getting this stuff...but then came the more serious awareness of what she was exposing the audience (me) to.

I found out by viewing this documentary that up until a few years ago, it was perfectly legal in Ethiopia for families to give their daughters away to marriage as young as 4 years old! The thought is baffling to say the least. The law was said to recently change so that a girl had to be 18 years of age to wed. What on earth I kept thinking would make that even an option? Poverty, lack of education, and cultural norms all play a part is this custom that seems to leave this girls (that is what they are little girls) forsaken and even abandoned at times. You see, they marry young, often they have not even started their menstruation cycles (that is how young they are!) and often are domestics to their often 20 and above year old husbands. Some of the girls highlighted on this documentary end up raped, exposed to disease, and often end up being single parents.

Apparently, since they are still babies (my words) they have a hard time delivering their babies. Often end up with a medical condition affecting their bladder and "leaking" causing abandonment and rejection by their husbands and families. Others end up exposed to HIV and Aids. Sadness, anger, and frustration were some of the emotions I felt...for this girls that are no different than I was or any other female. How much location (birth place) a difference makes!....

I looked back at my own life and that of eveyone I have known and thought to myself ...how blessed and lucky I have been. Fear and loss of control to the degree this girls face every day was not my common experience. Am very grateful for that. Now the question left is what do I do about what I know?....how do I proceed? Knowing this has changed me....