Tanzinia girl escapes to education

At 12, brown-eyed Neema Laizer persuaded her elementary school teacher to accept one litre of milk each morning instead of money because her father refused to pay for a girl to be educated.

At 13, her father selected a 30-year-old stranger to be her husband. The next day, she was supposed to drop out of school and begin a new life as a housewife and a mother within a year, a common fate for young Maasai girls in Tanzania.

Laizer had a different plan.

While her father slept, she and her mother quietly packed a small backpack of clothes, then she slipped on a pair of black rubber sandals and escaped by moonlight through heavy tears and forest brush, running more than a kilometre to her uncle's home.

The next morning, the two of them drove for six hours to a refuge 320km away that he had whispered to her about.

Now 19, Laizer is preparing to start college in the autumn -- hoping to be the country's first Maasai woman doctor -- and speaking out against female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and violence against Maasai women in the East African country.

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