Reading 46
Girls are running to get ahead of marriage, work
For many young girls in Ethiopia, only running can provide a future
and the freedom and power that go with it.
Posted on Sun, Jan. 08, 2006
ETHIOPIA
BY EMILY WAX
Washington Post Service
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Virtually the only way for Tesdale Mesele, 13, to avoid soon being married into a
life of housework and childbearing was to run.
So that's what the spunky girl with matchstick legs and a ponytail did. She ran along the rutted dirt roads
of the Ethiopian highlands, barefoot or in torn sneakers, trying to improve her endurance. She ran up the
wide, cracked steps to Meskel Square in the capital while goats wandered by and clouds of pollution turned
the air charcoal gray.
And once she felt she was fast enough, Tesdale ran around the country's only track, a rough ring of patched
and potholed rubber inside Addis Ababa Stadium, hoping to be spotted by a running club and win a tiny
sponsorship known as ``calorie money.''
Professional running in Ethiopia was long dominated by men, and the country has produced some of the
world's best male distance runners. The legendary Haile Gebrselassie, 33, has broken 17 world records
and won two Olympic gold medals. But in the last decade, determined female runners like Meseret Defar,
22, have also begun winning Olympic medals, world championship races and marathons. Today, according to
an Ethiopian sports magazine, seven of the 10 top-earning athletes in Ethiopia are women.
Inspired by these new national heroines, Tesdale and thousands of other girls have left their villages and
come to the capital, living with relatives in hardscrabble neighborhoods, training on their own and dreaming
of being able to compete.
But there are other, more practical reasons for girls to become fit and fast.
''I run so the boys know I'm strong and don't harass me,'' said Tesdale, panting from her afternoon run
from school to home in a ragged sweat shirt and sneakers. ''I also run because I want to give priority to
my schooling. If I'm a good runner, the school will want me to stay and not be home washing laundry and
preparing injera,'' the spongy bread that is the staple of the Ethiopian diet.
SISTERS' CARE
Tesdale lives in a mud-walled compound with three other girls whose older sisters have brought them here
from family farms to train as runners. But their real ambition is simply to stay in school.
In Ethiopia, getting an education is a true marathon: Girls' enrollment is among the lowest in the world, and
women and girls are more likely to die in childbirth than reach sixth grade, according to UNICEF.
''I have so many hopes for her,'' said Tesdale's sister, Alamas, 18. ``When I was her age, my parents
wanted me to marry an old man of 30. They were so angry when I ran away to the city. They didn't speak
to me for years. But now, with my sister's dream of running, she has value to them. She has respect. She
doesn't have to have babies early, because that would disturb her running. They realize it was right for me
to come, and now for her, too.''
In Ethiopia, girls as young as 12 can be sold as brides by parents desperate for dowry payments.
The country has Africa's highest rate of vaginal fistulas, a tearing of the vagina that often afflicts
adolescents during childbirth and requires painful reconstructive surgery.
Ethiopia, an impoverished country of 73 million, also has one of the largest caseloads of AIDS in the world,
forcing many girls to quit school and care for a sick or widowed relative. Since few homes have running
water or electricity, cooking and cleaning take most of day.
There are also cultural taboos against girls walking long distances through desolate bush to school. Parents
fear rape and abduction, which are often carried out as a way to force a girl into marriage.
`MOST VULNERABLE'
''Teenage girls in Africa are the most vulnerable population in the world,'' said Alessandro Conticini, who
heads the child protection and HIV/AIDS sections at the UNICEF office here. ``They do more work than
their brothers. They are far more vulnerable to dropping out and being forced into domestic labor . . .
forced marriages, prostitution.''
Conticini said conditions in Ethiopia were slowly improving, ``but ultimately, girls need a good reason to
sway parents that they should be allowed to go to school and delay work and marriage.''
So far, running has proved a powerful incentive. Even in the most traditional rural enclaves, parents see
the benefit in allowing girls to train, which means they must attend school because coaches pick race
contestants.
Children here are expected to support parents in their old age, and girls who run are often economically
successful because they lead disciplined lives, said ElShadai Negash, editor of Endurance, a sports
magazine in Addis Ababa.
''For a girl, being able to run is a real statement of freedom that actually turns into power,'' Negash said.
``Female runners are idols in part because of their financial success. If that girl can become a
respectable earner, then why not delay marriage? She's seen as an investment, after all.''
Many Ethiopian girls develop strength at an early age from doing hours of chores, walking three or four
miles a day to fetch water and attend school and carrying loads of firewood on their heads.
While boys spend time with their fathers, running errands or hanging out, girls are responsible for helping
their mothers with demanding chores, from mashing fruit for juice to cleaning carpets by hand.
Defar, who won an Olympic gold medal in 2004 in the 5,000 meters and a silver in the 2005 world
championships, said she spent her childhood carrying wood so heavy that she developed strong back muscles
by age 10.
''I would also carry clay pots filled with water for two miles every day,'' Defar recounted at a cafe here.
``I used to cry because all I wanted to do was train and run, but I had to do household chores.''
GETS ATTENTION
Though barely five feet tall, she proved to be an astonishingly fast runner and eventually got the attention
of her father and coaches at school. Even then, however, she had to secretly borrow her brothers'
sneakers.
''I always ran barefoot,'' she said, glancing down at the brand-name sneakers she is now paid to wear.
'Back then, girls were not bought real sneakers since they were expensive. So I started taking my
brothers' shoes for training, getting up really early and then sneaking them back so they could wear them
for school.''