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.”
“For a girl, being able to run is a real statement of freedom that actually turns into power,” ElShadai Negash, the editor of the Ethopian sports magazine Endurance, told the WP.
[…] I was curious about the Washington Post reporter, Emily Wax, who wrote that story on the Ethopian girls who are running to escape a life of servitude. Did a little research on google. Apparently Wax, who is 31 or 32, was one of the few American journalists report much on the genocide in Sudan: During her trip with rebel fighters in August, Wax lost 10 pounds and became ill from drinking “chocolate-colored water,” as she describes it. “Temperatures got so high, the tires [on the Land Cruiser] would burn,” she says. “None of us had showered for three weeks. We smelled like hell.” […]