English In Kenya

Born in a remote village in Kenya, Nice Leng'ete saw the young girls she grew up with receive the cut, the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. Every girl got the cut, and once you did, you'd be married off to a man triple your age. You might be his second or third wife. You'd have children in your teens. This is exactly what happened to Nice's sister. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast in Masai culture.

This volume in a series of world history case studies celebrates the remarkable career of Miriam K. Were, a physician and public health official from Kenya, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2022. A Quaker woman who has dedicated her life to providing health care and dignity to the world’s most vulnerable, Were’s community-focused efforts have saved millions of lives. Working for UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s, she fought to defend reproductive rights for women and improve children’s nutrition. In the 1990s, Were led Kenya’s ...