Maren's Many Moments

I met a young lady who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  She is a brilliant young woman, with a double major in chemistry and biology.  She wants to be a doctor. When she came to the United States at 14, she could not read in any language.  She was put into school with people her age and expected to understand a language she had never heard, work with a system she had never seen, and try to succeed in a world completely foreign to her.  I asked her to tell me a little about herself and her life. She told me that when she was growing up, first in the DRC and then in a refugee camp, her family told her she was a “nothing girl”. They told her she could not have an education. They told her that the only way she could help her family was to bring home a husband who would then pay the family a cow. Now she says she wants to go back to Africa, help girls learn about nutrition, education, reading and writing.  She feels blessed to have come to Ame...

I took time off from blogging.  I am certain there were many people crying silently into their pillows because of the definite loss that they felt when they no longer read my writing on a semi-frequent basis.  I am offering my deepest apologies to all five of you.  I had to focus instead on the little matter of getting married, and also finishing my PhD.  One of those things was infinitely more difficult than the other. All of my life, well, at least since junior high school, I have harbored a dream of getting a doctorate degree.  I love school.  I love learning.  I love writing papers.  I know what an absolute nerd this makes me.  I don't really care. Life and difficulties all got in the way, and now, a few weeks before my 40th birthday, which happens to be tomorrow, I finally finished this goal that I told myself about when I was 12. Part of the reason I wanted to do this was because I learned that for many generations, women could not go...