Kakenya Ntaiya was set to follow the traditional path of all girls born in the small village of Enoosaen, Kenya. Engaged at the age of 5, she was to be circumcised by the time she became a teenager. But she had a different plan. First, she negotiated with her father: she would willingly agree to be circumcised only if he would allow her to finish high school. He agreed. Then she negotiated with the village elders to do what no girl had ever done before: leave her village to go to college in the United States. She received a scholarship to Randolph Macon college in Virginia and returned to Kenya to change her hometown forever.
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