run tesdale run!

Facing Servitude, Ethiopian Girls Run for a Better Life
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 29, 2005; Page A01
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."...........................

.................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 sweatshirt 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................