Living in National Geographic

We have a subscription to National Geographic (thank you, Tina!) and due to crazy postal issues we get them in clumps a few times a year. We recently got a stack and I was flipping through one article late last night. It was about child brides mostly in India/Pakistan and in Yemen. I know this happens out here, but it isn't something folks advertise.

The very next day I was SUPER excited to have been invited over to the house of a classmate of Layla's to eat lunch. Normally Layla comes home from school very happy but totally wiped out and doesn't even eat lunch until after her nap. i was hoping she'd have enough emotional stamina to make it through lunch at a new person's house. I have been waiting and praying for a chance to connect with some of the families in Layla's class so that she can develop some friendships with local girls her age.

There are about 5 women in the house who were eating lunch with us and one of them was telling me that she she spoke English with an Ameircan accent because of the school she attended. She stopped in 6th grade because she got MARRIED. I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. Immediately I thought, "what I am supposed to do? look casual? look shocked? sad? interested?" I mean really. What are you supposed to do? If you act horrified, surely it would make her feel worse?

She said she had been promised to this man for a long time. I wasn't sure how old he was....I was full of questions but trying to figure out how I was supposed to react. Anyway, she said at the age of 13 she was married to this guy and packed off to Pakistan to go be a wife. I asked if she was scared and she said that she was and that she had a bad life with him and he did not treat her well. I can only imagine what was represented in those few lines encapsulating the last 8 years of her life.
She is back home now and trying to finalize the divorce. He is may not grant her the divorce...we'll see what happens next week when I have lunch with them. She was actually going to the courthouse today.

I know other gals who got married at around 16 years of age but that isn't that far from parts of the US a generation or two ago. 13 years old....that is another story. A story in National Geographic apparently. Crazy to realize it is happening just about 6 houses down from ours.