Jon Black Photography

Ethiopian artist Gebrekristos Solomon in his studio in Piassa, Addis Ababa

What a wonderful woman! This is an assignment I shot earlier this month for Associated Press.

Bogaletch Gebre was born in Kembatta in southern Ethiopia. She grew up in a culture where women experience heavy labor from a young age and are treated far less than equal from men. Determined to learn to read, she ran six miles each way to a missionary school and became the first girl from her village to be educated beyond the fourth grade. Her mother was occasionally beaten for allowing her to attend school. Like millions of African girls, she underwent Female Circumcision. Escaping four attempted forced marriages by abduction, Boge  received scholarships to attend high school in Addis Ababa and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she studied microbiology and physiology. With money scrimped from scholarship stipends, she built a tin-roofed house for her father’s family, the first in the village. In a society where fathers are known by the accomplishments of their sons, people of Kembatta began to understand the value of educating girls when they saw the “house that Gebre’s daughter” built. Boge became the first Ethiopian woman to join the science faculty at the University of Addis Ababa and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study parasitology at the University of Massachusetts. Since then Boge has returned to Ethiopia to start Kembatti Mentii Gezzima-tope (Kembatta Women’s Self-Help Center). The organization has worked in Boge’s Homeland of Kembatta since 1997 seeing a 97% reduction of Female Circumcision in the area. The organization also battles for Women’s rights and HIV awareness.

I am very fortunate to get to meet Boge and listen to amazing stories that need to be heard. For more info on Boge and her Organization Visit www.kmgselfhelp.org