The women kick up red clay dust, dancing with babies tied to their backs. One mother takes my hands in hers, cranes her neck up at me and shouts “dance!”

So we dance. Up the drive from the van toward the little pink church. All the mothers are bending side to side, bending low, breaking into song about a God who sees even them.

They’ve come a long way. They came from mothers who were never taught to read and fathers who married them off before their first periods came. They came from communities where women are held down by men who cut away their capacity for pleasure. They came from tribes where they were one of many wives, where they had no say and no right to refuse, where men shared them like property with friends.

They have come a very long way.

I’m so honored to be guest posting from Kenya over at my friend Ann’s place today. Please read the rest of this very important post and see many more beautiful pictures from Kenya over there.