I stayed at home for two years.  Then my aunt told my father that there was a mission hospital that needed people to volunteer to take a nursing course for six months.  He agreed and I learned how to measure blood pressure, temperature and to give people medicine and injections.  After six months I went home, but that was not enough for me.  I wanted more education.  Although I had a little knowledge I got a job at one Pharmacy, which was near home where I worked for a few months.

In 2002, my Uncle who had been studying at Mount Meru University in Arusha came for holidays.  He asked my father to give permission for me to go with him to Arusha so that he could find me a school.  He had a friend, Peter, who told him about Emusoi Center, which is helping Pastoralist girls to go to school.  By good luck, Sr. Mary agreed to help me.      

My name is Pendo Charles Olipu.  I was born in 1982 in Iringa.  My father had two wives and my mother was the second wife.  My father has eight children and I am the second born to my father, but the first born to my mother.  My father did not live with my mother for a long time. They had quarreled and my mother went back to her parents.  I was very young and went with her.

After six years, I started Primary School.  After completing Primary school my father came to my grandfather and told him that he needed his daughter.  My grandfather agreed but told my father that he must pay something.  My father paid four cows for me.  My father sent me to secondary school.  This is the first time he showed love for me but later he started to change.  He paid my school fees for the first and second term.  However, when the school opened again, he told me that he didn’t have the school fees so I should just remain at home.  However, it was not true that he didn’t have the fees.  He just decided that I should not go back to school.  I could do nothing but I wished to be an educated woman.  

She found a nice school for me that is teaching me very well.  I am enjoying my studies, although, sometimes I am facing different problems but that is normal in the life of people.  I am studying hard so as to become an educated woman.  My future wish is to be a good doctor who will help equally without looking if a person is rich or poor.  I believe that God, who has opened this golden chance for me will help me.

Note:  Pendo completed Green Bird Girls Secondary School, Mwanga, Tanzania. 

UPDATE: Pendo Olipu graduated and is now studying Pharmacology at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi.