Facing Servitude, Ethiopian Girls Run for a Better Life

"I always ran barefoot," she said, glancing down at the brand-name sneakers she is now paid to wear. "Back then, girls were not bought real sneakers since they were expensive. So I started taking my brothers' shoes for training, getting up really early and then sneaking them back so they could wear them for school."

Defar has earned so much money from running that she paid for both of her brothers to go to school; one is studying computers and the other video production.

Perhaps most important, being a successful runner gave her more control over her life. She was able to delay childbirth and choose the man she married, a handsome soccer player who is her age and has similar interests.

Recently Defar spoke to young mothers hospitalized with vaginal fistulas. She said she encouraged them to help their own daughters stay in school, develop their talents, delay marriage and find value in their lives. In the compound where Tesdale lives, the girls idolize Defar and have hung posters of her on the walls.

"Running gives girls a lot of options and makes our bodies our own," Defar said. "And even if everyone doesn't make it, training opens up ideas to teach, to be a coach, to do anything you try hard at."

Gebrselassie, the male running star, said he had been speaking at girls' schools and running clubs, too, and donating shoes for their training.

"It's so fantastic that more girls are running in Ethiopia," he said in a telephone interview here this week. "I want to support our girl athletes not just materially but morally. . . . Girls make wonderful runners. I think it sends a fantastic message that girls can do anything the boys do."

On a recent morning, Tesdale and her best friend, Sercalem Tesefay, 14, woke at 5:30 and jogged for an hour to reach Meskel Square.

Warming up at eight minutes a mile, they sped past women stooped under clusters of firewood and men behind the wheels of taxis snarled in traffic.

At Meskel Square, girls and boys were sprinting up the steps as recruiters watched. Neither Tesdale nor Sercalem has signed up with a running group, but they both said they hoped to improve their times by next year.

By 8 a.m. the two friends were off to elementary school, another half-hour run away. After classes ended at 1 p.m., they ran home, fed the goats, walked another mile to collect water and finally sat down in their compound for a traditional coffee ceremony.

Over doll-size cups of strong coffee, the girls' older sisters said they were happy the pair had become modern girls: students and athletes with braids in their hair and paint on their nails.

"There is scarcity of everything in the countryside. If we stay, we aren't sure if our lives will be what we want," said Sercalem's sister, Muluwork, 20, a part-time construction worker. Their "obvious" fate, she said, would be "early marriage and childbirth, along with many years of chores."

Sercalem smiled and turned to Muluwork.

"When I dream," she said, "I see myself running so fast that I can bring us up from our living standards and buy all the girls of Ethiopia sneakers."