I've traveled the world as a writer
and an activist for my entire life.
What we are talking about is a revolution.
We are the women
that our parents warned us about.
And I can tell you that, by confronting the problems
once marginalized as women's issues,
we can tackle the greatest dangers
of the 21st century.
Behind every major crisis,
there's an unseen factor in play,
a story you've never been told.
The greatest indicator of the world's stability,
wealth, and safety is the status of women.
Worldwide, more than 200 million women
have been married off before the age of 15.
They are cut off from their education
and often become what amounts to domestic servants.
It's an ingrained practice
that is keeping sub-Saharan Africa
mired in generational poverty.
We travel to Zambia to learn how the life
of one young girl in a remote village
can shackle the future of an entire nation.
**
We're in the Eastern Province,
where child marriage is the highest,
and we're meeting a girl
who's marrying a 48-year-old.
So we're meeting her in the last days of preparation.
We're gonna see how she's feeling
and what's going through her head.
The practice of child marriage has been going on for centuries.
It's often a source of income for poor families
who receive a dowry payment in exchange for their daughters.
But a recent economic downturn has thrust much of Zambia
into poverty.
That means thousands more young girls
are at risk of being married off under the age of 18.
The practice is technically illegal,
but enforcement of the law is rare.
We've been going down this road for a very long time right now,
and it's very narrow, very rough.
And it's in the middle of nowhere.
After eight hours of driving from the capital city of Lusaka,
we finally arrive in the Petauke District,
where the Nsenga people
have been marrying off young girls for generations.
Before any wedding can take place,
every bride has to complete a highly secretive ritual.
It's known as Chinamwali.
We're about to meet a young girl.
She has been spending the past 30 days
in this hut right behind me.
She's not allowed to speak,
and she's not allowed to get outside of this hut.
And, inside, she's learning everything
about how to be a wife.
And with my friend, Samanga,
who's a journalist, we are gonna go in.
And she's gonna help us to get to know about the girl
and what happens inside the hut.
This is Dialess.
Her mother has accepted one cow from the groom
in exchange for her daughter.
Dialess is 14 years old.
The very first thing they teach a girl
who's going to get married is how to respect your husband
because men are so particular about respect.
It's very, very important in this tradition.
That's why they would never, ever
allow a girl to enter marriage or to be taken to a husband
before she passes through this process.
The women who conduct the ritual are known as the alangizi.
So, now, you can go.
She'll show you where to hold it and how to hold.
That's how you hold a man.
Like it or not, I got a lesson of my own.
And then, stop doing your waist like that.
Just there. You lock your...
This feels so weird.
She's -- yeah.
And how do you -- they think how she's doing?
She's ready?
She's ready.
What were you doing here in the hut for the past 30 days?
So what -- what are you expecting your life
gonna be like?
What did they teach you?
What do you think about having a child
or being pregnant?
What did you do before the 30 days?
Did you like school?
When you get married, will you continue with school?
How does that make you feel,
knowing that you're not going back to school?
This kind of got me very emotional.
She's not very much taught about how to make herself happy.
She's just only taught about how to make her husband happy
and how to please her husband sexually,
and that's the most important thing.
But, in fact, as a result of this marriage,
Dialess will face a whole array of much greater hazards.
**
I have just watched Dialess undergo an elaborate ritual
before she can marry her new husband.
But it was hearing from Dialess directly
that affected me the most.
When I talked to Dialess
and she was telling me how she loves school so much
and she liked reading, it's heartbreaking to know
that the school is 30-second walk
from where she is.
What happens in Zambia in seventh grade
is that a lot of girls, due to early marriage,
drop out to go get married.
And now, in this instant, in this class,
there are 4 girls to 12 boys.
Would they rather stay in school
or get married?
They all would rather remain in school than get married.
Losing out on her education is one thing,
but Dialess faces a more immediate threat.
Statistically, she will most likely become pregnant soon.
And teenage girls who are not physically mature
are at much greater risk of complications
during childbirth.
We're going down this road, and it's taking us a long time.
And it's just pretty cut off from the main town
and very, very bumpy.
We made the 2 1/2-hour drive to Saint Francis Mission,
the closest medical facility to Dialess' village,
to find out what she can expect if and when she goes into labor.
We're gonna meet with a doctor who's gonna tell us
about patients and what do they have to go through to get here.
Is she going to behave?
Continue drinking, continue bathing,
continue exercises, okay?
So how worried would you be for Dialess?
She lives in a village
off of Petauke where there are no roads.
It's very bumpy.
And how worried would you be for her?
What do you think is the most important thing
the country needs right now?
Dr. Jansen took us to meet one of his patients,
a young woman from a small remote village,
just like Dialess.
And where is her baby?
What do you hope to happen after leaving here?
I wish you the best in healing after here.
Seeing the patients here,
it seems like only the lucky ones
come to get to this hospital,
since it -- it takes so long and so much money.
Getting to the hospital in time
is not the only challenge Dialess will face.
Zambia is in the midst
of a devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic,
and women are especially at risk.
It's not uncommon for married men here
to have extramarital affairs, contract HIV,
and then pass it on to their wives.
In fact, Dialess' family
has already been affected by the epidemic.
Her father died from complications caused by AIDS,
and, now her mother has been diagnosed, as well.
When did you get sick?
Is it because you're sick,
that's why you married Dialess off so early?
Are your kids sick?
Are you worried that, like, some --
God forbid, something would happen
and what would happen to Dialess?
Do you worry about that?
Many parents in this part of Zambia
hope that marriage will protect their daughters
from HIV/AIDS
by ensuring they have only one sexual partner.
But as Dialess' mother has learned, it's no guarantee.
And what she can't know is whether Dialess' new husband
will become more of a threat than a savior.
Dialess' Chinamwali ritual is coming to an end.
It's now the night before her wedding,
and the entire village is celebrating.
The bride is still inside the hut.
She's not allowed to come outside.
And everybody from the village,
women and men, are gathering.
They are singing. They just -- All these festivities.
And over on the other side,
they're cooking food -- chicken and bread.
And we're gonna have this amazing feast,
where everybody's gonna enjoy except the bride.
The bride will just have her food
brought inside the hut for her.
I sat down with Dialess' 48-year-old husband-to-be,
Isaac, to find out
why he's decided to marry a 14-year-old girl.
The first thing I learned was
that he's already married to someone else.
In many of these small villages,
male polygamy is an accepted practice.
How long have you been married?
So why are you getting married again?
So tell me about Dialess.
How did you meet her, or how did you see her?
You know that it's illegal in Zambia
to marry someone younger than 16 years old.
So why couldn't you just marry someone
who is at least two years older than Dialess?
Dialess is now out of school.
Do you think that you'd be able to let her go to school?
Because of the high poverty levels in certain families,
you find that the girls may be looked up to somebody else
to fill in the space,
being able to buy them clothes
and even simple things like cellphones.
And these children then fall out of school
and find themselves, you know, marrying older men.
According to Gender Minister Nkandu Luo,
it's this cycle of poverty and the lack of education
that allows child marriage to persist.
She believes that the best way to eradicate child marriage
is by attacking it at the local level.
This problem is highest in the rural part of Zambia.
And the rural part of Zambia
is governed by the traditional leaders.
Traditional leaders are campaigning,
speaking to the people in their chiefdoms,
using different methods, popular theater and so on,
to tell parents not to marry off their children.
To Minister Luo and others in this fight,
it's very clear
why child marriage should be wiped out.
We are the people who make missions,
so the healthier we are, as women,
who have healthy children
and, will reduce child mortality
and also reduce maternal mortality.
So it's -- it's in our interest.
And whatever way you look at it,
that child marriage must come to an end.
**
There is one group of women
who have taken matters into their own hands,
working at the village level to educate men and women alike.
We just got to Misolo. And we're getting an amazing --
amazing welcoming from these beautiful women.
They're saying, "We are moving forward.
We're never going back.
And this is for Women for Change going forward."
Women for Change.
Women for change. Women for change.
The Misolo Mamas are a collective of women
who bike around the country,
spreading a message of female empowerment
in an effort to end child marriage.
Women for Change!
We're going around the village now.
And the women, the Misolo womens,
are talking about gender-based violence and early marriage.
Why -- why do you think it started here, this program?
And has it gone really down?
Like, do you feel different?
Are you married? You are.
Are they in school? Yes, yes.
Would you consider marrying them?
You get these ladies on the bikes, right?
Fortunately, these efforts are also gaining traction
in the upper reaches of government.
Inonge Wina is Zambia's first female vice president
and a strong voice against child marriage.
You have done, in the past,
a lot of the effort to end child marriage.
Why is that so important for you?
We consider child marriage
as one of the developmental issues
because we are losing out on the girl child.
16,000 girls have dropped out of schools in Zambia
in one year due to child marriage.
We want girls to be future leaders
in their country, to prosper.
But if they drop out of school, it means the end of the future.
If you manage to end child marriage in Zambia,
what would that mean for the country?
It would mean prosperity for the country,
because you can imagine 16,000 young people
contributing to the economic growth
of their country,
to be involved, in their careers
and to prosper in those careers.
Definitely, they make a huge contribution
to the country's growth.
The mandate to end child marriage
is an idea that, came from we, the Zambians.
We have realized what this means
to our country's, development.
Back in the Eastern Province,
it's time for 14-year-old Dialess
to consummate her marriage to her 48-year-old husband.
It's very dark, and it's late at night.
And there's almost no ceremony.
She was just brought in by an alangizi woman.
And she was told that this is her home.
And that's it.
Since we met Dialess, she's given birth
to a baby girl named Accleaner,
who is just as likely to be married off as her mother.
Now that Dialess is a married woman
with a child,
she is confined to a life strictly at home
or in her village.
Though she would like to be, she's not in a classroom.
She won't be contributing
to the development of her country
or reaping any of its benefits.
She dreams that, some day, she'll return to school,
but she knows that will be her husband's decision.
To support survivors of child marriage,
go to viceland.com/woman.