The Hope for Freedom
A small girl, hardly a sliver of a person, walks slowly around a drift of pigs, her bare feet tickled by the damp grass. Deep chocolate hair ends at her waist, and her soft brown eyes roll at the job she has to do - herd the pigs. At only 13 years old, one would expect her to be in school, but that ended last year when she was deemed too old. Now, she spends her days doing the same things - washing clothes, tending her younger siblings, and tending the pigs. Her father is a strong man, she took after him, and her mother was a short, driven little woman. Her two younger sisters were still in school, being 9 and 7, and her little brother still toddled around holding onto their mother's brightly dyed skirt. She had freedoms, to work - sewing, working a market stall, picking her husband - but she envied her little brother, set to go to school and be something greater than a measly hog farmer. She wanted more. But it was unattainable, it was uncouth, and it was not cultural custom. So she would settle for being a pig farmer.
