On Valentine’s Day, I was reflecting on how lucky we are to live in a country where love matches are fully embraced. For some —particularly women and girls — marriage is not a choice. In fact, six of the 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are in West and Central Africa, according to UNICEF.

It’s why the story of new Mainer Marwo Sougue resonated so deeply with me. Today, Marwo is in her early 20s and studying to become a nurse. But she barely escaped becoming a child bride in her native Djibouti.  Custom there dictates that a widowed uncle will marry his niece. Marwo was 15 when her aunt died, so to protect her, her parents sought asylum in America. The family arrived in Westbrook in 2017.

“My dad was a businessman and believes in education more than anything,” Marwo told me. “And if I married, he knew that was not going to happen, basically.”

From the moment she arrived in Maine, Marwo took every opportunity to realize her academic dreams. When she first enrolled at Portland High School, she spoke no English. It was her ESL teacher who told her: “Believe you can do something big with your life.” Marwo took this to heart. By her senior year, she had qualified for Advanced Placement English.

With fluency under her belt, she began searching for ways to become involved in her new community. “There was always something inside me that wanted to do more,” she said. “More school, more programs, more clubs. Instead of sitting at home with my free time, I’d rather be out in the community coming up with ideas and finding things to be part of.”

Marwo began volunteering with the Ronald McDonald House in Portland and joined her high school’s International Club and its Muslim Student Association. She became aware of Portland’s growing homeless population, and decided to become a 4-H advocate for homeless youth, working with a local shelter to secure personal hygiene products and protective gear for young Mainers during the pandemic.

In 2019, Marwo joined the Portland Mentoring Alliance, a nonprofit that matches students with community leaders, where she developed a strong bond with her mentor, a 60-year-old immigrant from India. They worked on Marwo’s college applications, went on hikes, and spent time with each other’s families. Marwo still regularly visits her mentor, and even waters the woman’s plants when she travels to California to visit grandchildren.

After graduating high school in 2020, Marwo became a nursing student at USM. She loved anatomy and physiology, but she had also watched her diabetic mother navigate the complicated American health care system. “We’d be back and forth to the hospital because of her diabetes and intolerance of the medications they were giving her,” Marwo recalls. “I could barely understand what the doctors were saying and thought, ‘Well, why not go into nursing so I gain that understanding.”

This spring, she will earn her nursing degree and hopes to pursue a master’s degree to become a nurse practitioner. In the meantime, Marwo continues to work with vulnerable youth through the 4-H. “I feel very connected here in Maine,” Marwo says. “And I’ll do anything to help others feel the same. I just want to contribute as much as I can, any chance I get.”

When I asked Marwo where her drive comes from, she pointed to her mentors, but especially to her parents. “They always told me, ‘Just keep going,’” she says. After all, they uprooted their entire lives in Djibouti for her. This made her feel important and filled her with purpose. Without their love, she’d be living a very different life right now.

Héritier Nosso is a health promotion coordinator and community organizer in Lewiston.

Copy the Story Link