Before Annitah Raey became a wife at 17, she was a girl who wanted the freedom to be herself. She loved dressing like her father, pushed back against the expectations placed on girls, and held tightly to the independence that made her feel like she could carve out a place for herself in the world. But beneath that rebellious streak was a young girl carrying pain, struggling with a strained relationship at home, and feeling so unseen that she sometimes wondered if there was any room for her in the world at all.
When Annitah met the man she would marry, she knew him for just seven days. He made her feel wanted at a time when she felt unwanted everywhere else. Marriage became a way out, even though she was still a child herself, still carrying the weight of experiences no young girl should have to navigate alone. She did not fully understand what it meant to be a wife. She only knew she needed somewhere else to go.
Today, Annitah is a media personality with over a decade of experience across four of Nairobi’s biggest media houses. She is also a mentor to young people, sharing the lessons of her own life in the hope that others can make more informed choices and be spared some of the pain she experienced. For her, these conversations are personal.
This International Day of the Girl, Annitah shares her story with Leading Ladies Africa as we confront the realities of child marriage and the circumstances that push girls into adulthood before they are ready. Her experience reminds us that ending child marriage means more than preventing weddings. It means protecting girls, listening when they are hurting, giving them safe places to turn, and ensuring that marriage is never their only perceived way out. Every girl deserves the chance to grow up, discover herself, and choose her own future.
Take us back to who you were before marriage. What was life like for you as a girl?
Who was I before I got married? I think the honest answer is, a rebellious, lost, broken, and sad girl who hated her life.
I wasn’t a girly girl. I loved my dad deeply, so I wanted to be my dad. I dressed in trousers, which wasn’t common at the time, but I loved it. My dad called me princess. He kissed my hand. He bought me dolls when I was younger. He was my first love. But as I grew older, I had a strained relationship with my mother, and somewhere along the way, I developed a real resistance to women. I didn’t want to listen to women, be associated with them, or have anything to do with them. From about 13 to 17, I was a proper tomboy, no earrings, wanted to shave my head, refused to wear skirts or dresses unless they were on my terms.
I felt more masculine than feminine. I always felt like I had to be the responsible one, cooking, washing, taking care of my siblings. I was the firstborn, and I carried it. In the middle of all of that, I was also deeply rebellious. I started smoking at 14. I was everything society didn’t want a girl to be, and honestly, part of me found freedom in that.
What I really wanted was to be my own person. I didn’t want society to dictate what I could wear, what I could do, who I could be. My dad gave me that. He never said “you’re a girl, you should do this.” He let me be, beautifully unconventional, and I’m grateful for that.
But underneath all of it — the rebellion, the freedom, the borrowed confidence — I was a girl who felt unseen. A girl who had been sexually assaulted at 15. A girl who ran away from home at 13. A girl who felt so deeply different from the world around her that she wondered if there was any space in it for her at all. Sometimes I still wonder.
Take us back to who you were before marriage. What was life like for you as a girl?
Who was I before I got married? I got married at 17, so what was life like for me as a girl?
I was not a girly girl. I loved my dad deeply, so I wanted to be him, I dressed like him, I wanted to wear trousers, which was not common at all when I was younger. My dad called me princess. He kissed my hand. He bought me dolls. He was my first love, and he gave me the liberty to just be.
But as I grew older, I developed a strained relationship with my mother. I grew up leaning more into boys and, honestly, heavily disliking women. Between the ages of 10 and 17, there was a lot of rebellion, I did not want to listen to women, I did not want to be associated with women. By my early teens, I was a proper tomboy. No earrings, I even wanted to shave my hair at one point. I genuinely did not feel like I belonged in the girl space.
I also carried a strong desire to protect myself. As the firstborn, I was responsible, washing, cooking, taking care of my siblings. And in the middle of all of that, I was a rebellious child. I was drinking. I started smoking weed at 14. I was not the girl society desired, but I enjoyed it. Being rebellious felt like freedom to me. I did not want society to dictate what I could wear, what I could do, who I could be.
But underneath all of that rebellion was a broken, sad girl who hated her life. A girl who was sexually assaulted at 15. Who ran away from home at 13. Who felt so unseen, so different, so out of place that she genuinely desired to die. I felt like the world had no room for me. Sometimes I still wonder if it does.
That is the girl who walked into marriage at 17.
What did getting married mean to you at that age? Did you fully understand what marriage would mean for your life?
Getting married meant escape. That is the honest truth.
By the time I finished high school in November 2007, I knew I was not going back home. My mother and I could not be in the same space without everything falling apart. I was already living with friends, just trying to survive outside of that house.
I met him in a bar on December 24, 2007. We got married on December 31, 2007. I had known him for seven days.
What I remember is that he held me. He took care of me. He did not try to have sex with me on the first night. He told people I was his girlfriend. He showed me he wanted me. And I was 17, feeling hated and unwanted, feeling like damaged goods after the assault. He wanted me. That was it. That was genuinely enough.
I did not understand what marriage was. The only marriage I had seen was my parents’, and that was not something you would look up to. I had no idea what a healthy marriage looked like. I did not understand the commitment, the responsibility, what it would demand of me. I was still a child looking for a parent. I wanted him to guide me, to tell me what to do. I was not thinking about forever. I just knew this had to be better than home.
What I also did not tell him — what took almost a month to say — was that the only experience I had of anything physical was sexual assault. Sleeping next to him every night, knowing he had desires, was terrifying. Eventually we had the hard conversation. But I carried that fear into a marriage I did not understand, at an age I was not ready for, with wounds I had not begun to heal.
When you look back now, what do you feel you lost by having to become a wife before you were 18?
I lost myself.
I lost my teenage years. I never got to go to campus. I never got to pursue an education, and I was brilliant — I was so smart. I lost my childhood. I never got to be a normal teenager who gets a heartbreak here and there, who tries dating, who gets to figure out who she is without the weight of a marriage on her shoulders. I went straight from girlhood to wife and mother, and I never looked back because there was no time to look back.
I lost my naivety in love — that beautiful, innocent belief that someone can love you fully and wholly without hurting you. I lost that. I left my marriage in 2011, and I have not been able to fully commit to anyone since. I get scared. I am still scared. What if someone hurts me? What if someone breaks me? That fear lives in me because of what that marriage put me through.
I also lost my sanity for a while. It has taken ten years of therapy to begin recovering, and I am crying as I say that, because I genuinely lost so much. I stayed in violence. I stayed through cheating. I stayed through everything because we are taught as women that perseverance is your badge of honour. Don’t leave. Don’t say there are problems. Just stay. And I stayed until I almost died. Until I could not stay anymore.
There is a girl that got lost in that marriage that I do not know if I will ever fully get back. I walked in a child. I left a broken young woman who is still recovering. And that is painful — because I was so naive, and I loved the way I thought people should love, and I expected that love in return. I did not know it would cost me everything.
What would you want parents, families and communities to understand about allowing girls to grow up before asking them to take on adult responsibilities?
This is a wake-up call to parents.
I do not understand how, in this day and age, parents do not trust their children with money, with choosing their own courses, with being children, but they trust them with marriage. You do not trust your daughter to decide her future, but you trust her to go and be someone’s wife?
We groom our girls from birth. Every instruction, make your bed, learn to cook, keep the home, is grooming for marriage. Nothing but marriage. We reduce them to wives before they even know who they are.
And then we send them out so young. Sometimes we sell them. Sometimes we just allow them to go. They are still children who need to be parented, who need an education, who need to experience life without the bondage that comes with being a child bride. What does a 14 or 15-year-old know about living with a man? What do they know about navigating a marriage, raising children, surviving the weight of adult life?
As a mother to two children, I genuinely do not understand how you can watch your child become someone’s wife and call that a good decision. It is not. It is a failure of that child’s future. Communities expect so much of girls — yet they are the very communities that are breaking them. You marry a girl off at 15 and still expect her to become a model woman. The double standard is staggering.
If you are hearing this and you know a girl who was married off and you kept quiet, you are part of the problem. Be the person who speaks up. Be the person who says every girl deserves an education, deserves a future she chooses for herself.
They are children. They need to be parented, not married.
