I LOVE stories that highlight women, past and present, who are brave and true and honest and committed to their right.

Today I met, through more research, Nehanda. Nehanda was a woman in Africa who told the people that they had a right to fight for their land that was essentially stolen by Cecil Rhodes. And her people listened to her and believed her and followed her.

I wish I could say that these people won. They did not. Nehanda was captured and the local Jesuit priest, Father Richartz tried to convert her, but she would have none of it. She demanded to be returned to her people. Instead, they carried her to the scaffold where she proclaimed, “My bones shall rise again. Then they hanged her.

The girls of this region learn from this woman known as the grandmother of Zimbabwe. Her bones rise again and again as women are raised to be brave and true and honest and committed to their right.