For three days and three nights, Mary Laat ran and hid from members of her own family. The goal of their pursuit? To bring her to the altar to marry a man she didn’t know who’d paid his dowry and expected a wife in return. Clinging to the upper branches of the tree she was hiding in at night, she says she could hear the hyenas below her, circling, hoping for an easy meal.

It wasn’t until she fell to her knees at the gates of Loreto Rumbek School that she shed the tears that were burning within her. She was home now. Finally safe again.

Named for a cow, sold for a price

Now 22, Mary uses “Laat” as her surname, but for most of her life, she was called “Ding.” Mary and her family are members of the Dinka people of South Sudan. Within the borders of South Sudan, the Dinka are strongly associated with their “cattle camps,” the nomadic family tribes of agro-pastoralists whose social and financial standing is tied to the size of their cattle herd.

Mary’s father, Mabor*, was the chief of her camp, well-liked by most. Like all Dinka men, when he was a young man, a marriage was arranged between him and Mary’s mother, Akuach*, with a dowry of cattle paid as part of the exchange. In Dinka culture, each daughter in a family is expected to command a respectable dowry of cattle. But the first-born daughters, like Mary, are also expected to recoup the dowry spent on their mother’s marriage.

So, as a reminder of the value she was expected to have for the men of her family, she was called “Ding”, after one of the cows spent on Akuach’s dowry—a constant reminder of her place in the social order of the Dinka.

Dictated by the Dinka

The people of Mary’s tribe are, in her words, considered to be among the least educated people in South Sudan. “The Dinka do not support girl’s childhood education, because they feel the only thing a girl is supposed to do is get married,” she explains.

In 2016, around when she finished her Primary 7 (an equivalent of seventh grade in the U.S. and Canada), she got her first period, signifying her as a marriable woman in the eyes of the Dinka. She was deeply frustrated, though not necessarily surprised, that her father wanted to keep her back from school and find a suitor for her to be married to.

“You feel dictated with your plans—at any time, anybody can come up and terminate your plans, your goals,” says Mary. “You feel like less of a human being, you feel like you’ll be sold at any time.”

But with some helpful advice from her mother, she convinced her father that getting her full education would be valuable. He reluctantly agreed, and Mary finished Primary 8 before successfully applying to start secondary school at Loreto Rumbek School, an MCC partner in the area. Loreto Rumbek is one of many Loreto schools worldwide founded by Catholics.

Loreto Rumbek: An oasis, a school and a bastion

Loreto Rumbek School, near Rumbek, South Sudan, is made up of a primary school, a girl’s secondary school and a health care facility. A long-serving MCC partner in the country, Loreto is one of the most successful schools in the state.

When Mary arrived at Loreto, she was shocked. Many of the girls in the years above her seemed so free and happy.

Then, in August, she went home for a holiday and everything she was working towards was threatened.

A flight for her life

With a weeklong break from school on the calendar, Mary made the 90 km journey home near the village of Malueth, only to find her family acting cagey around her. She got evasive non-answers about what was going on, until she pressed a family member enough to learn what was really going on. It was bad news. Her father had accepted a dowry of cattle from a local man for Mary’s hand in marriage, and she would not be allowed to return to school.

Mary confronted her father, making it very clear she did not want this for herself, but he remained unmoved. So, Mary crafted a plan to get herself back to Loreto.

She came back to her father, pretending to have a change of heart about the marriage, which bought her a few days of calm. She told her family she was feeling ill; then, when night fell, she stole out of their encampment, committed to making her way back to the support and safety of Loreto at any cost. “I moved only at night and during the day I would climb a tree and hide in it,” says Mary. “I made sure I didn’t pass through anyone else’s property so that no one could tell anyone they’d seen me.”

For three days and three nights, Mary navigated her way back to Loreto, staying out of sight and avoiding danger, sometimes narrowly. “At night I could hear the hyenas making noise, but I did not cry. But once I saw the gates of the school, I fell to my knees and started crying.”

The realities, risks and rewards of educating girls in Rumbek

That was in September 2018. With the support of the school, teachers and classmates, Mary didn’t leave the walled grounds of the school again until she graduated in 2022 for her own safety. But that didn’t mean her family had given up. Shortly after she returned, a group of her uncles arrived at the school, hoping to catch her where they believed she’d fled.

When cases like Mary’s come up at Loreto, and the safety of students and staff could be at risk, the school’s leadership looks to their relationships with members of the community to resolve disputes safely. The staff at Loreto might call upon the local chief or elders to step in, or if need be, the gender and education ministers of the state who have more political power, says Sister Orla Treacy, Loreto’s principal.

Mary made the best out of her situation, committing to her studies for the next three years. Her friends rallied a community around her, with more than one of her friends’ families making it clear that she was part of their family now.

The thrill of graduation and the shock of heartbreak

Much to the surprise of Mary and Loreto staff, Akuach showed up to Loreto’s graduation ceremony. But Mary’s thrill of being reunited with her mother was tempered by the shocking news of her father Mabor’s death. One of Mary’s uncles had made a power play, seeking the chief’s seat by paying someone a small herd of cattle to assassinate him in his home.

Mary now had to choose what her next step would be. Loreto had been so pivotal to her freedom that she decided to sign on to Loreto’s post-secondary school internship. The program is designed to give young women the chance to participate in every part of Loreto’s operations—the clinic, the kitchen, the classroom, and many parts of its administration.

Once graduated from the internship, Mary hopes she’ll be one of the handful of girls Loreto sponsors for a full university education in Kenya. The result of MCC’s partnership with Loreto is far more than the sum of its parts for Mary. She received food, dignity kits and all kinds of other support as the result of MCC funding while she was at Loreto. But those things don’t lead to the kind of freedom and peace she now has on their own. Food addresses hunger, but it takes a peacebuilder to build peace.