"I came from school at around 18:00, and Mum called me," Balkissa Chaibou recalls.
"She pointed to a group of visitors and said of one of them, 'He is the one who will marry you.'
"I thought she was joking. And she told me, 'Go unbraid, and wash your hair.' That is when I realised she was serious."
The young girl from Niger had always been ambitious.
"When I was little, I was dreaming of becoming a doctor. Take care of people, wear the white coat. Help people," she says.
Marriage to her cousin, who had arrived with his father from neighbouring Nigeria, would make this impossible.
"They said if you marry him you won't be able to study any more. For me my passion is studying. I really like to study. That's when I realised that my relationship with him wouldn't work well."
Niger's tradition of marrying its girls young - it has the highest rate of child marriage in the world - is partly rooted in its grinding poverty.
"I came from school at around 18:00, and Mum called me," Balkissa Chaibou recalls."She pointed to a group of visitors and said of one of them, 'He is the one who will marry you.'"I thought she was joking. And she told me, 'Go unbraid, and wash your hair.' That is when I realised she was serious.
