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In Tanzania, a secondary school graduation program is worth every bit of five hours.

When the students in caps and gowns are girls, there's even more reason for celebration.

My son, Andrew, and I attended commencement exercises at Kongei Secondary School near Lushoto on Saturday, Sept. 19. In fact, we were seated among the guests of honor.

Andrew taught math at Kongei as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2006 and 2007. When he left, he promised his Form II students he'd return for their graduation in two years. That was a crazy vow, considering the difficulty involved in getting from here to there, but he was true to his word. And I can tell you, the students were overjoyed.

In Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa, only about 10 percent of children advance as far as secondary school, which corresponds to our eighth through 11th grades. For girls, the odds are even worse.

Kongei is a girls' school run by the Catholic Church. It's a good one. Most of its graduates do well enough on national exams to qualify for an A-level school, equivalent to our final year of high school and first year of college.

Education for girls is immensely important in an undeveloped nation like Tanzania, where women are definitely still second-class citizens. With education, girls will delay marriage and child-bearing. They'll make healthier lifestyle choices. And they'll build professional careers, greatly expanding their country's intellectual capacity.

I was so impressed by the bright, happy, enthusiastic young women I met at Kongei who want to become physicians, engineers, journalists and teachers. I enjoyed telling them the governor of North Carolina is a woman, as are our chief justice and one of our U.S. senators, then encouraging them to become leaders in their country.

It's possible to dream anything on a graduation day.

At Kongei, festivities lasted almost all day. The program included songs, dances, skits, speeches, awards presentations and gift-giving. The featured speaker was a university professor -- a woman -- who urged the students to follow her example.

Yet they face many obstacles. A popular magazine for teens called Fema -- I found dozens of copies in the Kongei library -- devoted almost its entire July-August-September issue to a scourge called "fatakism," the name for men who sexually exploit teenaged girls.

It's such a common occurrence that Fema's parent organization -- supported by several European governments and the U.S. Agency for International Development -- is conducting a nationwide, multimedia awareness campaign. I saw a number of billboards warning girls about the threat of lecherous fatakis.

It's no laughing matter. Pregnancy gets a girl expelled from school. Her education, very likely, is over. And, of course, the man won't take responsibility.

Many families don't see the value of girls staying in school to begin with. It's economically more adventageous, at least in the short run, to marry off a daughter and gain a bride price than to pay for secondary school education (which isn't free, even in government schools).

Fatakis entice girls, according to Fema, with gifts and promises but leave them at a dead end.

"The power imbalance between an older man and a younger girl like yourself, especially if money is involved, is striking," an article tells readers. "It only widens the power imbalance that already exists between women and men in Tanzania."

The magazine is frank. In a country with high incidences of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy and poverty, there can't be any mincing of words. Young women have to be wise and careful and determined to gain a better life. Getting an education is the way forward -- for them and for Tanzania.

The girls at Kongei peppered me with questions about the United States, my family and my work. They also wanted to know what I think about their country.

I told them I love Tanzania. Lushoto is in the beautiful Usumbara Mountains, and I've also been to the majestic Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Victoria. But best are its warm, friendly, generous and peaceful people.

If Tanzania can just harness its human potential, it will achieve great progress. But it must educate girls.

The 2009 graduates of Kongei Secondary School have taken big steps worth a full Saturday's celebration.

The next week, they began reviewing for their national exams. In the struggle for a brighter future, there can be no letting up for long.