Title: The Weight of Her Name They named her Amina after her grandmother—a woman who had crossed deserts with a baby on her back and a machete in her hand. In their village in northern Nigeria, names were never just names. They were prayers. They were burdens. They were destinies. Amina grew up where stories were told in firelight, where women ground millet while humming songs that their mothers and grandmothers once sang. She learned early that silence was power and that a woman’s strength was measured not by the volume of her voice but by the weight she could carry—wood, water, sorrow, and expectation. She was brilliant, but her brightness was often dimmed by customs that wrapped around her like the colorful fabrics she wore. Girls do not speak too much, they said. Girls do not climb trees, dream too big, or argue with men. Still, Amina read every book she could find. She read under mosquito nets at night, her face lit by a dying kerosene lamp. When her uncle tried to marry her off at 15, her mother—who had once been traded for dowry cows—stood firm. “This one,” she said, her voice trembling but defiant, “will not bend.” Amina won a scholarship to study engineering in Lagos. There, she shed layers of fear like old skin. She marched in protests for girls’ education, coded late into the night, and called her mother every Sunday to say, I am becoming everything you were never allowed to be. Years later, she stood on a world stage at a women-in-tech conference in Nairobi. She wore Ankara print, her hair in a crown of braids, her accent unpolished but proud. She spoke of tradition and technology, of soil and servers, of how African women don’t just survive—they build. As she left the stage, a young girl ran up to her with wide eyes and asked, “Are you really Amina?” She smiled. “I am. But so are you. And one day, they’ll know your name too.” #blackwomen #documentary