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It's always difficult to set a dramatic new course for your life, defying your family's expectations.

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But the extraordinary young woman that you're about to meet paid a particularly high price to get what she wanted.

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Here's her story.

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Like most graduate students, Kakenya Ntaya likes nothing better than letting her hair down after a hard day studying.

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Bowling is a way to unwind after hours in the library.

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She belongs to the Maasai, a world away from bowling alleys and the comfortable corridors of academia.

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Fetching drinking water from the local stream, plowing the fields, milking the cows,

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and cooking dinner in a mud hut, this is Kakenya's old life.

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And this is her new world, microwaved pizza, the life of a graduate student in America.

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Kakenya Ntaya is in Pittsburgh studying for her doctorate in international education.

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At weekly seminars, Kakenya gives her perspective to university staff and to other students.

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I feel that education is the key to changing things.

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And to educate people, they become liberalized.

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I mean, they make their own decisions and things like that.

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And I believe that we need leaders.

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Kakenya is writing her dissertation on girls' education, how and where they learn best.

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For a Maasai woman, it's a subject that's very close to her heart.

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My teachers, they were not encouraging me.

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As girls, we saw that, oh, it's the boys who will do well.

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They're the ones who will go to high school.

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They're the ones who will do A, B, C, D.

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But as girls, we felt constrained.

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There are more than 350,000 Maasai in Kenya.

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Former nomadic warriors are famously proud of their traditions, including strong views about a woman's role.

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The Maasai don't value much about women.

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They are just to give birth, maybe to look after our children.

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A father is proud of having many girls because he will get a lot of cows when they marry off their daughters.

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Kakenya's father was no exception.

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His biggest concern was marrying off his oldest daughter,

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and that meant the officially outlawed practice of female circumcision,

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the traditional Maasai rite of passage to womanhood.

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I said, you know, once I go through this, I am married.

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My school is ending.

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I told dad, this is what's going to happen.

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I can only get circumcised if you let me go back to school.

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And the reason I did that is that if I don't get circumcised,

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no man will marry me, and then it will be a shame to my family.

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I had to trade my, you know, my parts of my body to get an education.

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The women of the village already have their own ideas for Kakenya.

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They say we want a girls' school.

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We want our girls to be in a separate place with the men.

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So Kakenya, whose only goal was to get an education,

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found a mission to build a school and to educate all the girls in her village.

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I want to see girls in my village happy.

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That's my goal, and I know that the only or the best way I can achieve that

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is by giving them a school.

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Kakenya is hoping that her studies in America

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will show her the best way to educate girls,

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but she has already made another discovery about life in the United States.

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Kakenya has fallen in love, Western style.

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Her boyfriend Michael is Kenyan, but not Maasai,

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and he lives in Washington, D.C.

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Holding hands would be unacceptable in Kakenya's village.

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Now Michael is about to go one step further, giving Kakenya a big surprise.

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Kakenya, will you marry me?

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Proposing on one knee is not a Maasai custom,

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nor is being given an engagement ring.

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Kakenya hasn't been back to her village for two years.

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Whenever I go home, I feel like some weight has been taken away from me.

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All of a sudden, my brain feels lighter, I can think straight.

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The village women have come to welcome her and to remind her

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that she is not alone.

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The village women have come to welcome her and to remind her

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that she is still very much a Maasai.

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Our girls are disadvantaged, they are being deprived of their education,

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so we've been thinking that if we have a place that we can put them,

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they can be able to finish their schooling and they can be able

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at least to be better persons in the future.

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So we are hoping that now that she is going to school to a better place

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that is better than here, we expect that she will do something good

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for the community around here.

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The women's words have made a deep impression on Kakenya.

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She visits her old school, N.O. Osayem Primary.

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OK, good morning, class.

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Good morning, teacher.

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How are you?

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We are fine, thank you, teacher.

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Sit down.

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Thank you, teacher, and you're welcome.

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Kakenya asks the children how many of them want to go to university.

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In the older classes, things are even tougher for the girls.

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There are few girls, as you can see, compared to the lower grade.

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Most of the girls drop out of school because they are married off,

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most of them get circumcised and they don't go back to school.

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They don't have many opportunities because the Maasai men,

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they don't want to infest the girls' education.

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She has remained the same Kakenya.

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She still seems the same girl who left.

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But she has changed the girls of N.O. Osayem,

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because now they all want to study like her.

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I'm very proud.

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I would never consider the States my home.

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Living in the U.S. for now to better my future, yes, but for good, no.

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Home is home.

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I think that this is where I'm needed the most,

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and I think that being in the Ministry of Education

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is one way that I can serve the people,

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because I know education is the most important thing

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that you can ever give to any person.

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I want to be able to change that every child in Kenya,

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no matter if you're an elite, if you're a poor kid,

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you're going to get the same education as all of them.

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One day, hopefully become a president of this country, yes!

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One day, yes, president of Kenya, Kakenya!

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He's running away!

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Kakenya continues her studies and plans to marry this year

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in a traditional Maasai ceremony.