The story of Savannah will take you to Benin, a tiny West African country known as the Dahomey Kingdom during pre-colonial times. Benin is unheard of to most, but one aspect of the country’s cultural legacy resurfaces time and again in popular culture. That is, the ruthless all-female military guard that served to protect the king during a time when the African people were still their own rulers. The women warriors called themselves “N’nonmiton” which directly translates to “our mothers”. They swore loyalty to the king until death and pledged celibacy, as their child was the nation and their lives were dedicated to nothing but war. Honing the skill of combat to unparalleled levels, their reputation of indifference to pain and death traveled across lands. A similar tribe of warrior women is mentioned in Greek mythology, the fierce amazons, but whether they really existed or not is disputed. Their ideological sisters of Benin, however, were very real and their legacy lives on. The all-female kings' guard “Dora Milaje” in the blockbuster movie Black Panther, for example, is inspired by the warrior women of Benin and the upcoming movie “The Woman King” starring Lupita Nyong’o will depict the lives of the legendary Dahomey amazons. In the 19th century, the white man’s greed brought grief and destruction to the cradle of humanity from which the continent still finds it difficult to recover, and the N’Nonmiton were wiped out in the process. Their bravery, courage and artful skill of war could not compete with the cowardly fired guns by the hands of the French colonizers. The Kingdom’s Mothers are a thing of the past, but when I journeyed to Benin in 2017 I met many women with bravery running through their genes. One of them was Savannah, a young sweet girl living in my neighborhood. In line with the customs and traditions of the tribe she belonged to, her father had arranged a marriage between her and a much older man. It was expected from Savannah to obey her father’s decision and become just another blurred dot on a long line of women whose destiny was written long before they were born. But instead, her wild spirit tried to resist and break out of the cycle of childbearing, submission and silence. The repercussions of her disobedience promised to become devastating. I first learned about Savannah’s situation from my roommate Zeinab, a Ghanaian lady who quickly became a trusted friend with whom I shared home and heart. We were appalled by the father's actions and tried to assist Savannah in her struggle to win freedom and agency. We summoned our own army, a group of Beninese female lawyers, but our plans were obstructed by a close-knit net of kinship and corruption. Modern laws were unable to overcome the deep-rooted structures in place for decades. There is no happy ending to the story, only reality. Our efforts were in vain and Zeinab and I were banned from the neighborhood vowing never to return. Until this day I am left in the dark about the life Savannah lives today and I still find myself wondering about her in quiet hours. This is not a singular tale, but many stories coming together as one, painting a complicated picture of local and global structures of oppression. It is a story about a land full of voodoo and magic in which reality and myth create a fusion of truth until one becomes the other. It is the story of my dear friend Zeinab who stays up each night exchanging sweet words on the phone with her husband in Germany, dreaming of a future together but ripped apart by socially constructed borders that separate loved ones all over the world. It is also a story of stigma, exile, poverty, the endurance of custom, beautiful as well as cruel cultural practices, the complexity of doing the right thing in a multileveled society, ideological clashes of the west and global south, difference and unity, sisterhood and overcoming. But above all, it is a story about the seeds of hope that are buried in each and every one of us, waiting to be watered and to blossom even in the darkest of times.