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At first glance, it's a typical scene: Two teenage girls lean their heads together engrossed in conversation as they munch on tuna salad on a bagel and fries.

But listen to Memory Banda, 18, from Malawi and 16-year old Achie (whose last name is not provided because of her age) from Ethiopia, and you'll hear an earful about a lot of things you wouldn't expect, They're talking about how tough it is to be young and female in Africa. They're discussing how child marriage and female genital mutilation are just two of the obstacles to girls getting an education. They're commiserating about the challenge of getting health care and of finding jobs that will let them lead a better life.

But they're not just griping. Memory and Achie each push for change in their communities.

The teens came to New York last week to speak on some panels at the United Nations 59th Commission on the Status of Women. They were brought to the conference by Let Girls Lead, a nonprofit group based at the Public Health Institute. (The Gates Foundation is a funder of both the Public Health Institute and NPR.)

I got to join the girls for lunch and conversation. Here is an edited and condensed version of our interview.

The two of you are so comfortable with each other, it's as if you have known each other forever. But you just met last week?

Achie: Yes, we just met last week, and we're best friends on Facebook now! We are about the same age, we're both petite and we share the same goals to help women.

Memory: Also, both of us also like to write in our spare time — she writes essays, I write poetry. I write in both English and in Chichewa, which is my native language at home [which is Chiradzulu in the Southern Region of Malawi]. She won a prize for one of her essays!

What was the prize-winning essay about?

Achie: The topic was what would you see if you envisioned yourself as a satellite, what you saw and what you would like the change in the world. I wrote about how Africans need to stand up together and voice a desire for change and a vision for the future. I write mostly in English. Amharic is the language we speak at home.

What made you want to work for women's rights?

Memory: In my community in southern part of Malawi the tradition is that once a girl reaches puberty, you go to an initiation camp where we are taught how to be a woman — how to satisfy a man. As part of that you go through a sexual initiation with a man.

And did you?

Memory: I did not. This was a hard decision. My family and friends were calling me a stubborn little girl because it felt to them like I was embarrassing the family. But for me it was a life decision. I knew that some girls come back pregnant, they get married, they cannot go to school, and if the men run away from their responsibility the girls are left on their own with the children. That was not for me.

But when my younger sister reached puberty, she went to the camp. She ended up getting pregnant and had to marry to the person who impregnated her. She was 11. This is what I saw and what I wanted to change.

What are you doing to help make change happen?

Memory: I had the idea to put up posters in my neighborhood offering free lessons to the adolescent mothers. And 20 girls joined the class. That led to my working with Let Girls Lead to help create networks for girls and advocating to help stop child marriage..... So if you ask me what is it like to be a teenager here, it was a struggle. You get anxious as adolescence approaches because you know what you're going to go through.

Achie, tell us about your life in Addis Ababa.

Achie: I live in a nice neighborhood, and go to a good school, but this is not the life that many young girls in Ethiopia have.

Early marriage is also a problem in my country. There are traditional views about women, and they are not expected to go to school. There is also female genital mutilation. In my family there is nothing like that, but I would volunteer in organizations [to tutor] and I would talk to girls and hear their stories. Listening, you just have a feeling of how heavy a burden they are carrying and you cannot be quiet about it. When they share with you what they have experienced, you feel part of it and you want to act on it.

How has volunteering changed you?

Achie: I used to be a really shy girl and even if an opportunity was in front of me I would underestimate myself and not do it. That is how I was until I was 14.

At that time, I was working as a summer volunteer tutoring children from ages 5 to 16, and even though I was among the youngest of the volunteers, I was asked to lead one of the programs as a school coordinator. I was afraid, but I said yes, and it was my best decision. I opened up. I became less shy and more outspoken.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Memory: I have the dream of becoming a lawyer. And also journalism.

Achie: I plan on being an engineer, though haven't decided yet what type. And if I/when I get the opportunity to study in the U.S., I would love it. And I'm also planning on doing more work for empowering girls.

Goats and Soda

Meet The 15-Year-Old From Rural Guatemala Who Addressed The U.N.

What do you do in your free time, when you're not studying or working to help women?

Memory: I like to hang out with my friends. I'm an addict of writing, poems about women, and young girls and coping with being a teenager. And my favorite sport at school is lawn tennis. I am the only girl on the team.

Achie: I design dresses. I don't make them, I sketch them for fun. They are modern, but with a traditional Ethiopian sense. I also play basketball, even though I am short. And I have a blue belt in Tae Kwan Do.

malawi

Ethiopia

As scholarly buzzkills have long told us, corned beef isn't really Irish. So what to do if you want a taste of the Emerald Isle on Saint Patrick's Day? Instead of green, maybe look for the yellow — a pat of Irish butter. Although most Americans are familiar with images of Ireland's green rolling hills, few realize that they're the secret to a deliciously buttery empire.

"It goes back to the Emerald Isle," explains Pat O'Keeffe, deputy editor of Irish Farmers Journal. "The green land is our competitive advantage. Those rolling green hills are great for growing grass. You need frequent and regular rainfall, and we've got plenty of that."

The actual Irish cows themselves aren't that different from their American counterparts — in both countries, over 90 percent of milkers are Holstein Friesians, those iconic black-and-whites. What it comes down to is what the cows are eating.

Irish cows graze on those temperate rolling green hills from March to October, and are only milked during those months. (A small number, O'Keeffe estimates 10 percent, are milked year round for drinking, or fluid, milk, but butter's the real business.) Grass-fed milk produces a rich butter, yellow with natural beta-carotene. The polyunsaturated fats in fresh grass also make for pats that are softer than those from hay or grain — all the better for spreading across your scone. Like most European dairy, Irish cream also has a higher butterfat content, creating soft butter with a richer mouthfeel. And the end result?

i

Holstein Fresian dairy cows make their way towards pasture in County Cavan, Ireland. Irish cows graze on the country's rolling green hills from March to October, and most are only milked during those months. Tom Stoddart/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

Holstein Fresian dairy cows make their way towards pasture in County Cavan, Ireland. Irish cows graze on the country's rolling green hills from March to October, and most are only milked during those months.

Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

"I have to be careful for an American audience," Pat O'Keeffe hedges for a diplomatic moment, "but we'd say it's [like the difference between] chalk and cheese."

And those feelings of nostalgia (and unabashed superiority) toward Irish butter can run deep, even after leaving Ireland. When Dublin-born Lisa Jacobs' family emigrated to the United States, her parents continued to seek out Irish butter. And when she dropped out of law school to start making cheese in the similarly green-and-rainy Pacific Northwest, her father not-so-gently suggested that Jacobs Creamery make him some good, Irish-style butter. Jacobs even smuggled some grass and wildflower seed to cultivate the cows' fields, seeing if she could capture some of that Irish terroir in her hand-churned product.

But far before this modern evangelism, Irish butter had its fans. Ancient stashes of butter dating back 1,000 years — and up to 3,000 years — are routinely dug out of the Irish peat bogs. Scholars speculate the butter was either a high-value offering, buried ritualistically, or else a foodstuff stored in the bog as a primitive refrigeration technique. (Either way, the phenomenon is given the irresistible term "bog butter.") Although this millennia-old butter isn't quite ready for toast, butter is a long-lived product. Which means it can be shipped — and it was.

i

Butter samples from the first quarter of the 20th Century in Ireland. Cork Butter Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Cork Butter Museum

Butter samples from the first quarter of the 20th Century in Ireland.

Cork Butter Museum

"Cork butter was the first global food brand," explains Peter Foynes, director of the Cork Butter Museum (and yes, there is a butter museum).

The Cork Butter Exchange was established in the late 18th century, and in its day was the largest butter market in the world. Irish butter was tied to British expansion, as buckets made their way onto ships loaded for the sugar routes, or crossed the Atlantic to feed troops fighting to quell the American Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of casks left Ireland every year, heading everywhere from Australia to Brazil, France to the West Indies. Miles of "butter roads" helped even remote rural farmers bring their butter into the global marketplace.

But after this peak — Foynes puts it in the 1870s — Irish butter production began to trail off, due to a number of factors. Colonies had steadily been establishing their own agriculture, rendering Irish exports less important. But the biggest blow came in 1879, with the mechanical separator.

i

Butter is inspected inside a creamery in Dublin, Ireland, during the first quarter of the 20th century. Cork Butter Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Cork Butter Museum

Butter is inspected inside a creamery in Dublin, Ireland, during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Cork Butter Museum

Even as farmers mechanized the butter-churning process, they had long been hampered by separating — patiently waiting for the to-be-churned cream to rise to the top (a process that takes 24-36 hours, depending upon the temperature). With the centrifuge-like mechanical separator, that wait time is eliminated. Unfortunately, Irish farmers were late adopters — by the time they mechanized, the industry was 20 years behind. By the early 20th century, the Cork Butter Market had closed.

But luckily for lovers of good Irish butter, its grass-fed richness has made a comeback. Farms banded together to form the Irish Dairy Board in 1961, which developed popular Kerrygold Irish butter. (The company says it's now the No. 4 butter in the U.S.) And the next decade's E.U. membership brought with it milk subsidies, laying the bedrock for increased dairy production (and even over-production, leading to established quotas). Later fears of saturated fats hit the Irish butter industry, as they did all dairy, but recent data seems to be moving consumers beyond those margarine moments, and back to the full, sunny swipe of butter.

"Some of the science — or alleged science — has changed," notes Irish ag journalist Pat O'Keeffe. But like a good Irishman, he was never swayed. "It was always a good product. Butter today is still as good as it was."

And with the 30-year-old E.U. dairy quotas set to expire on April 1, this product could be on the brink of a new buttery era.

st patrick's day

food history

butter

food science

foodways

Ireland

As scholarly buzzkills have long told us, corned beef isn't really Irish. So what to do if you want a taste of the Emerald Isle on Saint Patrick's Day? Instead of green, maybe look for the yellow — a pat of Irish butter. Although most Americans are familiar with images of Ireland's green rolling hills, few realize that they're the secret to a deliciously buttery empire.

"It goes back to the Emerald Isle," explains Pat O'Keeffe, deputy editor of Irish Farmers Journal. "The green land is our competitive advantage. Those rolling green hills are great for growing grass. You need frequent and regular rainfall, and we've got plenty of that."

The actual Irish cows themselves aren't that different from their American counterparts — in both countries, over 90 percent of milkers are Holstein Friesians, those iconic black-and-whites. What it comes down to is what the cows are eating.

Irish cows graze on those temperate rolling green hills from March to October, and are only milked during those months. (A small number, O'Keeffe estimates 10 percent, are milked year round for drinking, or fluid, milk, but butter's the real business.) Grass-fed milk produces a rich butter, yellow with natural beta-carotene. The polyunsaturated fats in fresh grass also make for pats that are softer than those from hay or grain — all the better for spreading across your scone. Like most European dairy, Irish cream also has a higher butterfat content, creating soft butter with a richer mouthfeel. And the end result?

i

Holstein Fresian dairy cows make their way towards pasture in County Cavan, Ireland. Irish cows graze on the country's rolling green hills from March to October, and most are only milked during those months. Tom Stoddart/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

Holstein Fresian dairy cows make their way towards pasture in County Cavan, Ireland. Irish cows graze on the country's rolling green hills from March to October, and most are only milked during those months.

Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

"I have to be careful for an American audience," Pat O'Keeffe hedges for a diplomatic moment, "but we'd say it's [like the difference between] chalk and cheese."

And those feelings of nostalgia (and unabashed superiority) toward Irish butter can run deep, even after leaving Ireland. When Dublin-born Lisa Jacobs' family emigrated to the United States, her parents continued to seek out Irish butter. And when she dropped out of law school to start making cheese in the similarly green-and-rainy Pacific Northwest, her father not-so-gently suggested that Jacobs Creamery make him some good, Irish-style butter. Jacobs even smuggled some grass and wildflower seed to cultivate the cows' fields, seeing if she could capture some of that Irish terroir in her hand-churned product.

But far before this modern evangelism, Irish butter had its fans. Ancient stashes of butter dating back 1,000 years — and up to 3,000 years — are routinely dug out of the Irish peat bogs. Scholars speculate the butter was either a high-value offering, buried ritualistically, or else a foodstuff stored in the bog as a primitive refrigeration technique. (Either way, the phenomenon is given the irresistible term "bog butter.") Although this millennia-old butter isn't quite ready for toast, butter is a long-lived product. Which means it can be shipped — and it was.

i

Butter samples from the first quarter of the 20th Century in Ireland. Cork Butter Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Cork Butter Museum

Butter samples from the first quarter of the 20th Century in Ireland.

Cork Butter Museum

"Cork butter was the first global food brand," explains Peter Foynes, director of the Cork Butter Museum (and yes, there is a butter museum).

The Cork Butter Exchange was established in the late 18th century, and in its day was the largest butter market in the world. Irish butter was tied to British expansion, as buckets made their way onto ships loaded for the sugar routes, or crossed the Atlantic to feed troops fighting to quell the American Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of casks left Ireland every year, heading everywhere from Australia to Brazil, France to the West Indies. Miles of "butter roads" helped even remote rural farmers bring their butter into the global marketplace.

But after this peak — Foynes puts it in the 1870s — Irish butter production began to trail off, due to a number of factors. Colonies had steadily been establishing their own agriculture, rendering Irish exports less important. But the biggest blow came in 1879, with the mechanical separator.

i

Butter is inspected inside a creamery in Dublin, Ireland, during the first quarter of the 20th century. Cork Butter Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Cork Butter Museum

Butter is inspected inside a creamery in Dublin, Ireland, during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Cork Butter Museum

Even as farmers mechanized the butter-churning process, they had long been hampered by separating — patiently waiting for the to-be-churned cream to rise to the top (a process that takes 24-36 hours, depending upon the temperature). With the centrifuge-like mechanical separator, that wait time is eliminated. Unfortunately, Irish farmers were late adopters — by the time they mechanized, the industry was 20 years behind. By the early 20th century, the Cork Butter Market had closed.

But luckily for lovers of good Irish butter, its grass-fed richness has made a comeback. Farms banded together to form the Irish Dairy Board in 1961, which developed popular Kerrygold Irish butter. (The company says it's now the No. 4 butter in the U.S.) And the next decade's E.U. membership brought with it milk subsidies, laying the bedrock for increased dairy production (and even over-production, leading to established quotas). Later fears of saturated fats hit the Irish butter industry, as they did all dairy, but recent data seems to be moving consumers beyond those margarine moments, and back to the full, sunny swipe of butter.

"Some of the science — or alleged science — has changed," notes Irish ag journalist Pat O'Keeffe. But like a good Irishman, he was never swayed. "It was always a good product. Butter today is still as good as it was."

And with the 30-year-old E.U. dairy quotas set to expire on April 1, this product could be on the brink of a new buttery era.

st patrick's day

food history

butter

food science

foodways

Ireland

The divide between Republicans and Democrats on pot politics is narrowing, President Barack Obama said in an interview Monday.

"What I'm encouraged by is you're starting to see not just liberal Democrats but also some very conservative Republicans recognize this doesn't make sense including sort-of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party," the president said in an interview with Vice News.

During the wide-ranging interview, Obama noted that the American criminal justice system is "so heavily skewed toward cracking down on non-violent drug offenders" and has has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color, as well as taking a huge financial toll on states. But, Obama added, Republicans are beginning to see that cost.

"So we may be able to make some progress on the decriminalization side," Obama said. "At a certain point if enough states end up decriminalizing, then Congress may then reschedule marijuana."

Reclassifying marijuana as what's called a Schedule 2 drug, rather than a Schedule 1 drug is part of a bill being pushed by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican weighing a potential White House bid, as well as Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The unlikely trio of lawmakers unveiled their bill, which would also remove federal prohibitions on medical marijuana in the more than a quarter of states where it's already legal, last week.

"We, as a society, are changing our opinions on restricting people's choices as far as medical treatments," Paul, who has been a vocal critic of the so-called war on drugs, said last week.

"There is every reason to try and give more ease to people in the states who want this — more freedom for states and individuals," Paul added.

Paul's emphasis on states' rights is in line with the Republican belief that the federal government should keep its hands out of local affairs. But this is also a political sweet spot as a majority of Americans back more liberal marijuana laws.

In fact, 51 percent of Americans said they favor legalization of marijuana, according to the most recent Gallup survey. That's part of a decade-long trend more in favor of legalization. In 2004, nearly two-thirds of Americans were against it.

Support for legalization has increased over the last decade, polls have shown. Gallup hide caption

itoggle caption Gallup

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 23 states and in Washington D.C., and voters in four states and Washington D.C. have approved marijuana for recreational use. But it remains illegal at the federal level.

"Members of Congress tend to be between five to 10 years behind the public on this issue," Dan Riffle, the director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in an interview. "Medical marijuana is more popular in this country than baseball and apple pie, and it's certainly more popular than Congress. What this bill means, and what it shows, is Congress is finally catching up to the public on this issue and recognizes that this is a slam dunk."

While it might not drive the voters that tend to make up the vote in early presidential primary states, it came up at last month's Conservative Political Action Conference.

At the recent gathering, which typically draws droves of young conservative activists to the Washington D.C. area, nearly two-thirds of the 3,000 people who participated in the straw poll said they want to see marijuana legalized for either recreational or medicinal purposes.

At CPAC, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was asked whether he believed Colorado's recent decision to legalize marijuana was a good idea or bad idea.

Cruz initially responded with a joke.

"I was told Colorado provided the brownies here today," he said.

He added that states have the right to legalize marijuana, despite his personal position on it.

"I actually think this is a great embodiment of what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the laboratories of democracy," Cruz said. "If the citizens of Colorado decide they want to go down that road, that's their prerogative. I don't agree with it, but that's their right."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, asked the same question, echoed the same argument.

"I thought it was a bad idea," Bush said, "but states ought to have that right to do it. I would have voted no if I was in Colorado."

On the other side of the aisle, Democrat Hillary Clinton — who most expect to jump into the presidential race – sounded... a lot like Ted Cruz.

"On recreational [marijuana], you know, states are the laboratories of democracy," she told CNN in June. "We have at least two states that are experimenting with that right now. I want to wait and see what the evidence is."

Clinton said she supports medical marijuana for "people who are in extreme medical conditions."

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

Jeb Bush

Kirsten Gillibrand

marijuana

Rand Paul

cory booker

Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama