I acted as a man to get work As A Miner - until I was accused of rape

Pili Hussein grew up in a large family in Tanzania. The daughter of a livestock keeper who had many large farms, Pili's father had six wives and she was one of 38 children. Although she was well looked after, in many ways, she doesn't look back on her upbringing fondly.

"My father treated me like a boy and I was given livestock to take care of - I didn't like that life at all," she says.


But her marriage was even more unhappy, and at the age of 31 Pili ran away from her abusive husband.

In search of work she found herself in the small Tanzanian town of Mererani, in the foothills of Africa's highest mountain, Kilimanjaro - the only place in the world where mining for a rare, violet-blue gemstone called tanzanite takes place. Saying she acted like a gorilla and could fight anytime.She became very vicious.

"I could go 600m under, into the mine. I would do this more bravely than many other men. I was very strong and I was able to deliver what men would expect another man could do."

Pili says that nobody suspected that she was a woman.

With the money that she made she built new homes for her father, mother and twin sister, bought herself more tools, and began employing miners to work for her.

And her cover was so convincing that it took an extraordinary set of circumstances for her true identity to finally be revealed. A local woman had reported that she'd been raped by some of the miners and Pili was arrested as a suspect.

"When the police came, the men who did the rape said: 'This is the man who did it,' and I was taken to the police station," Pili says.

She had no choice but to reveal her secret. A female officer was made to search her and boom she is indeed a woman.

This was how she was spared from such a conspiracy. "I'm proud of what I did - it has made me rich, but it was hard for me," she says.

culled from BBC