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Pregnant school girls paying the price for our follies!
2007-11-26 09:38:48
By Demere Kitunga
It gives me great pain to note that we often avoid fundamental questions when discussing issues of concern to women and children and especially girl children.
Let`s take the example of the current debate on pregnant school girls.
Others affirm their right to continue with school—for isn`t education a fundamental inalienable right of the child? Why then do others argue that they should be denied this right?
Arguments made by the latter draw a moral wedge by citing erosion of the social fabric.
But if the number of girls leaving school because of pregnancy and other sexuality related complications is growing in such an alarming rate, can we boast of having a social fabric intact in the first place?
And who are the real culprits, the girls we have not protected enough from sex exploitation or those mandated to protect them?
Lest we forget, child protection is another fundamental right of the child that neither the proponents nor the opponents of allowing pregnant school girls to continue with education brought it into this debate.
Homes, schools and communities are obligated to protect the child against harm, while the state has the obligation to enact laws and put in place regulatory mechanism to monitor and punish any violation of this and other rights of the child.
It is not uncommon that people, when faced by insurmountable problems such as this of child pregnancy become fatalistic—blame the victim, spell doom or just shrug it off. In our case, we choose to blame the victim.
To justify our actions, we have been spending a lot of time and energy focusing on the manifestations of the problem instead of addressing the source or root causes.
Yet all we need is to imagine the repercussions of taking sexual exploitation of girls casually.
If we look at the current trends as outcomes of a generation of inertia, what do we think will be the outcome of our current denial in the coming decade and generation? Here I am thinking of the co-relation between child pregnancy, poverty and HIV/AIDS.
Supposing we changed gear for a change and asked ourselves, `Where did the rain start beating us`? A complex question I will try to address in a very small way.
Drawing from my lived experience, I will attempt to explain how adults and the social institutions they put in place for child protection turned into key agents of child sex exploitation and abuse by exploring power hierarchies and use of sex as an expression of domination.
I will confine myself to incidents that occurred within my locus when I was a teenager way back in the sixties and seventies; even though most of them have their genesis somewhere in our historical past—be it colonial or pre-colonial—some of which we may wish to associate with our `traditions` even though they might have been constructed as a cultural weapon of those with power of domination.
Think of ideologies supporting power hierarchies between chiefs, slave masters, colonial officials and the like and their subjects—commoners, slaves, subjects. Think of how the same hierarchies and ideologies informed other power relations such as those between men and women, adults and children and in familial contexts between husband/wife, parent/child, and in schools teacher/student, bigger and smaller children etc.; and their differential gendered nuances and repercussions. Then follow my story.
Starting with the home, for us who grew up in villages in the sixties, girls were raised in awe of pregnancy! Pregnancy then carried the face of an enraged father, who beats her daughter almost to death and throws her out of the home. Every mother and daughter dreaded that.
Pregnancy before marriage was received as an insult not only to your father, but to the whole family and clan—but primarily it was an insult to the honour of the father—hence the `right` to punish and banish `wayward` girls in the most cruel of ways so as to set an example to all girls to submit themselves to the will of the `patriarch` and the clan; and women folk to take more `care` of `their` girls.
Needless to say, daughters were branded as `theirs` i.e. belonging to their mothers only when they fell pregnant but not when they married `decently` and brought bride wealth to the clan—read father.
Paradoxically, in a society where premarital sex for girls was such a taboo, the sexuality of boy children was (as it still is today) not accorded the same level of vigilance.
On the contrary, unlike tales of harsh penalties meted on both boys and girls who engaged in pre-marital sex in some pre-colonial societies, it was, during our teen age days, as it continues to be today a source of pride if a pubescent boy manages to `get` a girl (mark the language).
No wonder then that there were (still are) sanctioned cases of gang rape of girls by boys who in their masculine opinion, considered it an act of insubordination for a young woman (who exercised chastity as society demanded of her), to reject their advances—especially those considered too attractive to pass `untested`.
Can you imagine a sensible society that evolves a culture or tradition with such a strict moral code for its girls and leave its boys Scot free to demonstrate their sexual prowess at will? Can you imagine the outcome?
Does it surprise you then to hear that the first sexual encounter for about 30% of women below 50 years was coerced? And what does this mean to the social fabric we are harping about?
Ask yourself this other question, if pre-marital sex was/is so wrong, how come until now society hasn`t evolved modern institutions offering sex education on how to avoid pregnancy or to manage sexual urge without having sex?
Initiation institutions that existed before we become a `modern` society have become extinct or fossilised while in `modern` schools it is still an uphill battle to agree at what age and how much sex education should be given to our children—even as it relates to HIV/AIDS.
Now walk with me from home to my school—the next institutions put in place for child protection and development.
Schools during the years after independence whose legacy according to several child focused research suggest continue up to today, were far from fulfilling that noble task. Mine was first and foremost poor.
In colonial times it was a Native Authority school—as opposed to better endowed government and mission—mostly middle schools.
It is post Arusha declaration and we are all young and patriotic—teachers and pupils alike.
The most zealous among our teachers are young and elite—the first crop of our national effort to train our own manpower—grade A teachers, agricultural extension workers, rural medical aids etc, sent back to the villages to leading the fight against our national enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease right after getting a dose of national service.
These `patriots` whose measure of power was somewhere between the departed colonial masters and village chiefs—were received and treated by villagers like semi-gods.
They could get away with anything with impunity—to appease them, villagers gave them gifts as reward for performing their duties as civil servants.
Similarly, these low ranking officers were expected respect the hierarchy of power by being subservient and offering gifts to their superiors from the district headquarters that came regularly to inspect their performances.
They would go out of their way to prepare elaborate meals for them and collect sacks of maize, paddy etc, to give as gifts to their bosses to take back home—often it is villagers who would be mobilised to provide feasts and gifts.
Failure to do that meant a bad performance report followed by a transfer (read banishment) to a remote place as punishment for not `minding` your superiors.
At times, the visiting officials would demand the village council to provide a `woman` to attend the visiting `state` visitors—ranging from members of parliament, ministers, regional and even district officials.
Emasculated by the power relations described above, the same elders who would punish and banish their pregnant girls, were reduced to the role of giving away their `daughters` to these powerful leaders, who sired many children they would never know existed.
I remember we had a member of parliament who was also the minister for education who was notorious in this practise.
With time, even school children would be singled out to `service` these wakubwas. Imagine what followed.
Emulating their bosses and recalling their experiences of national service, teachers started exerting similar power over their female students while parents and local leaders simply looked on. Can you imagine this?
Or maybe you don`t need to imagine because you witnessed it but you`d rather pretend it didn`t happen! Now imagine you are that child—all the sites and agents of your protection—the home, community and schools/ parents, community leaders, teachers—and the state, including your own member of parliament conspiring to rob you of your fundamental right to protection! Where would you turn to for support?
And if such a child were to become pregnant, who gives any of the above including you and me the moral authority to mete out judgement against her?
And who is to be judged here, the society which failed to protect its girls or the victims of our pathetic failure as a society?
With the above scenario, can anyone give me the rationale for humiliating, abusing and expelling girl children from school as a way of addressing child pregnancy!
Can`t we see the consequences of our failure to see beyond our pretensions?
Isn’t it as obvious as day and night that child sex exploitation leading to child pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, street children and poverty with a woman`s face, are all linked?
For how long will we continue to avoid this problem that we have nurtured until like a cancer it is now threatening our very survival as a people and as individuals?
Rather than continue with the endless debate of whether or not pregnant school girls are allowed to continue with school, let’s heed this call and look at where the rain started beating us.
Believe me this can no longer be relegated to what cynics berate as `women`s lib`. Feminist as it is, this call is fundamental to our common destiny—men and women, individual and collective.
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