Married at 16 and back

Early marriage in rural settings is rampant. Bernadette Chingwani, a rural champion of girl education and women empowerment in Kawaza, Rumphi West, remembered how her daughter dropped out of school and ended up in marriage three years ago.

“She went into self-boarding to prepare for Primary School Leaving Certificate examinations but vanished with a driver before sitting even one paper,” says Chingwani, 52, of her daughter Wezi who strengthened her resolve towards ensuring that every girl is in school.

The chairperson of Kawaza Mother Group, which is helping girls stay in school and ensuring dropouts return, says her immediate reaction was “the pain of seeing the Standard Eight girl doing something worse than what I did in 1970”.

According to the mother of five, her worst mistake was marrying at 18 and this left her with nine children, four of whom died shortly after birth.

Having withdrawn the girl from her marriage in Bolero, the elated mother says: “No sensation beats the joy I had seeing my daughter unchained from marriage, resume school in 2011 and being selected to Bolero Secondary School where she is now in Form 2.”

But the girl is not the only one at Kawaza Primary School where nearly every pupil remembers Oxford-trained engineer Dr Matthews Mtumbuka and Harvard-groomed economist Dr Mapesi Gondwe to have begun their educational journeys before leaping to the coveted universities overseas.

At the remote school, nobody seems to remember women who defied the odds to achieve the prominence the Airtel Malawi ICT engineer or former MP attained. Not even the head teacher Charles Kuyokwa.

Yet, the head-teacher easily reveals that almost five pupils drop out of school every year and four of them are girls that end up in early marriages or with teen pregnancies before their 18th birthday.

“The 4:1 ratio represents a big gap that must be closed to ensure girls and boys have equal chance in life,” says the head teacher who is failing to understan why two 13-year-old girls dumping school for marriage in the past three months.

As a matter of fact, Bolero primary education adviser Webster Mkandawire ranks Kawaza as the worst hit of the seven Catholic schools where Mzuzu Diocese’s Education Commission is working with communities to achieve quality, relevant and inclusive education for the past three years.

“Through the commission’s initiatives, the enrolment of pupils with disability has gone up, more teachers have been trained in handling children with disabilities and girls are being supported to remain in school. However, we need to do more to surmount early pregnancies,” says Mkandawire.

Speaking at an open-day organised by Domec recently, Father Andrew Chunda of St Denis’ Parish called for concerted effort to save girls’ rights and futures.

“Children are like an egg. If you mishandle it, it will fall down and break apart. Let us help them to prioritise school over early marriage,” said the Catholic priest.

Secretary for the commission, Joseph Longwe, hails the project funded by Tilitonse Fund for providing wheelchairs for pupils with special needs as well as strengthening community members to mobilise children to go to school and make by-laws with penalties for early marriage.

Besides, mother groups counsel girls, visit them at both home and school as well as inviting role models to ensure they remain in school.

Chingwani’s group has reclaimed the future of 10 girls who were almost doomed for poverty due to early marriage.

The mother group leader says: “I blame peer pressure for compelling my daughter into marriage, but most rural girls end up like her due to poverty, pressure from parents who do not value education as well as cultural practices that erroneously require boys to be educated and girls to be married for cows.”

According to Longwe, the country cannot develop if girls and special needs students, a vital section of its population, continue facing exclusion from its education system.

“Every citizen has a role to play to end early marriages which rob girls of every opportunity in life,” says Longwe.

Human rights violations, early marriages and teen pregnancies deny girls their health, education and choice of who and when to marry.

Unfortunately, the United Nations last year reported that one in two women aged 20-24 were married before their 18th birthday.

In the report Marrying Too Young, UNFPA executive director Osotimehin Babatunde says the findings urges decision-makers to sharpen their focus on protecting girls’ rights.

“No society can afford the lost opportunity, waste of talent or personal exploitation that early marriage causes,” said Babatunde.

But decision-makers’ failure to create a better world for girls is best exemplified by protracted slowness to amend laws which put marriageable age at 16.

Amid seemingly endless talk about the consent age, findings by Human Rights Watch show weak laws conspire with poverty, teen pregnancies and cultural factors to push schoolgirls into early marriages.

Rumphi social welfare officer Joshua Luhana says nearly 30 out of 100 girls quit school for marriage every year.

Yet the district is finalising construction of a “safer place” which will improve the way communities, civil society, government and other agents of change withdraw and rehabilitate girls that marry too early.

Luhana says the structure under construction is built on Division 6 of the Childcare and Child Protection Act which outlaws early marriages and other undesirable practices that impinge on the rights of children.

The structure, which is being bankrolled by Save the Children, Youth Net and Counseling (Yoneco), Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (Creccom) and Total Landcare will also be a counselling centre.