Poverty exposing girls to Aids

Busega. Poverty is pushing many schoolgirls into early marriages and just early pregnancies in Busega District, Simiyu Region.

They are giving themselves to older men simply because their families sometimes force them to look for money to cater for their needs.

The shocking trend is common in many poor families. Alarmingly, the number of girls marrying young is rising, notwithstanding the fact that such marriages are exposing them to risks, including HIV/Aids.

A survey in different secondary schools in the district by The Citizen, in collaboration with the Tanzania Media Women Association (Tamwa) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in the district have it that the trend is a result of poverty.

In an interview with this paper, the Lamadi Secondary School Headmaster, Mr Samwel Bilingi, said because many students lack someone to support them with their daily basic needs, they see early marriage as the only option and readily accept any man who comes to their rescue.

At his school, in 2012, two students got married and in 2013 three others tied the knot. He says they became brides as young as 15 years. The five students were too young for marriage and virtually unprepared to venture into new roles of mother and wife.

“Driven by poverty, parents are colluding with their daughters. You abruptly realise that they are no longer attending classes... then as per regulations guiding us, after 90 days we delete them from our register,” he says.

The legal age for marriage in Tanzania is 18 years, although customary law allows for teenagers to marry younger.

However, the contradiction of Tanzanian laws has made it difficult to fight early marriages which fall under various forms of Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

The Marriage Act of 1971 allows a girl who is under 18 years to get married if there is consent from parents, but the Sexual Offences Special Provisional Act (Sospa) of 1998 criminalises marriage below the age of 18.

Section 13(2) (b) of the Marriage Act does not punish a man who marries a girl who has attained 15 years and above if the court is satisfied that there are special circumstances which make the proposed marriage desirable.

But section 130 of the Penal Code provides for punishment to a person who marries a girl who is yet to attain 18 years.

Section 130(2) clearly states that a person commits the offence of rape if he has sexual intercourse with a girl with or without her consent when she is less than eighteen years, unless the girl or woman is his wife who is fifteen or more years of age and is not separated from the man.

This contradiction is a hurdle to law enforcers and human rights crusaders and various calls have repeatedly been made to have it removed, if the fight against early marriages is to achieve any success.

In an interview with The Citizen at Lamadi Secondary School, 14-year old Agnes (her name has been changed to protect her identity), a Form Two student, escaped marriage thanks to her headmaster, Mr Bilingi, who intervened and halted the move that was engineered by her father.

According to Agnes, her parents had pocketed Sh300,000 as bride price from a ruthless man and forced her to get married to him, luring her that she would still attend classes despite staying with her husband.

“I rejected the move because I could not balance my academic work and wife duties. So I decided to inform my teacher who then threatened to take my parents to the police. Later, my father returned the money to the man who wanted to take me out of school,’’ she says.

“At some point there was a student who got pregnant and we didn’t realise she was pregnant until she gave birth,’’ Mr Bilingi says.

According to the headmaster, the biggest challenge they face is that they do not take students for monthly pregnancy check-ups because they have no funds.

“When we take them for check-ups, we are told to pay Sh1,000 for each student,’’ he adds.

During the survey, the headmaster showed this reporter two girls who he said appeared pregnant but said he could not take any action against them because he was yet to take them for pregnancy tests.

Parents in Busega District who were interviewed admitted that early marriages were rampant in the district.

Goodluck Simon, a resident of Nyashimo Village, however, accused teachers, saying they colluded with parents to have school girls married after receiving cash from perpetrators.

“The teachers are a major source of early marriages here and I know one headmistress of a secondary school here who made a secret move to have her student married, but the ward executive officer intervened to help the student,’’ he says.

With many families grappling with poverty in all 55 villages of Busega District most teenage girls are coerced easily by adults who have disposable income which they use to lure them and their parents, leading to earlier sexual experiences that have increased the rate of HIV/Aids in the district which boasts 13 wards.

At Winam Career Secondary School, which is located at Kisesa Village, the acting headmaster, Mr Fikiri Jonas, gave an account of one of her students who was being forced by her mother-in-law to sleep with different men so that she could help to feed the family.

Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth (again not her real name), sometimes, according to her teacher, would come to ask for money so that when the school closed she would have something to give her mother.

“She was the best student in class but her performance started going down drastically because of the suffering she was enduring from her mother who exposed her to an environment that was likely to land her into HIV/Aids,’’ he says.