Eassi’s Weblog

Teenage mothers want to change their lot

By Redemtor Atieno

Her performance thrilled the audience who attended the VCT family day held at EASSI on June 4th. Faith is a natural in her acting which left the audience dying with laughter and wanting more.

As the main actor in the play ‘strength of a teenage girl’ faith exhibited her power in perfect Luganda dialect as she easily fitted so well in all the scenes in the play. In the play she acted as a teenage girl who was raped by her science teacher and conceived. Her parents chased her from home and that was the end of her otherwise bright future.

And her real story isn’t quite different anyway. Her real name is Christine Nakalema and she is only 16 years old. She was raped when she was in primary six and became pregnant. Christine had gone to visit her maternal aunty who used her to be a go between men and women who want to get into a relationship and the aunty would be paid for that.

One day when the aunty was away at night a man came to the home and wanted to sleep there. Christine refused to allow him to spend the night there and when the man refused to leave she left the house and headed to her sisters place.

She did not have transport so she decided to trek although it was dark at night. She met a boy on the way who asked her to spend the night at their place and promised to give her transport the next morning. Christine agreed and on reaching the boys place she realized he lived alone. The boy who was about 21 years raped her on that fateful night and her cries fell on deaf ears.

He gave her transport and in the morning and she left for her sister’s place. She reported the incident to her mother who directed her big sister and herself to confront the boy. The boy refused to accept what he did. The mother was advised to take the boy to the police but since she did not have money to pursue the case with the police she left the matter.

Christine discovered two months later that she was pregnant. She delivered last year in November and incurred a lot of medical bills during delivery that made her mothers business of selling vegetables collapse. She is now seen as a burden at home since she crippled the only source of income her mother had and has a child. Her father passed away when she was still very young.

She joined the Single teenage motherhood HIV/Aids project in Ndeje where she lives. She says the group has helped her a lot since she has learnt how to protect herself from HIV/AIDS and future pregnancies, how to take care of her child, and personal hygiene.

Her biggest wish is to go back to school some day but does not know whether her dream will ever come true owing to her family’s poverty. She still feels guilty for making her mother’s business collapse when it was the only source of income they had. She hopes she will get a job and refund her mother all the money she used on her and her child and go back to school.

She looks at drama as a source of employment where she can earn a living but the drama group has only been in existence for three months and only gives them transport refunds during practice sessions.

Christine’s advices other girls is to avoid situations that can lead them into problems like being alone with boys in funny places.

The Single teenage motherhood HIV/Aids project uses drama as a source of rehabilitation for teenage mothers. The Writer/Director of the play ‘strength of a teenage girl’ Aggrey Barusya trains the girls in skills of theatre so that they can use the skills to go to villages and teach people about HIV/Aids and teenage pregnancies.

He hopes that the group will become self sustaining and generate income that would enable them go back to school.

The project was started by the Rural Health Promotion and Poverty Alleviation Initiative (RUHEPAI) with support from Stop Aids Netherlands. RUHEPAI Executive Director Fredica Baguma says the project started out of concerns for young girls who become mothers at a very young age.

“No one has come out to talk about teenage mothers. Most HIV/Aids programs are on adolescents but not teenage mothers who are unmarried” she explains and adds that most of them have been ex-communicated from home as a result of this.

Baguma says the project was started with an objective to create a forum where girls can be heard in the community and empower single teenage mothers with coping mechanism in this era of HIV/Aids.

The project also aims to rehabilitate single teenage mothers and provide moral support to them and create an avenue for income generation for them.

The Director explains that the girls are sensitized on different aspects of HIV/Aids, condom use, parenting, family planning, small scale business management, proper child nutrition and hygiene.

The girls are also trained on HIV/Aids prevention, how to abstain from sex, use condoms, treatment and management of HIV/Aids, and are encouraged to go for VCT. “The girls have really opened up and are giving testimonies of how they conceived and the challenges they faced. They have also improved in their hygiene and that of their children” she explains.

She however says that the project faces some challenges such as community perception whereby some leaders say the project will encourage more girls to become single mothers since the ones enrolled in the project will become well off.

Some parents and guardians also refuse to give the girls enough time to go for rehearsals and some have been chased away from home as a result of this. She says most girls are still shy while others still feel guilty and are in denial.

The Writer/Director of the play says since the group is young and are mothers they come with their children for practice and it is hard to make them master the script as the child is crying. “The girls cannot give maximum attention when their babies are crying or when they are harassed at home”.

He says some girls in the group expect immediate money and when it is not forthcoming they leave the group. “It is therefore hard to keep recruiting and training new actors all the time. There is also a high turnout after training since after most of them have become good actors there parents or guardians send them to the village” he says.

Barusya says training the girls in Luganda when there educational background is low is also challenging.

Uganda records highest teenage pregnancy rate in Sub-Saharan Africa

According to the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) teenage pregnancy rate in Uganda, at 31 per cent, is the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Young women constitute nearly half of all maternal deaths, due to an increased risk of complications in pregnancy and birth, which in turn often leads to obstetric fistula. HIV/AIDS related fear and stigma remain widespread although political commitment has considerably raised awareness on the topic.

Although Uganda has recorded improved performance in terms of HIV/Aids prevention with the national HIV prevalence rate dropping to 4 per cent since the pandemic in the 1990s, the rate currently is still high among the young people estimated at 8.7 per cent amongst youth aged 15-24. Factors contributing to increased HIV prevalence among the youth are: Poverty and inadequate access to contraceptives and sexual and reproductive health information, as well as traditional customary practices, such as female genital mutilation and early marriage, are not helping the HIV/AIDS problem.

DSW says young women often turn to sex in exchange for gifts due to poverty and confronted with peer pressure. Only around half of the sexually active youth aged 15-24 use condoms.

German Foundation for World Population (DSW) estimates that about 28 million people currently live in Uganda, with just over 70 per cent of the population under 24 years of age. Despite economic progress and development experts considering Uganda as “a model of success and a source of stability in an otherwise troubled sub-region of Africa”, more than 50 per cent of Ugandans live in poverty.