By Joyce Gathu
When she got pregnant at the tender age of 13, Tabitha Mugure was in shock. At that age, she had hardly thought hard about the consequences of her active sexual life.
Motherhood is not something she had ever given a serious thought to, but she had no option but to âgrow upâ before her time.
Her childhood in Karatina, Nyeri County, took a drastic turn especially because she had scandalised her family and tongues were wagging in her small Sagana village.
"The psychological torture that a teenage mother goes through is shocking. Other parents donât want to see you even talking to their children and everyone treats you as if you are an outcast," Mugure explains.
Mugure woes begun when she went to visit some young people in the company of a trusted friend. Unknown to her, it was a match-making arrangement that left her literally holding a baby.
Luckily, her father believed in education and gave her a second chance.
"Life in school was different. My mind was that of a child, but my body was that of a woman. I could see the physical marks that child bearing had left on my young body and I didnât want my schoolmates to see them," she recalled.
Nonetheless, life in school was uneventful until when she was in Form Three, Mugure became pregnant again.
"This time, there was no going back to school, I got married and began living with my husband," she says. Tabitha Mugure in a workshop. [Photo/ Joyce Gathu]
One would imagine that after her first pregnancy, Mugure had learnt her lesson but, unfortunately, she is in good company.
