Teenage pregnancies hold young mothers in lifelong bondage

By Kiundu Waweru

On a cold June morning in the Kibera slums, a slight drizzle makes the footpaths running between the sprawling shanty dwellings very slippery.

Human waste, sewage and nature seem to collude in sharpening one’s manoeuvring skills.

But navigation is the last thing on Mercy Awino’s mind—her wretched circumstances are all consuming.

For the last 21 years, she has called Kibera home and it has now become a place where she has added two more souls.

When she gave birth to her first child at the age of 17, Awino’s mother was furious and she chased her away.

Awino left home to live with her cousin but despite the hassle of feeding a family of six, her father ordered that she returns.

“Not long after, father and mother separated,” she says, vacantly staring at her five-month-old daughter

sucking comfortably at her breast, “I do not know if I was the cause.”

Awino says that the father of her first child could be 26. They do not talk. He said the child was not his.

Awino dropped out of school after Class Eight, and by this time no one had told her about safe sex, or contraceptives. When she got pregnant for the second time she contemplated abortion but changed her mind.

One of her friends had died while terminating a pregnancy.

“We are used to seeing that,” says middle-aged Janet Malesi, a mother of four and who also has lived in Kibera’s Lindi

Ward for most of her life. Malesi says most girls in the slum engage in sex at a young age not knowing what they are getting into.

They are lured by chips, she tells us, and small amounts of money, like fifty shillings, even twenty.

“Some are orphans, others have drunk, uncaring parents.

For these girls, selling their bodies is the easier option,” says the mother of two teenage daughters who lives every day counselling and praying for them.

She adds that if the girls do not abort, they throw the babies away as soon as they are born. “Here in Kibera, if a woman asks you to hold a baby for them, be very afraid. They do that and run away.” In 2011, the Liverpool VCT, Care and Treatment (LVCT) released a damning publication, Lost Innocence: Stories of Children Exploited Through Sex Work in Korogocho.

Korogocho is the third largest slum in Kenya after Mathare and Kibera, all of which the common denominator is marginalisation, poverty, and the attendant ills of crime, prostitution and anarchy.

The publication tells the heartrending stories of seven minors forced into a dangerous life of bondage.

There is Rachael, 13. She dropped out of school in Standard Seven after getting pregnant at the age of 10. The boy responsible ran away and she was forced to start “hustling” to feed her baby. Rachael says she has leased a house for a monthly rent

of Sh400. When her mother learnt what her prostituting daughter did for a living, she ordered her to stop.

“She scolded me and told me to stop. But now, you see, she told me to stop, but then did not help me. And I don’t have other means to provide for my baby.”

The publication also features the story of 17-year-old Vivian from Gitathuru, Korogocho. Vivian dropped out of school at Standard Five, does not know her father and is the sole breadwinner for her two sisters aged 20 and seven. She also pays the rent. Vivian is a cleaner at a bar.

She earns a pittance. “When I finish cleaning, I get a john, these customers hang out in the bar and the lodging is also there, so we leave and if I do not have money to pay rent, I charge for sex, he pays and I am able to pay rent.”

The Kenya Demographic Health Survey of 2008-09 indicates that 12 per cent of women age 20 to 49 have had a sexual experience before the age of 15 and about half had their first experience by their eighteenth birthday.

The survey shows that one per cent of women had given birth to a live child at the age of 15 with the number increasing to 30 per cent by the age of 19. Also 1.1 per cent experienced their first pregnancy by 15 with the number increasing to 6.2 per cent at the age of 19.

The bulk of teen births are highest in the urban areas at 16.1 per cent as compared to the rural at 14.1 per cent. Teens from Kibera and Korogocho are driven into early sexual

Experiences and consequently motherhood. Childbirth and the risk of being infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are exacerbated by the cycle of poverty.

Other problems then emerge. The KDHS adds that the onset of child bearing has a direct effect on fertility with early initiation, lengthening the reproductive period subsequently increasing fertility and posing a strain on society.

The government survey says one’s level of education determines how soon one gets pregnant. Women with secondary education begin childbearing more than three years after women with no education.

Also, women from well-to-do backgrounds delay childbearing by about three years compared to women from poor backgrounds.

But it is the level abandonment that worries experts.

Dr Jean Kagia, an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, says teen mothers, especially from poor backgrounds and those rejected by their parents lack access to reproductive health services.

They, therefore, develop complications in later years that could lead to death. Needless to say, the babies born of these young mothers are also at a risk of illness and death.

Then there are the abortions. Rachael Kameti, who works with the youth in Kibera under the Riziki Kenya, says teen pregnancy is rampant in the slum. “Most of the girls are orphans, whereas others

sent away from home. With nowhere to go, most opt for abortions using crude means, most time to fatal ends.”

The Pro-Life Movement which Dr Kagia helped found estimates an average of about 800 abortions a day in Kenya despite the complications that include bleeding, infection, infertility and even death. The PLM says at its worst, abortion complications kills about 3,000 women annually in Kenya.

Dr Kagia believes that unplanned pregnancy is a societal, not medical problem and communities should embrace the girls instead of accusing and disowning them.

She adds that other girls are victims of rape. Kagia has started rescue homes she calls Kiota (Nest) with the fi rst one in Kiambuthia, Murang’a. The

Kiota Rescue Centres temporarily houses women in crisis pregnancies where they get counselling and life skills which will enable them survive after birth even as the carers seek for reconciliation with the victims’’ parents or guardians.

Various studies that havebeen conducted highlight the social strain that result from the growing cases of abortion.

This not only hinders efforts to establish gender parity in schools, it also means more girls are edged out of the school system due to health complications or even death.

One study noted that 47 per cent of girls who get pregnant while in school procure abortions.

Criminal organisations are taking advantage of these organisations operating under the guise of health care clinics fleece girls large sums of money in order to procure abortions.

In major town such as Nairobi, Nakuru, Mombasa and Kisumu, quacks offer abortion services under deplorable conditions. This has at times culminated in the deaths of female students, one study notes.

When babies are dumped by the road side, in rivers or in garbage dumps, the already over-burdened law enforcement agencies have to step to conduct investigations.

It has been noted that an information gap among female students concerning sexuality and contraceptives is one of the factors resulting in pre-marital sex among adolescents.

Students have no difficulty getting books, videos and magazines that encourage sexual freedom without providing information about the risks involved.