Hope after pregnancy: Kasambya gives moms a chance at education

By Carol Natukunda

That night, her mother fumed and threw her belongings in all directions. “Leave my house immediately. You are not my child anymore,” she shouted. Even though Namboze (first name withheld) was terribly scared, she challenged her. “Mum, I am sorry I ashamed you. But I am not leaving this house.”

The 15-year-old was eight months pregnant. She would be due in a few weeks. The fact that Namboze’s mother had not even noticed her daughter’s pregnancy all this while was not much of a surprise. As a charcoal seller in Kasambya sub-county trading centre, Mubende district, she was always on the move, trying to make ends meet.

She often reached home tired and had no time to find out what her only daughter might have been up to. Not to mention that she would barely afford her children’s school requirements.

It was not long before Namboze found a man to cater for everything she needed. He was a shop keeper and he would give her everything she needed.

“When my mother asked where I was getting the books, I kept quiet and she ignored it. Probably she thought they were giving them to me at school,” recounts Namboze. And for a year, this is how she managed to make ends meet.

Namboze is just part of the bad statistics on teenage pregnancies in Uganda. According to the Demographic Health Survey 2011, one out of four teenagers aged between 15 and 18 is either pregnant or has a child. Apparently it was on the realisation of this problem that the World Population Day being celebrated today is on the theme: Focus is on adolescent pregnancy

The trap

Like they say, some things come with strings attached. Namboze had not realised that she would have to pay in kind for the freebies. So one evening, this man asked her to be her lover. “I accepted because I did not see why I would refuse. He invited me over to his house to pick some things and that was when we had sex,” Namboze recalls, looking down.

Did he force her? “No I willingly accepted because he used to give me everything I needed. Besides, he told me he was going to use a condom.”

But as it turned out later, it seemed he did not even use the protection. Or maybe, the condom burst. Looking back, Namboze mutters: “I do not know, I really do not know if he used it.”

One month later, she missed her periods. “I could not stop crying,” she recalls. Terrified, she decided to keep quiet.

“Mum had earlier told me that if I ever conceived while still in school, she would chase me out of the house,” Namboze recalls.

As it weighed heavily on her, she confided in a friend, who advised her to abort.

“I told her I would not do it. I was scared I would die.” Meanwhile she also confided in her ‘boyfriend’. “He was happy because he had never had a child before. He got for me some herbal medicine to help me deal with the morning sickness. He also told me to go and see a nurse to confirm how old the pregnancy was.”

Despite what she was going through, Namboze, decided to keep in school. She was lucky the school authorities did not do checkup. “I was putting on weight and everyone commented about it, but that is where it stopped,” she recalls.

At the end of the seventh month of pregnancy, she decided that the best thing to do was to face her mum. She also quit school, before it was too late. “The uniform skirt could not fit me by this time. I needed a maternity dress.”

After school

The next morning after she had told her family, her furious mother was determined to find out which ‘monster’ had impregnated her daughter. But Namboze decided to keep quiet. “I did not want to tell her because he was supportive. Who would give me money? Mum was so poor though she did not want to admit it.”

Did she love him? Namboze only smiles shyly at this question, before looking up. “He went into hiding, because he knew he would be arrested since I was a minor.” Namboze could not blame her mother for her reaction. Any mother would be bitter. Her father had long died and her mother was raising them single-handedly. Namboze is the third born in a family of four boys.

“Mum then called a meeting of elders in my family. They advised her to send me away from home. One man was so furious and even threatened to beat me up. But I told them even if they arrested me and locked me up, I was not going anywhere,” she says.

At this moment, Namboze’s mother changed her mind. “It must have been God,” she sighs. Her boyfriend finally showed up and owned up to his responsibility. He supported her through pregnancy.

Childbirth

Namboze cannot explain the pain she went through. But after being in labour for more than 24 hours, she gave birth normally to a bouncing baby boy. He is one year old.

Back to school

When the baby was eight months, Namboze asked her mother for forgiveness. “My boyfriend was demanding that I go and live with him, but I was not ready. I was missing school and I wanted to pursue my studies,” she says revealing that she was in S3 when she conceived.

She went back to school after a long bargaining. They decided the man would continue sending money for little Fabian. She is now in her S4, at Kasambya Parents’ School, Mubende district. Her mother helps her to look after the child when she is at school. “When it is immunisation day or when he is sick, I do not attend school.

Right now, Namboze is determined to excel. In the meantime, she uses her experience to teach girls against engaging in premarital sex.
“Sometimes students tease me calling me mama, but I do not mind it because I know what I want,” she says

What the head teacher says

Lawrence Lumbuye, the head teacher of Kasambya Parents’ School says Namboze is not the only girl who has returned to school after child birth. He says since they started encouraging girls to school after childbirth in 2010, about 10 girls have returned. Those who commonly get pregnant are aged between 15 and 16 years.

“People think we are encouraging girls to get pregnant. But if a boy can continue school after making a girl pregnant, why not the girl?” he says. The administration does not tolerate bullying. When he advocated for these girls to return to school, some teachers and students were apprehensive.

“We used to have an average of four girls dropping out of school annually. But now we have none,” he says. He attributes the high teenage pregnancy to commercial sex in slums and parents being too busy for their children.

Lumbuye condemns parents who force their children to get married once they get pregnant. He is in support of contraceptives and sex education among school girls. “By nature, people will have sex. While we advocate abstinence, the reality is that it cannot happen.”

With the help of United Nations Population Fund and the Red Cross, the school has introduced a youth corner, where adolescents are able to access as much information on reproductive health as they can. They are also counselled on relationships.

An overview of teenage pregnancytrue

In Uganda, one out of four teenagers aged between 15 and 18 is either pregnant or has a child, according to the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey. This is because the majority do not have access to contraceptives. This has resulted into unsafe abortions and deaths resulting from complications that come with childbirth such as fistula and excessive bleeding.

“The main problems are inadequate pelvis muscles. Many of them cannot deliver normally because they are too small,” says Josephine Namuleme, a midwife at Kasambya Health Centre III. She reveals that out of 70 deliveries which were done in May, almost half were young mothers aged below 20 years of age.

She noted that compared to older women, many adolescent girls give birth without a skilled attendant.

“Very few of them come to deliver in hospital. So where do the rest go?” she asks.

Osotimehin Babatunde, the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund calls upon all sectors to tackle to issue head-on.
“We must pave way for girls to achieve in their communities. We need to ensure that they are empowered,” he says.

Several reports show that woman who are well educated and empowered, make better choices for their families in future.