Source: Tanzania Daily News
IN the course of my duty at Muheza in Tanga Region, I just returned from a burial of an eight months old baby which passed on due to, largely what villagers view, as a result of child neglect.
It was a well attended burial ceremony, a thing that drew my interest to the irony of how the local community feels sad about a child they hardly shared a life with and the glaring realities that perhaps, prevent them from giving the required care to such young innocent souls when still alive.
The story doing rounds is that as soon as the baby was born in November last year, her young mother, 16 yearold Mareti Peter, left her in the district hospital, leaving it to the mercy of any interested relative. Mareti, who was in Form Three had been working in local bars in the rural centres within the district at night, on returning home.
During one of the escapades with some men who frequent her bar, she conceived and gave birth last year. When Mareti gave birth last year, she abandoned the baby and her (Mareti's) mother immediately desperately took charge of the baby at hospital and subsequently put her negligent daughter and the baby's run away father behind bars for three weeks. Note that, this is a family that lives on less than 600/- per day.
Amid all the attempts to save the life of the baby, it eventually succumbed to opportunistic diseases that come with child neglect.
She is a daughter of a man who succumbed to cancer some 11 years ago, leaving her poor jobless mother to take care of a family with children who have now grown up and the best jobs they can take up is waiting at a rural bar with all vulnerabilities of the socalled men who offer a few thousand shillings to have nights with her between the sheets.
As the burial which took place in the village, she was nowhere in sight as villagers gathered to commensurate with her mother over her little grand daughter's death.
As of that day, there was no doctor nearby to confirm to me the cause of the death but all villagers around were convinced that it was due to the initial neglect from her biological mother.
A probable pointer to things like malnutrition. The story told of realities in huge bad statistics of infant child mortality rates and circumstantial causes to some of these things only illustrated by figures in Dar es Salaam's boardrooms. Mareti is among the girl children who fail to make it to education opportunities after Standard Seven.
The predicament of her type is extended on to the innocent children they bear as they are results of what comes with circumstantially reckless sexual lives. But even with an opportunity to attend a public secondary school thereafter, girls in Bukombe District in Geita Region face a number of problems, some of which may make them fail in their studies.
For example, some rural girls cannot afford sanitary pads or a change of clothes. Even at home their parents can't provide them with things like underwear. The result is that most of the girls get annoyed and refuse to return to school.
When they insist on asking their parents to provide them with these items they are sometimes forced to accept marriage, albeit for convenience. It is touching that as opposed to the boy, the girl child may need more to be able to stay comfortably in school -- the necessary items that help girls stay at school.
Some with backgrounds of broken families, opt for village or manipulative boyfriends, sometimes in villages far away from their own.
Eloping with below 16 years girls is a culture still practised subtly including in my own rural area. Picture this: A man wants a girl, and as she, one day, comes from the well, the man and her few friends attack her and run off with her for a forced marriage.
They come to report to the girl's family after a week, to ask for the girl's hand in marriage. At this time, the man will already have slept with the girl in her house. Law enforcers have been checking this lately. Back to the challenges, older boys or men (as it may be) deceive them, with promises of buying them as little as what their parents cannot afford -- sanitary pads, knickers and other things.
But after putting a future baby in the girls' wombs, they disappear in thin air. And that was what some say happened to Mareti. Her singled mother had no money for basics like buying soap, clothes, food, treatment .To her, life at home was surely bleak.
As the grandmother to the deceased baby mourned, "I wish it had grown up to play in the compound like other young ones I see in peoples' compounds." It was clear to me that today's society, 'the government,' has no option but to educate and empower the girl child.
Many 'Maretis' in rural Tanzania are gullible and stand a risk of producing a generation in vulnerabilities that would otherwise have been stopped by a clear education system that empowers them with opportunity, regardless of whether they come from humble backgrounds or not.
And the government should not just raise the girl's literacy levels, but to give her world class quality education. This is because, according to the Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Dr Shukuru Kawambwa, a total of 5,157 girls dropped out of primary schools dues to pregnancies last calendar year; with that the number of girls in secondary schools has decreased from 48 to 45 per cent.
Besides other challenges that the government is facing in terms of providing education to girls, they are also struggling with helping pregnant girls continue with schooling.
Unlike the United States where they have continuation schools, Tanzania does not have that, therefore they let the girls seek secondary education by registering as private candidates.
It is the same reason, that TAMWA, through support from Foundation for Civil Society, is working to urge government to take serious steps against school pregnancies.
