Pregnant At 14

By Erick Kabendera
Joyce Chipati’s dream was to one day be a teacher. Now 14, and heavily pregnant, the ex-standard seven pupil can only sit and watch helplessly as her dream disappears like smoke in the air. “I knew that having sex without using a condom could result into pregnancy,” says the young girl. Her boy friend, Marcus Magongo, never heeded her repeated warnings and insisted that they had nothing to fear.

Then last year her school, Makanga Primary, took all female pupils from standard four to standard seven for pregnancy tests at Mahenge district hospital.

A day after they had come back from the hospital, she was called to the head master’s office where she found her grandfather, Geremia Kazibure waiting with a panel of teachers. Chipati has been living with her grandfather ever since her last surviving parent passed away in 2000; the year after which she began her sexual relationship with Magongo.

In a long and very grave meeting the teachers informed the family that the girl was pregnant and therefore cannot continue with her education. In that moment immediately after that sentence was passed over her Chipati says that she felt the world crushing down around her.

“I cried a lot because I knew my dreams of becoming a teacher were no more,” says Chipati. She says that she had already suspected the pregnancy after having missed her periods for three months in a row.

In what appears to be a case of treating symptoms rather than the disease itself, the school administration says it started the exercise two years ago as a means of ‘curbing’ early pregnancies. Taking the deterrent approach, the program expels any pupil found to be pregnant and assumes that the rest will think twice before becoming pregnant.

“Most pupils travel to distant places during vacation to visit their relatives and it is there that the female pupils face the greatest risk of becoming pregnant,” says Lukwaro Senkoro, the school head teacher.

There are no formal sex education classes at Makanga primary school and the matron, Fortunata Likulu, says that the school only meets thrice per year with the pupils, boys and girls from standard three to seven, and talk to them about reproductive health issues.

The decision to introduce sex education in primary schools was prompted by a 2005 Ministry of Education study, which showed that an alarming 30 percent of primary school pupils had already experienced sex, and a significant proportion of girls who dropped out of school because of pregnancy were HIV positive.

Likulu says she understands that there is a syllabus for sex education but is herself totally unaware of the reasons why the classes are not taught at her particular school. “Even if the subject were taught, there would still be a problem of materials and trained teachers.” She reasons.

“It’s a great loss to the school because she was among the top pupils in class and the school counted on her to be among the best performers,” says the head teacher on Chipati’s expulsion.


Chipati’s aunt. Lydia Kazibure is 20 years old and she finished her primary education at the same school that her niece was attending. “I knew she would become pregnant,” she says. She is currently raising one child of her own. She says she is proud of completing her primary education. “If my parents could afford it, I would have gone to a secondary school,” she says. Lydia does not understand how Chipati could play with her life, “we gave her all that we could, she wasn’t satisfied,” says the aunt.

According to Senkoro, the head teacher, one of the main reasons why many of the girls get early pregnancies is the absentee parents. “Many of the farmers travel to distant fields to cultivate and leave their children unsupervised for extended periods of time,” he says. Such girls then become easy preys for the likes of Magongo who can easily lure them to unsafe sex. Senkoro says some parents can stay away for up to ten months with the children visiting them occasionally for food and some cash.

There are also the movie shows every Sunday where the entrance is Sh500. “ older boys who do odd jobs in the village get some money and use that opportunity to seduce the girls,” says Senkoro. The movies are shown at Mahenge town, about 5 kilometres from Makanga village. “They pay the entrance fee and also buy the girl a soda and on top of that they give her Sh500. that is a lot of money for someone who does not eat at school and whose parents are always absent,” says the head master.

But Chipati does not agree that it is a matter of money; at least not in her own case. “I just fell in love,” she says.


Senkoro says that the appalling state of the school buildings is also a major factor in causing the girl pupils to become pregnant. “We have six proper classrooms,” says the head master. The rest of the rooms consist of a roof supported by logs. “When it rains the water gets in through the roof and also from the sides where there are no walls,” Senkoro says. During rainy season there are no classes and the pupils stay at home where the parents are sometimes absent.

Five other pupils were found to be pregnant along with Chipati. The Mahenge District Education officer, Clarence Mgowawo, says it’s unusual for a single school to register such a number. He however confirms that last year the district registered 123 cases of school pregnancy, which is almost half the number of reported cases countrywide. According to the Basic Education Statistics in Tanzania 2005 about 265 primary school students had dropped out of school because of pregnancy last year. “This year we have 26 cases so far but we expect the number to rise.” He says.


The numbers become uglier as one moves up. According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training between 2000 and 2005 an estimated 15,000 primary school pupils had dropped out of school because of pregnancy countrywide.

And the boys are rarely caught. All that Chipati knows about her former lover is that he is somewhere in Morogoro urban evading the supposedly long arm of the law that is groping around for him.

According to the Education circular no 6 of 2004, anyone found guilty of impregnating a schoolgirl is liable for a sentence not less than three years and not more than six years in jail. But having a law is one thing and actually enforcing it is quite another. While the Police are searching for the men responsible for impregnating the five primary school girls, who have disappeared without a trace, Chipati is dismayed at her grand father’s lack of interest in her plight. “My grandfather hasn’t said anything since I was suspended. I don’t know what he is thinking about,” she says.

Meanwhile she is trying to come to grips with a bleak life that she knows awaits her, without much success. “I don’t know what I will do with my child once she is born. But I don’t even know what to do with this pregnancy,” she says and stares at her enormously swollen belly. “Neither grandfather nor my aunt are employed, they only own small farms where they get food to eat.”

The clinic isn’t much help either. The nurses, who perhaps have seen it all before, treat her with chilly indifference. She went to a maternity clinic for regular checkups the previous week. “The nurse wrote in English in my card and I did not understand what she said because I cant read English,” her requests for explanations were met with gruff instructions to go home and come again the next week.

Chipati is determined to go back to school after having her child. It will be a hard battle indeed for this 14-year old with everything against her; a rapidly ageing grandfather with no job, former friends who now mock her, cold nurses, a baby to raise and the biggest hurdle of them all id the system itself which has already declared her unfit for education…

Ends.