Teenage motherhood…Mary and her baby. [Photo by Joshua Kumunda]
Zimbabwe
Animals and humans alike scurry for cover in anything that resembles a shade. It is 35 degrees Celsius in Ndamuleni, a village in Matabeleland North, some 450 kms. from the capital city of Harare. In the sweltering heat, 15-year-old Mary watches an infant, whose cries trigger an older woman in the thatched house call out and tell the teenager to feed her child. Barely out of childhood herself, Mary is still learning to understand and interpret baby language and needs.
Mary has lived with her grandmother, since her mother migrated to South Africa in search for better fortune. Like many girls, Mary dreamt of being the salvation to her grandmother’s poverty through doing well in school and eventually becoming a nurse.
“I have always wanted to be a nurse,” I would play pretend and wear white clothes and i also know that nurses have a good salary. With a good salary I can help my grandmother and stop her from doing manual jobs to raise money for my school fees and upkeep,” she says.
But that dream of donning a white uniform turned grey when Mary was sexually abused by a 20-year-old man from a neighboring village, under the guise of a relationship. The abuse resulted in a pregnancy and the birth of a baby boy.
“When they told me I was pregnant, I felt my world crash,” Mary says. “I didn’t know anything about being pregnant, let alone raising a child. My grandmother lives off domestic work: how were we going to survive? As soon as this man found out I was pregnant, he did not want anything to do with me anymore. I wanted to commit suicide to just end it all,” she says.
Fortunately, Mary’s grandmother reached out to a local Child Care Worker (CCW) working with the USAID-funded Zingane Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) project being implemented by Bantwana Zimbabwe. Upon hearing details around the case, Bantwana Zimbabwe (BZ) social worker Vanessa Matsvanganyi and the CCW under the Department of Social Development, initiated first tier response and a case management plan.
“Our first port of call was to provide some counselling and also ensuring that [Mary] understood that she was a survivor of sexual abuse and gender-based violence,” Vanessa says.
Collaboration with the Department of Social Development helped obtain a medical affidavit for clinical services and, Vanessa says, led to the eventual arrest of the perpetrator. “We later also discovered that the perpetrator had infected [Mary] with an STI,” she adds. After the treatments, the plan was to reintegrate Mary back into school.
“I was not sure how I would be received,” Mary says. “I am so grateful to the Zingane program and its staff for the support they gave with getting me back to school. I needed to dream again of the possibility of my life getting back on track.”
Mary continued with her schooling until it was time to prepare for delivery. While she is still adjusting to her new life and the support of her grandmother has remained invaluable. Despite this “set back” chapter of her life, with the support of the Zingane project, Mary is at school with the goal of completing her studies. She is back to seeing the possibility of putting on that nurse’s white uniform, helping young girls like herself at the clinic. Mary now dares to dream again!
The Zingane_OVC project has facilitated the successful reintegration of 14 girls into school. A further 3,757 have to date been provided with educational support in the form of stationery, school fees and sanitary wear to continue with their education since October last year.