(This article was first published in the New Vision on September 21, 2022)
By Maureen Nakatudde
At Bunya Secondary School in Mayuge district, a group of women split up into five small groups and walked to Tsetse, Bugingo, Igamba, Budebera, Busera, Buyiwula and Usinde villages.
Led by Annet Balambe, the senior woman teacher at this school, the women combed the seven villages in December last year in search of 25 girls who were either pregnant or had recently had babies.
On their way to the households of these girls, the women learnt from the residents that the number of girls who had recently had babies or were pregnant in the community was more than 25.
By the close of the day, the women, who belong to Eastern African Network for Women in Basic Sciences (EANWoBAS), had visited more than 30 households.
So, as the women returned to Bunya Secondary School, where they planned to hold a conference the next day to prepare the girls, who were sexually abused during the COVID-19 lockdown, to return to school for studies, the task before them was bigger than they expected.
Over 50 girls, who included pregnant ones, showed up for the conference with their parents, filling the school’s main hall. They included a 16-year-old, who was pregnant with twins.
Scholastic Materials
At the conference, the association’s leaders handed the girls geometry boxes, exercise books, pens, pencils and pairs of shoes to facilitate their return to school.
Other items included bars of soap, clothes, mosquito nets and blankets.
EANWoBAS, which was established in 2013, says it has held career guidance and mentorship workshops as well as donated scholastic materials to over 20,000 teenage mothers and girls in different parts of the country, including Kalangala, Wakiso and Kampala districts.
The association comprises female professionals in various scientific fields who use their own resources and support from others to encourage girls to stay in school.
A 17-year-old girl, one of the teenage mothers, who have returned to Bunya Secondary School with support from these women, says she was lured into a sexual relationship by a man who got her pregnant because her mother could not give her basic needs.
“I needed things like pads, clothes and bras,” she adds. Twenty-four of the girls who were supported by the association have resumed their studies at Bunya Secondary School.
Fred Mugabi, the headteacher, encourages the girls to treat EANWoBAS women as role models.
Mentorship
Betty Nannyonga, the chairperson of EANWoBAS, which also operates in Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, says they seek to inspire the girls to emulate them.
Nannyonga, who is also a senior mathematics lecturer at Makerere University, says they invited parents to the conference to encourage them to support the girls to return to school.
The association has also held workshops in various schools to encourage girls to pursue sciences.
“We use our personal stories to tell the girls that they can also do it,” Nannyonga says.
Caroline Taliba, a mathematics teacher, who is also a member of the women scientists’ network, says teenage mothers still have the potential to excel academically.
Taliba, who taught the girls some mathematical concepts at the conference says: “It took a bit long for the girls to comprehend some concepts, but as the session went on, they picked up.”
Julira Numugaya, the head of the mathematics department at Muni University, and a member of the association, says most of the sexually abused girls live in communities which are increasingly urbanising.
These girls, she adds, need to be empowered to overcome the temptations to engage in sexual relations.
Peer Pressure
However, Asumpta Kasamba, a mathematics teacher at Gayaza High School, who is also a member of the association, explains that some girls got involved in sexual relations due to peer pressure.
“I got a boyfriend because my friends had boyfriends. I was confused after sex and I regret it,” a 16-year-old student at Bunya Secondary, said.
Matthias Ssembwayo, the headteacher of Bukasa Secondary School in Kalangala district, says the career guidance and mentorship workshops held at the school by EANWoBAS improved the school’s performance and increased enrolment from 100 to 132 students.
“We had two candidates in division one for the first time last year,” he adds.
Doreen Mbabazi, a mathematics lecturer at Kyambogo University, who is also part of the network, says a big number of the households they visited were run by single mothers.
The absence of the fathers in the lives of children, she reasons, could have rendered the girls vulnerable to defilers.
Mbabazi says many single mothers get overwhelmed with pressure to raise families alone, losing control over their girls in the process.
A 2021 study by United Nations Population Fund shows that 354,736 teenage pregnancies were registered in 2020 and 196,499 in the first six months of 2021 in Uganda.
Returning To School
However, as Gertrude Ayubu, a physics lecturer at Makerere University, who is also a member of the association, urged schools to create a learning environment free from ridicule for adolescent mothers.
The revised 2020 guidelines for the prevention and management of teenage pregnancies in schools forbid ridicule and discrimination against pregnant girls and teenage mothers.
In a foreword for the guidelines, the education minister and First Lady, Janet Museveni, says the guidelines were revised to facilitate the re-entry of adolescent mothers into school.
Balambe and Joseph Mugeni, a teacher at Waitambogwe Secondary School in Mayuge district, where four adolescent mothers have resumed studies, says the girls are allowed to return home to breastfeed their babies during the lunch break.
“Taking care of my daughter alone was hard, but now I have help from two people,” says Hasfa Nangobi, a parent, who takes care of her granddaughter as the mother attends school.
A 2015 study by the education ministry says 22.3% of the girls drop out of school due to pregnancies, but only 8% of these return to school.
The Revised Guidelines
The 2020 revised guidelines for the prevention and management of teenage pregnancies in schools require the teachers to protect pregnant girls and adolescent mothers from stigma and discrimination.
Once a girl is found pregnant, schools are expected to facilitate retention and re-entry after delivery.
A pregnant girl is expected to be enrolled on the school’s counselling programme and sent on mandatory maternity leave when she is at least three months pregnant.
She can sit end-of-year exams if she wants, but it is mandatory for the schools to support them to do national examinations.
The headteacher is expected to work with parents to find out the circumstances under which a girl got pregnant and support the family to take legal action against the defiler. If a fellow learner is responsible for the pregnancy, he is also supposed to be counselled and later sent on mandatory leave.
He is not expected to be readmitted to the school until the teenage mother is able to return — at least six months after delivery.
“The boy and the girl must write a commitment letter indicating they are coming back to study and will not repeat what they did,” Angela Nansubuga, an administrator at the education ministry’s gender unit, says.
Parents should report to the district education officer a school that refuses an adolescent mother readmission.
The school is expected to keep in touch with pregnant girls on maternity leave and their families as well as plan a return to school after delivery. They are entitled to remedial lessons.
“We want to help them get back on the right academic track and catch up with others,” Nansubuga adds.
Leave feedback about this