Published in The Sunday Times, Malawi, on December 13 2009
About three years ago, Thokozani (not a real name) was a source of happiness in her village. Drums sounded loudly and the noise of celebration ricocheted between the hills that surround her village.
Thokozani was being married off. Her parents craved happiness which only marriage would guarantee; she succumbed to their whims. She was only 13, and had just menstruated for the first time.
“I was told that I should leave their house if I didn’t get married to this man,” recalled Thokozani, now 16 and a mother of a two-year-old, in an interview. She left her husband because she needed some more time before going through another pain of giving birth.
Issues of early marriage are rampant in the country. Even though the law restricts marriage to people aged 15 (for anyone below, one needs parental consent) and above, more and more girls aged below 15 find their way into marriage. Thokozani is a perfect example.
Once in marriage, these girls are expected to fulfil conjugal obligations; thus, they get pregnant regardless of the age. According to a 2007 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) titled ‘Giving girls today and tomorrow, breaking the cycle of adolescent pregnancy’, most girls get to this stage before they are physically, emotionally and socially mature enough.
“Globally, the overwhelming majority of adolescent girls who become pregnant are married,” reads the report in part.
In Malawi, statistics on how many get married and fall pregnant before the legal marriage age are lacking due to the absence of comprehensive research. As such, stories of those falling into the trap might sound mythical.
However, bits and pieces of information emerging from across the country show the problem could be colossal.
For instance, a baseline survey conducted by Action Aid International Malawi in Phalombe indicated that up to 112 girls were forced out of school and into marriages between January and September this year.
Action Aid International has taken a campaign to keep girls in school and prevent early marriage to areas it operates in. One such area is Chitipa, and there the campaign group was also forced to digest stories of parents forcing their young girls to get married.
“It was in 2007 when I asked my father to provide me money for school fees as I was about to start secondary education which is paid for. He promised me that he would borrow money from somebody because he didn’t have the money himself,” said 16-year-old Flora Mweso, and a form two student at Nthalire Community Day Secondary School (CDSS).
She revealed this to members of the press who visited the area courtesy of the group Action Aid. Then only 13, Flora was being forced into a marriage with a 79-year-old in a practice called Kupimbira.
Under the practice, a man, old as he may be, enters into a contract with a girl’s parents. He provides what the parents need or pays a bride price in return for the girl. And, he demands that his ‘wife’ joins him in matrimony any time. The practice is prevalent in Chitipa and Karonga.
“After some time he told me to go and collect the money from a certain man with whom he had negotiated. Fortunately, my friend tipped me that my father had arranged with the man that he should lock me up in his house the moment I arrived.”
At the same gathering, a 14-year-old girl had a tale to tell similar to Flora’s. Like Flora, this girl (name withheld) lives to tell the tale because of efforts to prevent such marriages by some chiefs and organisations like Action Aid.
But not many adolescent girls are as lucky.
“There are so many others who are in a situation like the one I went through. I am luckier because it happened when I was 13. It happens to girls as young as 12 in most areas,” added Thokozani, now a housemaid in a Blantyre suburb.
Although this growing problem seems to provide financial bailouts to parents who praise it, the consequences on the girls have capacity to overshadow the happiness that overwhelms the parents when these girls succumb to their pressure and accept to be married off.
Since they are expected to perform conjugal obligations when they get married, these girls are exposed to unprotected penetrative sex. This exposure leaves them vulnerable to cancer of the cervix, the leading cause of death amongst all cancers affecting women.
According to Dr Frank Taulo, Director of Centre for Reproductive Health (CRH) at College of Medicine, girls who have unprotected sex before turning 20 have highest chances of contracting cancer of the cervix compared to those in the older age band. Further, when they fall pregnant and go for labour, these girls face a death trap.
“Pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths are the number one killers of adolescent girls worldwide,” reads the UNFPA report which quotes earlier research conducted by partner organisations World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
“Each year, nearly 70,000 die. At least two million more are left with chronic illness or disabilities that may bring them life-long suffering, shame and abandonment. Physically immature and often with few resources, the youngest first time mothers are the most at risk.”
The report ranks Malawi seventh out of 10 countries where early motherhood is most threatening. Malawi got 75 points based on three indicators, namely early marriage, early motherhood and infant death risk.
Testimonies quoted in the report stamp the importance of abandoning the practice and leaving girls in school.
“I married at age 12, before I even had my first period. I am from a lower caste family … we cannot afford nutritious food or a decent house to live in. I have three children: two daughters and one son,” reads testimony from a 19-year-old Nepalese girl only identified as Ganga.
“My last childbirth was especially difficult. I still feel weak, and I look like an old woman. I wish I had not married so young and had babies so young … my message to all teenage girls is do not marry before age 20 and wait to have children until you are 22. That is the right age for child bearing, when a woman is mature and can look after herself and her baby.”
In Malawi, the law is the supreme authority. But as debate on what should be the marriage age continues, Dr Chisale Mhango, Director of the Reproductive Health Unit (RHU) in the Ministry of Health, warns that putting it at 16 will increase the number of parents violating the law on marriage.
“Raising the age to 16 will not protect these girls,” says Mhango in response to an e-mailed questionnaire. He says many parents will continue to break the law by allowing their daughters to marry before the legal age.
The situation on early marriages is an established problem. However, with all hands together, the situation could be reversed and girls could live to live a better future.
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