- Waga says most girls in the area found it easier to drop out of school as the lure of making quick money from gold trade and pressure to get married early was rife.
- Within a year, activists in the area have worked with 300 vulnerable girls.
Image: MANUEL ODENY
Image: MANUEL ODENY
Wiga Girls Secondary School in Suna West constituency stands out as the only girls’ school in Wiga division, a gold producing area in Migori.
Faced with high school dropout rates among girls who are lured to gold trade after teen pregnancy, or into early marriages and prostitution, local stakeholders decided to start the school in 2019.
And within a short period, the school population has jumped to over 400 to include a boarding facility hosting 125 students within the school especially those in Form 4 and 3.
“Community leaders and education stakeholders saw the need to give priority to start the school and even before Teachers Service Commission gave us teachers we used to take our pioneer students to the nearby Masara Mixed Secondary School,” the school principal Rosebela Waga says.
Waga says most girls in the area found it easier to drop out of school as the lure of making quick money from gold trade and pressure to get married early was rife.
“We started the school solely to ensure girls’ education is uplifted and among the issues we take seriously is motivation and mentorship from women in career to encourage girls. We also get spiritual nourishment through the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church,” she says.
Through a network of parents, teachers and mentors, the girls progress is constantly checked to avoid dropout.
“The biggest challenge we face is dropout, then there is chronic absenteeism and lack of pupils especially for the day school. This is because of gold mining around. These mentorship and motivational talks are our engine for the school,” Waga said.
Three kilometres from the school at Masara town, Pamela Alugo, the director of Migori Development and Community Empowerment Project (Midace) is babysitting two infants, one aged nine months and another two years.
“Their teenage mothers are candidates in both primary and secondary schools nearby. We offer shelter for their children so that they can go to school normally and complete their studies after falling pregnant,” Alugo says.
She said in nearby Wasimbete division stakeholders' effort has seen Bishop Masaga Girls, only girls secondary school in the area, set up.
“We have teenagers engaging in commercial sex from as young as 13 years. They ply gold mines and local clubs. Among those in our current mentorship plan, we have three pregnant students,” Alugo said.
Within a year, activists in the area have worked with 300 vulnerable girls aged between 10-21 years with 85 of them being sex workers, 60 more are young windows after death of their gold mining husbands.
Among the girls is Janet Nyasoko ( not real name ), 19, who rejoined school on September 28 after two years hiatus caused by early marriage and giving birth. She leaves her six-month-old baby at Midace offices.
“Marriage did not work for me. I dropped out of school because I was sexually active with several partners and ended up being married,” Nyasoko said.
She rejoined Bishop Masaga Girls where she had dropped out thanks to the effort of keeping her infant at the nursery.
“I live with my grandmother after my parents divorced. During the day, the whole family goes to the gold mines and so my attempts to rejoin school were hampered because I had no one to leave the baby with,” she said.
Nyasoko is among girls in the mentorship plan and who are now talking to their peers to boost education standards in the area.
Among the key agenda of the group is also ensuring the young girls are on contraceptives as data from the Ministry of Health placed 15 as the age when girls in Migori start engaging in sex.
Tory Moon and others in their research ‘Determinants of modern contraceptive prevalence and unplanned pregnancies in Migori county' between 2018 and 2019 interviewed 3,642 female heads of household.
63 per cent of respondents reported that they currently use some form of contraception, and the prevalence of unplanned pregnancy was 36.7 per cent.
“We need more family planning programmes to focus interventions on those at highest risk to reduce unplanned pregnancies,” Nyasoko said.
Suna West MP Peter Masara who has been instrumental in starting the schools said in most cases over 60 per cent of those who join either Class 1 or Form 1 drop out.
“In the past five years I have managed to help start 16 primary and secondary schools in the area, key agenda being cutting distance and having three secondary schools just for girls,” Masara said.
Masara said while it is prudent for teen mothers to go back in school after giving birth, parents need to play their role and finds ways, even if it includes contraceptives, to end the trend.
“We need government to move with speed and put in place sex education in the new curriculum, we are having too many young mothers and children have sex at a young age,” he said.
In 2017, Migori registered reduced teen pregnancies to 28 per cent from the previous 41 per cent.
According to Migori county family planning report by USAID done between January and June 2016, from the 20,712 pregnancies, 402 of them were aged between 10-14 years while 6,639 were aged between 15-19 years.
“Mothers aged between 15-19 years in Migori stand at 20.9 per cent which is more than 15 per cent of national rate,” the report states.
The report also stated only 44 per cent of women in Migori use contraceptive against 53 per cent nationally.
“We need to increase the use of contraceptives, we have also used peer-to-peer mentorship among girls who freely discuss and have access to Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP),” said Celestine Mwango, Secretary of Youths Against Drugs Substance Abuse and HIV/AIDS.
According to Kenya HIV Estimates Report of 2018 by National Aids Control Council, Migori HIV prevalence is nearly 2.5 times higher than the national prevalence at 13.3 per cent.
The survey also points that for new HIV infections, “adolescents aged 10-19 years and young people aged 15-24 years contributed to 28 per cent and 52 per cent respectively of all new HIV infections in the county.”
According to the report, only 44 per cent of female sex workers in Migori who have “the highest risk of contracting and transmitting HIV,” tested for HIV between April-June 2016.
Image: MANUEL ODENY