- Many of these moms are aged between 14 and 19 years with a majority having between two to five children despite their young ages.
- They are rarely reached by outreach programmes in the campaigns for the girl-child in the region.
Manda-Maweni village in Lamu’s Manda Island has acquired a reputation for being home to the highest number of teen moms in the entire county.
The situation has been blamed on high levels of poverty and illiteracy.
Ben Juma Ojuok, the founder of the Manda-Maweni Community Health Initiative and Women Empowerment Program, says every homestead in the remote village has at least one or two teen moms.
Many of these moms are aged between 14 and 19 years with a majority having between two to five children despite their young ages.
Manda-Maweni, home to over 2000 people, most of them stone miners and farmers who settled on the island from other parts of Lamu and Kenya in the 1980s, grapples with a myriad of challenges among them a lack of schools and health facilities.
They are rarely reached by outreach programmes in the campaigns for the girl-child in the region.
KL, now 20 and a mother of two, reveals that she had her first child when she was just 17 and had to drop out of school.
Her husband, a stone miner in the village had promised to send her back to school once she gave birth.
However, that was never to be as she got pregnant with her second child shortly after and has since given up on her dream of going back to school.
The hard life has forced her to join her husband in the stone quarries on several occasions to enable them to put food on the table.
“I have two kids now and even if I wanted to, I don’t think I can sit in a classroom with small kids. My husband was unable to take me back when I got pregnant and also because he couldn’t afford the fees,” she said.
PK, now 19, is already a mother of three and reveals that she had her first child aged 14 while in primary school.
She would later drop out to marry her mason husband and says she has no plans or dreams of ever going back to school.
“I am a mother now and a wife. Life is so hard but still, given the chance, I would go back to school because my children will not have anyone to care for them,” she said.
SA, 19, and a mother of two got pregnant shortly after joining Form 1 and dropped out of school for fear of bullying and stigmatization from schoolmates.
“The thought of my classmates talking down on me because of my pregnancy weighed heavily on me and I dropped out. I planned to go back after delivery but I never did. I always wanted to become a nurse but that dream is dead now. I know my life will never be the same,” she said.
According to Ojuok who is also a community leader and spokesperson in the remote Manda-Maweni village, the high levels of poverty are the biggest culprit behind the increased school dropouts and teen pregnancies in the village.
He said high levels of illiteracy and outdated cultural practices are also to blame for the situation.
“Majority of villagers are poor. The few men who can make ends meet are taking advantage of the girls, getting them pregnant and dumping them. There is a silent culture here that once a girl gets pregnant, that’s her cue to get married. Most are just stuck with their parents,” Ojuok said.
He called on the county and national governments to introduce campaigns and awareness strategies encouraging the community to send teen moms back to school.
“We need people to change perceptions and understand that girls can’t still give birth and go back to school to pursue their dreams,” he said.
Lamu County Commissioner Louis Rono said he is aware of plans by the Ministry of Education to have teen moms rejoin school and better their lives and reiterated that it is the government’s stand for every child to access education.