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Uganda: School Pregnancies - Does Anybody Care?
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New Vision (Kampala)
COLUMN
4 January 2008
Posted to the web 4 January 2008
Lydia Namubiru
Kampala
LABOUR is not one of those experiences you want to go through before an audience. Especially not when the onlookers are scores of teenagers in an examination room. Namirembe, 18, an S.4 candidate at Kikomeko Memorial School in Buwama, Mpigi had that misfortune.
Sitting for the first paper of the S4 final mathematics exam, she went into labour.
Her labour progressed in minutes and soon she was writhing in pain, attracting the attention of those sitting next to her. The invigilators at first ignored her, and only helped her out of the room after her waters had broken and her labour had progressed to the most advanced stage. She delivered a baby boy a few yards outside the examination room.
Eight months earlier, she had become pregnant by a fellow teenager who was also an S4 candidate. Although Namirembe was discontinued from school following the discovery of the pregnancy, the boy was not. Indeed, even on this fatefully day, he sat in another examination room miles away in Gomba, oblivious of what Namirembe was going through.
Although she went back to school to complete her exams, Namirembe will have no results for Mathematics, a compulsory subject. She will have to repeat the class if she is to realise her dream of becoming a teacher.
A few days later, Namuyomba, 20, another S4 candidate in the same district would face a similar fate. Namuyomba had been expelled from school just after sitting for only one of her mock exams in second term because she was pregnant. However, the school administration allowed her to sit for the final exams provided she commuted to the school everyday.
On October 30, the day before her Fine Art paper, she went into labour and her sister rushed her to Nkozi hospital where she delivered her baby. The next day, she left the newborn girl with her sister and went for the Art paper. She went back to school seven days later for the Agriculture paper. Luckily for her, she completed all her exams. Like her mother says, if she is lucky and the money is available, she will go back to school and realise her dream of becoming a nurse. Looking at her sad face now, and the poverty that surrounds her and her two-week old baby, it is obvious Namuyomba is missing out on the joy of motherhood.
She was wooed into sex by a 24-year-old man, Steven Kavuma, who had visited her home village, Kigula from Nateete.
Namuyomba, the child of a widowed, peasant, mother of nine, could not resist the clothes Kavuma bought her. Soon she was pregnant and like usually happens with crisis pregnancies, she remembers the actual date. "I got pregnant on February 12, 2007," she tearfully says. Although the man encouraged her to keep the baby and even promised assistance, he has since disappeared.
In a replica of the above scenarios, an even younger girl, Babirye, 15, of Mpumudde Estate Primary School in Jinja Municipality, also went into labour as she was sitting for the PLE English paper on November 5.
She was rushed to Mpumudde health centre, where she delivered a baby girl and rushed back to school to complete the exam. The baby was left in the care of the medical officers. Babirye too had dropped out of school at the beginning of the third term and was allowed back only to do the exams.
Nakiguli, 19, an S4 candidate of Mende Kalema Memorial School, missed her final Chemistry exam because she was in labour. Contractions started shortly before the examination so she was rushed to a clinic in the locality where she gave birth to a baby boy. Her baby's father is 18-year-old Diviyo, an S.3 student in the same school. It was reported that Diviyo had to miss school to take care of the baby as Nakiguli went for the rest of her exams.
It is not possible to list all the girls who get pregnant in school each year. According to the 2006 Demographic and Health Survey, 25% of teenage girls in Uganda have had children.
Other sources suggest even higher percentages. According to statistics from UNICEF, 35% of teenagers are either pregnant or have already had their first child.
It is, however, not clear how many of these teenagers were in school before conception and consequently dropped out.
Disturbingly, the issue of pregnancy in school does not seem to feature high on the agenda of the policy makers.
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The ministry of education no longer compiles statistics on how many girls get pregnant in school. "I only know of those I read about in the papers," says Namirembe Bitamazire, the minister. "I don't receive reports on the issue of pregnant girls or those who deliver in examinations rooms."
Indeed, there is very little documentation about the issue at the ministry. Before 2003, the ministry used to capture information on the reasons for dropouts, in which pregnancy featured often.
However, that question has since been dropped from the questionnaires sent to schools from which the education statistics are compiled. The ministry's senior statistician, Vincent Ssozi, says: "We no longer capture some of that information because the information we used to get was not accurate. We intend to carry out a survey on some of those issues."
not anybody cares or else these things would have been on the decrease.
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