Pupils not safe at home

A recent workshop on teenage pregnancy held in the Ohangwena region has uncovered that some young girls in the region feel safer in hostels than at home.

The ‘Say No to Teenage Motherhood’ campaign, an initiative that kicked off at five secondary schools around the Ohangwena region, is a teenage pregnancy prevention campaign targeted to girls in the region where more than 9 000 girls under the age of 19 were recorded to have fallen pregnant between 2022 and July this year.

Campaign facilitator Andreas Robert during the workshop last week said the schools visited that do not have hostel accommodation have a higher number of pupils reported who became pregnant compared to schools that have hostels.

“In the hostels there are strict rules, order and guidelines. The girls are safer at schools than at home,” says Robert.

Pupils were advised to focus on their school work and abstain from sex.

However, during group discussions, some pupils revealed that some of their parents coerce them into engaging in sexual activities for economical reasons.

A 16-year-old from Mwadikange Kaulinge Secondary School says she has been engaging in sexual activities since she was 13.

“I started having sex with an older man who has a cucashop at our village. My mother encouraged me to go with him because he gives us food every now and then. He would buy household needs such as sugar, maize meal and other stuff for me. I am not pregnant yet, because we have been using condoms, and I only see the man when I go back home on holidays,” she says.

Another Grade-11 pupil is seven months pregnant and has kept her pregnancy a secret until it showed.

She says a cattle herder from her house raped her, a claim she says was refuted by her parents.

She says the cattle herder from Angola employed at her house had been making sexual advances at her until he eventually barged into her room while she was asleep.

“The man would come into my room in the evening and would rape me. I never told anyone because I was afraid no one would believe me, I just kept it to myself. After two months of not getting my period, I discovered I was pregnant,” she says.

The man has since fled back to Angola.

“My parents are angry with me, I don’t know if they will help me to look after the child so I can return to school,” the pupil says.

Ohangwena life skills teacher Sylvia Mwaetako says most of the young girls are exposed to a lot of vices while at home.

“When these young girls leave for the holidays they go back to hardship and poverty. They are made to help out the family working at cucashops, selling tombo and alcohol. There of course, they are exposed to men who would make sexual advances on them, lie to them and coerce them into engaging in sex,” she says.

The Ohangwena region has 280 schools, but only twelve schools have hostel accommodation.

According to the region’s director of education, Isak Hamatwi, some pupils have looked for accommodation at community hostels.

“There are people who are running their own private community hostels where some of the pupils who live far away from the schools are accommodated. . . Of course the ministry has no control of what happens at these establishments, “ says Hamatwi.