FOR REAL? Do You Know That A Girl Can Be Drowned Alive For Getting Pregnant In This Community?

Women or girls bearing children out of wedlock were once punished by exile or death. They would be taken to Ijwi Island in the Western Province and drowned in Lake Kivu.

“Rwandans believed that bastards were a curse and that God would send drought as punishment. The punishment was meant to scare any girl from having premarital s£x,” he adds.

Today, this punishment cannot work because of international laws that protect human rights. However; Mpyisi observes the need to address out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

In Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda, residents, largely from Burundi, also condemned teenage pregnancy as exemplifying bad morals. It was also widely believed that the lack of punishments for teenage pregnancy, and especially the reinforcement of the right of pregnant girls to continue school, only perpetuated and encouraged the problem; particularly as it was assumed that allowing pregnant girls and young mothers to attend school would have a negative influence on their peers’ behaviour. As one 40-year-old mother explained:

It is really a shame … we are witnessing a large number of girls getting pregnant.

We see 13-year-old girls getting pregnant. But what we don’t appreciate is that here in Rwanda, they allow them to continue schooling. This is the reason why the numbers keep increasing. Back in Burundi, a girl who gets pregnant is punished … they stop going to school so that they can see the consequences of their bad behaviour. What they do here … is not helping, because when other girls go to school and see their pregnant friend studying with them, they think it is OK for them to get pregnant too … After all, there is no consequence if they can continue going to school.

Camp residents viewed teenage pregnancy as a conscious and planned action. In other words, it was assumed that pregnancy was the goal, rather than a consequence of different sorts of relationships. Moreover, community members’ disapproval often referred to a former time in Burundi, in which punishments were applied. These narratives framed education as a reward for good behaviour and not a right of every young person; education therefore could, and should, be withdrawn if a young person exhibited bad behaviour. As one parent, a 37-year-old former teacher, put it:

In Burundi, to discourage girls from engaging in s£xual relationships and bring the pregnancy shame to the family, we punish the girl by not allowing her to continue school … She stays home and helps with household chores while other young people of her age are at school. This teaches her the lesson to not do it again.

When younger boys commented on the presence of pregnant teenagers in school, they mainly voiced discomfort and disapproval, generally because they thought that these girls would set a bad example. They were also unsure about how to behave in the presence of pregnant girls who, to them, were no longer adolescents yet also not yet adults. As one 14-year-old boy put it:

We ask ourselves if these pregnant girls are still children like us or if they are now grownups. We don’t know if it is ok to still talk and play with them … and our parents tell us to not talk to them anymore … So you find us gossiping about them and making jokes of who could be the father of their child. You see, here in Mahama, we hear many things happening. We heard of some girls that were sleeping with the staff from the organizations working in the camps, like Save the Children, Plan International, Red Cross etc. … And we also hear stories of some girls having Rwandan boyfriends who support them financially … We think it could be good for us to not have pregnant girls coming to schools … maybe that will stop other girls from also getting pregnant.

Some younger boys talked about girls’ s£xual behaviour negatively, as sinful, risky and immoral. They labelled it the cause of the teenage pregnancy problem, and suggested that such girls should be punished. Some girls also made spontaneous comments about other girls’ pregnancies, though they did not suggest that they should be forbidden from attending school. I observed compassion in the way they spoke about their fellow schoolmates. As one 16-year-old girl said:

Life here in the camp is not easy. And with all the temptations around, it is difficult for girls and they end up getting pregnant. … You see, girls need things like sanitary pads and make-up. So boys and other old guys use that to lure them and sleep with them.

According to my interlocutors, it was not always the girls’ peers who got them pregnant. They gave examples of scandalous relationships between male teachers who pressured girls for s£xual encounters in exchange for good grades or other school-related support. Another scandal involved NGO staff members, who allegedly engaged in illicit s£xual activities with girls in exchange for services to which the girls were already entitled. My interlocutors confirmed that such scandals came to light because some of the girls involved became pregnant and the men – the teacher or NGO worker – had pressured them to obtain an abortion. Due to the girls’ limited knowledge and fears of abortion procedures and the fact that they are illegal, they were forced to tell their story.

I met Jeanine at the entrance to one of Mahama’s two health centres. She was wearing a worn-out blue t-shirt with a UNICEF logo, and had a small baby tied to her back. With her tiny frame, she looked small and fragile. I wondered where the mother of the child was and why Jeanine had had to bring the baby to the hospital. I learned that the 3-month-old baby girl on her back was hers. I tried my best to hide my surprise. Jeanine had just turned 15 the previous week. She had come to the hospital unaccompanied because she was living alone and had no one to support her. She was due to meet a Save the Children6 worker who was going to facilitate the check-up for her and her child. Jeanine consented to spare some time to tell me her story.

Prior to her pregnancy, Jeanine had lived with her aunt’s family. At the time of the interview, she was living alone with her baby. Jeanine described her relationship with her aunt and her husband as difficult, mostly because they had disapproved of her love of football and hanging out with boys. She was always being told that she was not behaving as a girl should. People talked behind her back, insinuating that she was a shame on her family, and that a girl who only hangs out with boys could only bring trouble.

Jeanine explained to me that she was no longer part of the football team because of what had happened to her. ‘I am a very good football player’, she told me.

I would go play with boys and always hang out with boys. So yeah, my friends have always been boys. That is what brought me this ‘trouble’, this baby. This baby is the fruit of what happened to me. I was s£xually assaulted by one of my teammates.

Jeanine was 14 when Samson, who was 19, s£xually assaulted her. She did not have a boyfriend and had never had s£x. According to Jeanine, all the boys from the football team were her friends and she could never have imagined that her friend, Samson, could do such a despicable thing:

One day while playing football, it started raining. We all ran to Samson’s shelter to wait for the rain to clear. The rain continued and as the darkness approached, the other boys began leaving one by one. Samson promised to take me home when it stopped raining, so I wasn’t worried. Samson waited until he was sure that everyone had left to close the door. I remember that I asked him why he was closing the door. He pulled me with all his strength. He used excessive force to drag me to the mattress in the corner of his shelter. It took me a while to realize what was about to happen to me. He violently pushed me against the mattress, took off my shorts. All that time I was trying to defend myself – scratching, kicking and screaming for help – but my voice was drowned by the rain hitting the iron roof. He pushed his organ inside me and raped me with force. I cried all the tears of my body and he went on doing whatever he was doing. I felt angry, powerless, cheated, defeated and confused. How could someone I call my friend do such a despicable act against me? I just could not understand that … I had so many questions with no one to help me.

Jeanine could not talk to anyone about what had happened because she felt that no one would

believe her. She also felt responsible: ‘After all, everyone had warned me about hanging out with boys’. She deliberated about telling her aunt, but was afraid of her reaction. She wished she could have had someone to share the many questions going through her head.

After three months, Jeanine discovered that she was pregnant, and despite her efforts to hide it, her aunt found out. Her aunt began abusing her, calling her offensive names and accusing her of getting what she deserved. She told Jeanine that she was a disgrace and had brought shame to the whole family. Her aunt made it clear that Jeanine would have to find somewhere else to go with her baby. And as if the harsh treatment she received from her aunt was not enough, she became the talk of the camp; her name was raised when people expressed their indignation about the rising number of teen mothers.

With the support and encouragement of Save the Children, Jeanine continued going to school for a while, but she eventually dropped out when she was about five months pregnant:

It was so difficult, with no support from my family, to continue going to school. School felt like a punishment. Because, on top of always feeling tired and not well due to the pregnancy, I had to keep up appearances and do all the household chores as I used to. Some days, going to school after all the hard work I had to perform, I felt like dying …

But also at school, I would see how the other students were not playing with me anymore. You know, you feel lonely at times. [I had] no one to tell my problems to or share my tribulations. It was everyone against the pregnant teen that I was. I started missing a few classes and I would go to sleep at one girl who was a single mum. We became friends because she could relate and was compassionate, but I feared being caught by the youth representative of the camp who would report to the camp management that I was missing school. I knew that if this came to be known, I would be forced to go. But at a later stage, I officially stopped going to school after incidences of fainting, which I reported to the Save the Children person. I was living by myself at that time, because the situation and abuse from both my aunt and her husband became too difficult. They even kicked me out of their house.

After giving birth, Jeanine began thinking that she would love to go back to school, but she lacked family

support. She mentioned only one cousin from abroad who had learned of her story and had been sending her a little money. She did not see how going back to school would be possible: ‘Yeah, it’s very hard to take care of the kid and still go to school, and you don’t have someone to look after you and your baby’. She also did not see any hope for the future, beyond continuing to lay low to avoid stigma from people in the camp.