Steep rise in pupil pregnancies worries Nyanza teachers

Head teachers from Nyanza are grappling with the increasing number of pregnancies among pupils. The problem will be top on their agenda when they start the annual national head teachers meeting in Mombasa today.

While their colleagues from the rest of the country will be discussing ways of improving performance, the Nyanza team will be seeking to solve the sex pests problem which, they say, is approaching crisis levels.

Some girls as young as 11 years are getting pregnant. The pupils are also exposed to HIV infections and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Many cases of unwanted pregnancies have been reported in the province in the recent past.

The issue of how safe the children are against the virus came up during a regional headteachers and principals meeting in Nakuru. Speakers at the meeting said the pregnancies could be just be the tip of the iceberg as there could be an underlying bigger problem; most pregnancies occur in close-knit neighbourhoods inhabited by relatives.

Some of the pregnancies could be as a result of incest and defilement by neighbours or teachers because the children are day scholars. Kenya Literature Bureau director, Eve Obara gave an example of a Rachuonyo school where people are not supposed to intermarry because they are believed to be relatives yet 35 girls were found to be pregnant.

“The pregnancies could be resulting from defilement since some of the girls are too young to know about sex leave alone consenting,” she adds. Ms Obara, who also sits at the Nyanza Provincial Education Board, questioned how a man in their right mind could take a class five pupil to bed.

“These children are day scholars. That means the only places they could have been impregnated is at home or in school, raising the question of incest or exploitation by teachers,” she says. She said at Kekelo Primary school, 35 pupils were found pregnant, adding that 20 of them had since delivered and gone back to school while 15 were still out of school.

“We are now having young mothers in our school, cases of children having children yet we have laws that protect the young ones against sexual abuse,” she said. She added that 11 girls at a primary school in Ndhiwa district had been reported pregnant.

Another 10 girls at a school in Mfangano area of Mbita District were reported pregnant while a 14-year-old school dropout gave birth to triplets in Rachuonyo. Ms Obara said the children were at a risk of contracting the HIV virus since it was obvious they were having unprotected sex.

Education and corporate affairs manager for Microsoft in East and South Africa, Mr Mark Matunga, said there were many cases of unwanted pregnancies on the smaller islands of Lake Victoria meaning that immorality, which included incest, was on the rise. Some elders in the area say the girls were being impregnated by relatives which is against the Luo culture.

Following the latest report of 10 pregnancies at a school in Mbita, the government deployed a team to investigate the matter and find out who was responsible. District Commissioner Francis Komen said cases of primary school dropouts were on the rise due to unwanted pregnancies. The administrator who was also quoted in one of the local dailies saying fishermen and youths were preying on vulnerable girls learning at schools near fishing landing centres.