Plight of the Pregnant Teenager

As medics, scientists and global health partners race against the 18-month timeline in finding an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine, the rest of the world is battling with deadbeat economies or undercurrents of the hidden pandemic, teenage pregnancy.

Is the church or WHO developing the teen pregnancy vaccine, as the government is deeply politicking?

Mutheu is an adorable 15 year old girl. Always on time and at hand to help with setting up the class for learning. On a normal Sunday, after a lesson she asked to speak privately with Mwangi, her Sunday school teacher. This was the first time she had made the request. Mwangi wasn’t sure what curve ball would be hurled at him, but agreed to meet her.

After the lesson, as the other excited learners high-fived the teacher and filed away, she tucked at Mwangi’s side with restlessness and anxiety. “Yes, Mutheu what did you want to tell me?”

Without mincing her words, she said, ‘I am HIV positive‘. Teens have a such a direct and non apologetic way of saying stuff, without giving background and context information. By no means, was Mwangi prepared for such information.

If it was in the 1990s when being HIV positive was ‘more’ ostracized, Mwangi would have scuttled for dear life. But times have changed. HIV isn’t the death sentence disease it used to be. Advanced medicine has made it manageable and countless people living with HIV have survived eons, to tell their tales and experiences.

Mwangi felt cornered. He couldn’t back away. Life had done little to prepare him for this conversation.

He caught his breath and asked, “Mutheu, what did you just say?” She had her script ready on how to narrate her gory story. Ignoring his question and moving on, she recounted how her live-in uncle had pried on her too many times, while her mother was away from home.

Sexual intimacy isn’t what she and her uncle talked about, rather it was they engaged in, initially as an experiment, and later as an obsession.

Mutheu had her first sexual encounter at a tender age of 9 years. She said it started off as play with uncle prying on her innocence and graduated into sex slavery, where sweets and sanitary pads were exchanged for pedophile pleasure. Her numb face showed little or no emotion, as if narrating the story of another girl, not herself.

Mwangi was clueless on how to respond. Considering he wasn’t a trained teacher and teaching Sunday school was more of a voluntary passion than a skilled profession. The church hadn’t equipped him with any psycho-social first aid skills as a front-line worker. Is it any wonder the church and other religious groups weren’t considered essential services by the government, during COVID-19 instigated lock-down and curfews?

He couldn’t immediately think of a quick fix to the presenting problem. As if in a flash, he saw Pastor’s wife (fondly referred to as Mrs. Pastor) walking past them and there stood his escape from the awkward trap. He called her out and guided Mutheu to speak to her about her situation.

Mrs. Pastor and Mutheu huddled at a corner on the church compound and could be seen conversing deeply. Their facial expressions and hand gestures captured moments of awe, shock, anger and rage.

It is the story of a teenage girl in Form 2, who had suffered repeated sexual exploitation by an uncle resulting in HIV infection and a pregnancy that would rather be terminated than carried to term.

Such was the ethical and moral dilemma. To carry or not to carry. Back at home, her mum was oblivious of the pregnancy story. Mrs. Pastor agreed to break the developing news to her. After the church service, they walked hand in hand to Mutheu’s family’s humble aboard. This was inside some narrow and stinky allies in an informal neighborhood where drunkards and other drug addicts openly staggered or idled, as early as 9 am on a Sunday morning.

The walk was full of hop, skip and jump episodes in evading wet and waste patches on the path. These informal settlements breed the highest number of children who end up as street urchins or children workers in construction sites and middle class homes. In her mind, Mutheu knew she staring at the prospect of dropping out of school, to nurse her baby and a bleak future thanks to the unforgiving 8-4-4 curriculum, which haunts those who don’t complete a cycle or two.

Reaching Mutheu’s home, they found her mum winnowing some cereal and sun drying some food relief-donated groundnuts. Her broad smile expressed delight in Mrs. Pastor’s visit. Mutheu’s younger brother was also in the house, but on seeing the visitor he scampered out as one being chased by ghosts. For some reason, he was extremely antisocial and the mother had accepted his behavior, and apologized to Mrs. Pastor, after he splashed some mud water on her shoes, as he elbowed his way out.

Settling down and after all the niceties, time had reached for the purpose of the visit to be tabled. Mutheu watched her mum’s face and possible emotional explosion with bated breath, knowing that expulsion from their single roomed house was the most likely response. Her mother toils among casual laborers in construction sites, selling groundnuts and KDF mandazi, to put them through school and afford a livelihood for the household of four, including their live-in uncle.

At first, there was awkward silence as Mrs. Pastor gathered her thoughts, to best frame the story.

As is the tactic with breaking sad news of death to a close relative, Mrs. Pastor started with a narrative of ‘another‘ family in crisis because of a truant child. She didn’t need to go deep into the scene-setting story before Mutheu’s mother cut the chase by asking, “Are you saying that my daughter is pregnant?”

It couldn’t have been more difficult to be a bearer of bad news. Mutheu’s mum choked as she looked straight at her. Her face tweaked in apparent internal agony and her eyes popped as one who had just watched a contortionist snap after an extreme backward bend, while performing.

Mutheu wished the ground would open up and swallow her alive, to save her from the wrath of her mocked mother. She cowered in fear and faced their earthen floor.

Her mum almost let out a scream, had it not been for Mrs. Pastor’s quick and tight embrace that capped her shock and pain. While in the embrace, her mind raced with thoughts of how many times she had warned Mutheu about boys and men, yet all this time the warning was never addressed to Mutheu’s uncle or brother, as potential perpetrators. In her mind, bad boys were always out there, and not in her house.

Her preventive approach explains how counter-pregnancy messages have perennially been disproportionately targeting girls and not boys or men. Was it her fault that Mutheu was sexually abused and impregnated under her roof? How do parents of such teenagers emerge from such life happenings?

Which is worse, HIV infection or pregnancy? Mutheu was assaulted by both swords.

A solid 20 minutes passed by as the two embraced, with feelings of shock, denial, anger, and bargaining forming word clouds in her mind. What was to be a two-hour visit, turned into a five-hour stay, as Mutheu’s mum needed intense talk therapy to normalize her feelings. She even forgot to serve tea to her visitor, showing how unprepared she was for such an eventuality.

Mutheu was her firstborn child, whom she raised with strict discipline and responsibility, yet all the honest efforts were apparently paying off with a possible school drop out, a teen mother and an irresponsible child predator who will widen the never-ending siblings’ strained relationships in their family.

Being a pillar of salt would have been better, than the laughing stock that Mutheu became among her peers. They called her names and cheekily whispered at her protruding tummy. Her mother drowned in shame as she began considering life adjustments to accommodate the unplanned grandchild.

No amount of encouraging words would soothe her, even her friend’s motivation that children are a blessing from God and each child comes with their own plate of food. Mutheu and her mother henceforth had a tense relationship. They became instant strangers to one another. While schools were re-opening post-COVID, such discussions never came up in their home.

Her mum wasn’t (consciously) angry with Mutheu’s pregnancy but (was sub consciously angry) with history repeating itself, given that she also got pregnant at her mother’s house and dropped out in Form 1. The script was the same, only the cast was different.

Humans are harshest to those who commit offenses that they themselves are guilty of. Same to the biblical David who had taken his foot-soldier’s wife, but was enraged that a figurative rich man had taken a poor man’s sheep, saying that the rich man should die and restore fourfold!

Before Mutheu’s family was a matter ripe for litigation in terms of child abuse, but Mutheu’s mum had little fighting energy left, considering the countless times she had been to the area chief solving conflict-related sibling wars in her family. Her friends and confidants were few and her mind drifted into apathy and depression.

A disillusioned Mutheu joins hundreds of thousands of teens who got pregnant in Kenya during the pandemic, while her mother is distraught by the shame and imploding socioeconomic burden of raising a grandchild.

Her uncle joins the fray of scot free boys and men who continue their treacherous acts, hiding behind the curtain of negative and irresponsible masculinity. Their family and community stare at hard-to-crack moral and ethical questions.

While Mrs. Pastor may have left after her initial visit and promised to keep in touch with Mutheu’s family for any support, the effects of sexual violence can be seen in a girl who is in her teens. Her relationship with the mother has been dented for the foreseeable future. Her sense of worth is nose-diving as she now finds solace at a local make-shift salon, in the company of other school dropouts and fellow teen mothers.

Ostensibly, she has been robbed of her childhood, education and future.

Beneath the statistics teenager pregnancies in Kenya, this is neither fiction nor another statistic, but a story with a human face. Resilience of the human spirit, families and communities in navigating through such crises, remains a mystery.

Views expressed in this article are my own. Every human interaction is an inspiring story worth telling.

Joseph N. Mungai is inspired by people’s life experiences. Do you have a intriguing life story and need a ghost writer? Email: j.mungai@hotmail.co.uk