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Teen pregnancy epidemic feeds Mozambique’s population boom
MURRUPELANE, Mozambique, Aug 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – In the tiny maternity
ward in Murrupelane, two 16-year-old mothers breast-feed their babies, both
born that morning.
Mozambique’s child marriage and teen pregnancy rates are among the highest
in the world, a driving factor in the population explosion in this poverty-
plagued southern African nation.
After emerging from a brutal war in 1992, the former Portuguese colony saw
its population swell 40 percent in the two decades to 2017, reaching 29
million today.
“My parents really wanted me to get married,” says Julia Afonso, one of
the girls who has just given birth in Murrupelane, a village in the north.
In a tiny voice, she says her family received 1,500 meticals ($21, 22
euros) as a dowry.
Around half of Mozambique’s women — 48.2 percent — marry before they
turn 18, according to UN children’s agency UNICEF.
Of girls aged between 15 and 19, 46.4 percent are either pregnant or have
already become mothers.
These early marriages and pregnancies “are impoverishing the community,”
says Murrupelane village chief Wazir Abacar.
Young parents “cannot feed their children, and the mums leave school,” he
said. As a result, 58 percent of Mozambican women are illiterate.
– Pregnant at 12 –
Ema Nelmane, now 13, gave into the advances of a man she met in the market
who offered her 200 meticals (three euros) for her virginity.
“She saw a chance to get the same shoes her friends were wearing,” her
grandmother said, by way of explanation.
When she fell pregnant, Ema was flabbergasted.
“I didn’t know you could get pregnant by making love,” she said, breast-
feeding seven-month-old Ismail in the clay yard outside her grandmother’s
home.
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Ema was plunged prematurely into the world of adults.
“I can’t go out and play with my friends anymore,” she said.
As in other developing countries, teenagers in Mozambique often fall
pregnant “through lack of education”, said demographer Carlos Arnaldo.
“Parents see in these births a guarantee that they’ll be looked after when
they get old.”
Until recently, Mozambique’s government did little to tackle demographic
problems.
But the mounting costs of the population boom have forced a change of
thinking.
– Contraception drive –
“The economic consequences for the government are that it has to build
hospitals and schools,” said Pascoa Wate, head of maternal and child health
at the health ministry.
“In spite of government spending, people don’t have access to them.”
In a bid to curb the population explosion, Mozambique’s government is in
the process of changing the law to allow marriage only at 18, rather than at
16 with parental consent.
“We know that the practice of early marriage is rooted in deeply-seated
cultural values and social norms that prioritise fertility,” said Youth
Minister Nyeleti Mondlane.
With UN support, Mozambique has also been waging a contraception awareness
campaign since 2016.
Only a quarter of women currently have access to contraception, according
to a national health survey.
In the shadow of a mango tree in the northern village of Namissica, a
dozen women crowd around a table to watch a nurse demonstrate how to use
different contraception, with the help of a wooden model penis and a plastic
vagina.
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If their husbands are “not cooperative”, nurse Fatima da Silva Cobre
advises women to opt for a birth control implant.
“He won’t know you’re using it,” she says.
The women ask anxious questions: could the implant fall out? Won’t it make
them infertile?
One by one, the nurse debunks the myths.
– Rites of passage –
Reining in the population boom also depends heavily on male education in a
country where “it’s they who dictate sexuality to girls”, said Gilberto
Macuacua Harilal.
A crusader against underage pregnancies, Macuacua uses his weekly
television show “Man To Man” to denounce churches that defend marriage under
18, as well as traditional initiation rites, common in Mozambique.
During such ceremonies, “boys aged eight to 12 learn to punish girls by
forcing them into sex,” he said.
Slowly, the message is starting to get through.
Jaoa Carlos Singano, a village chief in the northern Rapale district, said
that for a year “we’ve been trying to convince officials who carry out the
initiation rites to be careful in the instructions they give boys”.
But the need for change is urgent.
At current rates, the population is set to double in the next 25 years.
“It is a race against time,” says Mondlane.
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