Emaweyesh Kassie, 19 year old from Gonder, Northern Ethiopia married when she was six. Here, she shares her experience.
Emaweyesh Kassie, a 19-year-old woman from Gonder, Northern Ethiopia married when she was six. Here, she shares her experience as a child bride.
My oldest brother told me about the day they came to kill my mother. He said I was six months old, and my village was attacked by violent men. I have no memory of my mother. My brother told me my father disappeared as well, but nobody knows how or where. When my mother was killed, my brother named me Emaweyesh, which in Amharic means ‘you share my feelings’.
When I was six years old I was forced to marry an older man. In a way, my four brothers were relieved to see me go, thereby reducing the burden on my already shattered family.
Life as a six-year-old bride was never beautiful. I did not have the opportunity to go to school like other children my age. My husband forced me to work all day in the house, and spending the night with him was always a very painful experience.
When I was 12 I gave birth to Almaz, my beautiful daughter. It was a natural birth that lasted for several days. I never believed that creating a new life could cause so much pain. I was going to give birth in my village when a group of foreign aid workers found me and took me to the poli-clinic in Gonder.
Shortly after returning to my village my husband left me because of my post-childbirth condition. My fragile body was rattled by the experience, I was no longer useful to him, and he left me for another woman; that is, another child. My only choice was to migrate to the city of Gonder where I lived on the street and begged for food to feed my infant daughter.
I worked as a daily laborer for over two years, keeping my child alive by the grace of God. When I could not find any work, I resorted to begging. One day I was approached by a social worker from Wogen, an association that aims to assist orphans and street children. This year, they enrolled me in the USAID Urban Gardens Program school garden in Kebele 03 Elementary School.
Today I am 19 years old and in the fifth grade, and my seven-year-old daughter is currently in the first grade. The school garden allows both of us to go to school and to eat vegetables every month. In my free time I wash clothes, sell injera (Ethiopian flatbread), and roast coffee beans to pay the 150 birr (US$9) monthly rent.
Every day I work alongside more than 100 children from the school, ranging in ages. We each have individual garden plots, and I now take home cabbage and Swiss chard every month. In addition, as a group we raise and market vegetable seedlings to sell to other farmers, earning enough money to pay for clothing and school materials.
My dream is to be a doctor. I don’t want to see children suffer the misery and pain that I went through. I will not allow my daughter to marry until she is at least twenty years old.
Many families living in the rural areas of Ethiopia continue to sell their daughters for as little as 3000 birr (US$150) and as much as 10,000 birr (US$575). The practice is slowly disappearing as urban populations rise and awareness spreads.
Emaweyesh owes much of her success to the teachers and administrators of Kebele 03 Elementary School, who have even taken child-bride suitors to the regional authorities.
Kababush Lisanark, Emaweyesh’s mentor and physical education teacher at Kebele 03 Elementary School, said: “We are pushing her to keep learning to improve her life.”
Uganda joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Women’s Day last week, and many issues need to be considered. Many African countries still have a low retention rate for girls in school. In Uganda’s Nebbi district, the host of the Women’s Day celebrations, and Zombo district, the retention rate of girls in school is very low.
According to Nam Eddie, the programme officer for NGO Forum in Nebbi stated that there are no girls in primary six and seven at Cam Kwan Primary school in Atyak sub-county in Zombo district. When they reach these classes they show signs of maturity, and their parents encourage them to get married.
In cases where a child is defiled the parents prefer to settle matters out of court or pay a dowry or exchange for cows, thus these girls often drop out of school.
A lack of sanitary pads is also causing many girls to drop out of school in Katakwi district. Parents do not know how to help the girls during menstruation. Damalie Asekenye, the community development officer, believes girls will continue to drop out of school and get married at an early age.
There is a need for African governments to take the lead or provide some subsidy on the taxes levied on businesses conducted by women to enable them to compete with men. When resources are limited, boys are sent to school instead of girls, so governments should think of inspiring girls to continue schooling.
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