How teen marriages cut short dreams of Maasai girls in Arusha

Ngorongoro.  In a sombre mood, pregnant 17-year-old Sarah (not her real name) is hoping and waiting to deliver safely after escaping from a forced marriage to a man old enough to be her father.

 She is living at a centre based in Arusha Region after she escaped the clutches of her husband, who was mistreating and beating her despite her condition.

Her greatest hope is that she will deliver safely and later get a second chance to go back to school to realise her dream of becoming a gynaecologist to help girls and women in the Maasai community who give birth at home with support from midwives.

Sarah hails from Osiloni Kakesho, Ngorongoro District in Arusha, a bustling Maasai community, many of whom live in-side traditional houses.

She is one of the majority of Maasai girls who are forced to get married at a tender age due to outdated traditions.

This is because child marriages remain one of the biggest hurdles that still plague the girl-child relationship in the country.

The High Court in 2016 decided that the provisions of sections 13 and 17 of the Law of the Marriage Act 1977 offended the principles of equality provided for in Articles 12(1) and 13(1) of the Constitution and declared the said sections unconstitutional.

The court went further to direct the government, through the Attorney General, to correct the complained anomalies within one year from the date of the decision.

The court also set 18 years as the eligible age for marriage in respect of both boys and girls, but this has yet to be done.

“I had just completed my O-level education last year and passed to continue with A-level, where I planned to work hard to achieve my dream, but my father forced me to get married and shipped me off to my husband’s home,” she said.

She reveals that she was very disappointed and could not cope with the life that her father had chosen for her, which in turn made her husband angry and mistreat her by beating and forcing her to work in the fields.

According to her, she lost hope when she discovered that she was pregnant and decided that the only way out was to run away and look for another life for herself.

Secretly, she talked to her mother, who told her to go to a centre in Arusha known as the Mimutie Women Organisation (MWO), which rescues girls from forced marriages.

“I succeeded and came to the centre, but I was eight months pregnant by then.

“Now, I await delivery, hoping that I will deliver safely as I await what the future holds,” she said.

Reports show that pregnant students and adolescent mothers have been forced to drop out of school for decades.

In 2017, Tanzania adopted a discriminatory ban that prohibited them from continuing their education in public schools and threatened to deregister non-governmental organisations that challenged the ban.

But in November 2021, Tanzania’s Ministry of Education announced that girls who had dropped out of school because of pregnancy could return to school, effective immediately.

This change allows girls to re-enrol within two years of giving birth, or if later than two years, they can enrol at an alter-native education centre that offers a condensed version of the curriculum.

The government has also adopted additional measures, such as publishing detailed guidelines on how long pregnant students can stay in school, how much time they are allowed to be absent from school after giving birth, and the type of support they receive when they return.

However, all is still not well for the girl child in some communities, including those from Massai.

Sarah’s mother, Naminyike Mboi, said she was helpless to stop her daughter’s marriage because their culture gives all the powers to men.

“It brought back memories of how I was also forced to marry my husband when I was only 13 years old, and since then my life has been hard; I had to carry pregnancies at an early age and work hard to provide for my family,” she said.

She explained that she did not want the same fate for her daughter; therefore, secretly, they plotted her escape, although, by the time they succeeded, she was already pregnant.

According to her, when her husband discovered that their daughter had escaped, he was angry and chased her from her marital home, where she is currently living at the centre with her daughter.

“I could have had a worse fate than this because aiding one’s daughter to escape from her marriage is not taken lightly in our community,” she said.

The story of Sarah is not different from that of Nataana John (18), who hails from Arumeru. She was married off at the age of 17, and now, at 19 years old, she is still struggling to make sense of her life.

With no education and a husband who does not support her, she only sees a bleak future ahead of her.

Global statistics on child marriages indicate that Tanzania is one of the countries with the highest number of child marriages; on average, 2 out of 5 girls are married before the age of 18 years.

This is highlighted in a report by Human Rights Watch (2014) that says 8,000 girls drop out of school every year due to pregnancy.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) indicates that up to 16 girls under the age of 18 are impregnated daily in Tanzania.

However, the story is different in Arumeru Olevulosi Village; its local government chairman, Emmanuel Lasheon, said that in the past, many teenage girls were married off.

He said that the religion and wisdom of the village elders brought about great changes.

“After decades of child marriages, religion and elders in Olevulosi village intervened and brought an end to child marriages,” he said.

He said that at least 95 percent of the community has an awareness of the importance of education for both girls and boys, and they now see girls being educated up to higher education for their successful livelihoods.

He noted that they hold rallies at the village to sensitise the villagers on the importance of educating their girl children and the disadvantages of not taking them to school and marrying them off to men who are too old for their age.

While things have changed at Olevulosi village, a social worker from Longido who asked for anonymity because he was not the spokesperson said the district faces a lot of challenges where girls aged 13, 14, and more are married off.

“Our major challenge is culture and tradition and refusing to change. We come to know that a minor has been married off after the deed has been done, which is very frustrating because by then the girl is forced to lie to us about her age, and we can do nothing,” said the social worker. According to him, it’s even more frustrating because girls are married off when the girls are still foetuses in the mother’s wombs.

The father and the intended husband bet that it would be a girl, and the latter pays a dowry that must be paid off with marriage when the girl attains 12 years of age or more.

He notes that they have Wasonjo and Maasai tribes, where the former’s dowry of a girl is paid off when she is still a foetus in her mother’s womb but stays with her parents until she is of age, unlike the Masaai, who marry off their daughters before the age of 18.

“These girls are threatened with the worst fate if they disclose they were forced to marry at a tender age; therefore, it is left for us to continue providing education on the dangers of early marriages,” said the social worker.