Football changed my life

At the age of 21, Maua Mohammed Juma is a Form Three student at a local secondary school in Msambweni, Kwale County. Her age mates elsewhere are university students.

Maua took long before joining school because her parents could not afford to educate their nine children at the same time. She is a seventh born and priority was given to her older siblings.

Every day, she commutes between her home and school. In the evening, after school, she joins a local girls-only football club in her village in Gazi.

She is the goalkeeper of Amkeni Gazi Girls Club, where she plays with other girls from different schools in the locality.

Two years ago, Maua was on the verge of dropping out of school. She lacked school fees and was also unwell. For three months, she stayed home and almost gave up on her education.

During this time, she became a henna artist and would decorate hands and legs of women attending celebratory events such as weddings, across Msambweni Constituency.

“Football changed my life. I was on the verge of dropping out of school but my coach talked my parents and I into going back to school,” she says.

Riziki Mohammed, a local girls' rights champion and community activist who founded the Amkeni Gazi Club, was the first one to approach Maua. Ms Mohammed convinced her parents to allow her to play for the team and also go back to school.

Gender-based violence

She now plays every day, and takes part in tournaments with other teams across the county. In December last year, for instance, she participated in a girls’ football tournament that was to raise awareness against gender-based violence.

Maua’s success is unlikely in Kwale where most girls either drop out of school on becoming teenagers, while others barely afford to join secondary school after completing Class Eight. Many end up in early marriages, while others engage in child sex tourism due to the proximity of the beaches in Diani that attract many tourists.

Poverty and parents' low value for education also feed into the ability of girls here to stay in school.

Kwale County is among those that record the highest cases of teen pregnancy. For ages, girl child education was the responsibility of government officials, child rights protection officers, teachers or even counsellors. This is, however, changing.

Today, a section of villages has resorted to peer counselling that is helping keep Kwale girls in school. Through the She Leads programme, implemented by the Network for Adolescents and Youth of Africa (Naya), a non-governmental organization, the girls are empowered on leadership and advocacy.

The five-year program runs until 2025 and targets at least 2,000 girls from vulnerable counties in Kenya.

Through the program girls aged between of 14 and 25 years meet and discuss challenges they face and potential solutions. They are also motivated by older girls.

“My sisters never completed their education. I am the seventh born and the only one in school. They all got married and left home. Now I know the value of education and I can take care of myself until I am done studying,” says Maua.

In Lunguma village, Matuga Constituency, I meet 25-year-old Meswalehe Swaleh, another beneficiary of the program.

Ms Swaleh is a Community Development and Counselling graduate from the Technical University of Mombasa, and plays a key role in engaging young girls in regular motivational talks and menstrual hygiene discussions. She visits secondary and primary schools in the locality and neighbouring communities.

Currently, she is the only girl who has reached the highest level of education among her peer group. Many dropped out of school or couldn't join higher education institutions.

Ms Swaleh says she faced many challenges while pursuing her education, including lack of school fees. She stayed at home for two years between 2016 and 2018, before joining university.

She is the only one who has managed to go to college in her group. Two of them could not go beyond Form Four, while the rest dropped out in Class Eight.

“I am now a role model to other young girls. I saw the need to further my education because there are many challenges that come with staying at home including drug abuse, child exploitation, and early pregnancy, among other issues,” she says.

She meets other girls in her village at least twice a month. For those unable to further their studies, their talks focus on entrepreneurship opportunities. Her group, for instance, is setting up a soap manufacturing business.

"Some girls dropped out of school because they got pregnant or lacked school fees…the program has helped most of them go back to school. For those unable, we formed chamas where we save and come up with income-generating activities," Ms Swaleh explains.

She is in charge of 15 girls in her village.

Climate change

“I am happy to be among the young women changing the narrative in our community. I hope that by the end of this project, I will have impacted many girls’ lives.

She explains that through the project, she has realised that she can do anything, and that dropping out of school is not a ticket to marriage. She lists social factors, cultural beliefs and poverty, hunger drought and climate change, as among the issues affecting Kwale girls.

Sofie Safari, the project officer at Naya, says the program has 21 groups in 21 villages across the three sub-counties. Each group comprises of 30 girls aged between 14 years and 24 years. The other category of girls aged between 25 and 30 participate as mentors.

“We engage in activities that reduce gender-based violence (GBV). There is also a cultural perspective that a girl cannot be a leader or anyone meaningful in the community; something we are trying to demystify,” Ms Safari says.

One challenge they face, she says, is that most GBV cases are not reported, leading to a rise in the cases. Most girls also get married early, cutting their dreams of continuing with their studies.

She explains that the project has also reduced the perception that girls are not important in the community.

Data from the Public Health Department shows that Kwale’s teen pregnancy cases have reduced to 17 per cent.

“Girls between the age of 10 and 19 years are still being reported pregnant. When we started this empowerment programs in 2013, we were at 39.8 per cent. We put some measures in place in the last five years and by June last year, we only had 20 per cent of teen pregnancy cases reported," Kwale County Chief Nurse Edward Mumbo says.

He adds that the percentage has reduced to 17.2 per cent in the last three months.

Kwale Governor Fatuma Achani, says her leadership has inspired girls in the community, who were afraid that their future would be derailed by cultural factors, to do more.

She explains that her administration is working round the clock to curb cases of GBV against girls.

“We have tackled the teen pregnancy issue and the numbers keep declining. This is because of the collaboration between the county government, other stakeholders and parents,” she says.

Back to Maua, she hopes to become an artist and support her family. Ms Swaleh, on the other hand, says she will continue imparting the lives of other young girls.

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