Education: When families prioritize boys by Ruth Ayisi Gondola, Manica province - ‘’I feel ashamed to see my friends,” says fourteen-year-old Gina Felix, fiddling with her fingers and head bowed down. She finds it difficult to talk, and only with a lot of prompting she manages to explain timidly. “My friends are all at school. I stay in the fields working. I don’t feel like mixing with them. I feel alone.” Gina left school when she was 12 years and just beginning grade 4. “My father married another woman and left home. Now I live here with my mother, my grandmother, my uncle and five brothers and sisters.” Gina’s mother could not afford any longer sending all her children to schools. She opted for the boys to continue. Gina describes her typical day. “I get up at 5am. I collect water from the well and then I cook pap. When I need to farm in the machamba, I leave at 6am with my mother. It is a two-kilometer-walk and we stay there until 12.” For the past three years, their maize harvest has not been good, so Gina says she earns money pounding maize in other people’s households. She receives 10,000 Meticais (50 US cents) for pounding a tin of maize. Sometimes she says she can do three tins and earns 30,000 Meticais. “It takes me all day.” Gina has participated in a UNICEF-supported course on life skills, which she enjoyed. The programme called “My future is my choice” is implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. It targets mainly those 40 per cent of young people between the ages of 12 and 15 years who are out of school. The aim of the programme is to provide the participants with basic information and negotiation skills to empower them to adopt safe sex practices. The main actors are adolescents who offer a 20-hours training course to their peers. Gina says she learnt about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. “Lots of people are dying of AIDS in my area,” she says. She has no boyfriend. But she says, “I would like to have lots of children.” Asked whether she would like to return to school, Gina says, “Yes.” But she is blank when asked how she thinks she will do that. So what would she like for her future? Gina just replies, “I never have thought about the future. I don’t know.” Gina is typical of many teenage girls in Mozambique. The chances of children to receive a basic education have improved tremendously since the end of the 16-year-old civil war in 1992. But girls are still underrepresented. Some 76 per cent of children of primary school age were enrolled in EP1 (grades 1-5) in 2004. The net enrollment rate for girls stood at a lower 73 per cent. Girls are also still the first to drop out. Only around 40 per cent of all children who start school manage to complete grade 5. For girls, however, the completion rate is only 32 per cent. There are multiple reasons for this inequality. They include families giving low priority to girls’ education. If they cannot afford paying the tuition fee and buying school material, many parents still opt for spending their scarce resources on their sons’ education. Girls instead get saddled with a heavy workload. The schools also lack female role models, and some girls suffer sexual abuse, even from the teachers themselves. The lack of separate latrines often poses an additional barrier for girls’ education, especially for the older ones. But some girls manage to overcome the obstacles. By contrast to Gina, her friend, 15-year-old Louisa Chico, who is in the ninth grade of school, is focused. She knows what she wants and has backup plans if she can’t make her first choice. “I think I’ll be a nurse.” Asked why she does not want to be a doctor, she also is quick to reply. “If I could afford the books, and have the possibility, I would like to be a doctor, but I don’t think it is possible.” Louisa’s father fell sick in 1998 and died and her mother supports Louisa and her four sisters by selling flour. Louisa has to also perform similar domestic chores like Gina, but she never misses school. “Only when I’m sick,” says Louisa. Also like Gina, Louisa has little to eat. Her family’s plot dried up as the rains came late. “I never eat before I go to school and I can’t afford to take a snack,” says Louisa. Louisa too has participated in the life skills programme. “I learnt about protecting myself against pregnancies and HIV/AIDS.” But she also does not want a boyfriend for other reasons. “I don’t have any boyfriend because they can prejudice your studies,” says Louisa with conviction. “Most of my friends have relationships, even with older men. I don’t understand them. I want to concentrate on my studies because they are very important.”
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