By Elias
Banda
Esther Petulo stood near her house and cursed the day she was born.
She wondered why she was introduced to this hopeless and horrible world where
there is no love, a world where she would go to bed without food for several
days and nobody seemed to care. Esther faced her demise when her husband abandoned her with her newly born
bay. The only close relative was her uncle who passed away a few months
earlier. She was found HIV positive during antenatal checkups when she was pregnant.
She looked at her baby and shed tears because all her hopes were shattered.
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| Esther sited right with club members, the project has brought smiles back on their faces |
This is the plight of the 19 year Esther who hails from Sabola Village
in Traditional Authority Juma in Mulanje District of Southern Malawi. Esther
narrated that when her parents died 6 years earlier she was left under the care
of her uncle who supported her until she reached form 2. When her uncle died,
Esther’s future hanged in limbo and she became vulnerable as no one within her
family network was capable of supporting her. Just like what many girls do in
her community, marriage became the only option left for her survival.
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| Esther is harboring big dreams -to become a nurse |
She got married to a young man in her village but after two years into
marriage Esther was shocked to discover that her husband had several other
women. It took several months for her to recover from this shock and when she inquired about her husband’s infidelity, he reacted by abandoning her and
married in the other village. This was her critical moment in her life as she
recalled that it was even better for her to die and escape all the life hurdles she would go through. She imagined how life would be for her to
stand on her own with a fatherless child. After weighing several survival
options, she put up a brave face and decided to face the challenges head on.
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| Esther caounselling fellow teen mother and village members |
In October 2014 a glimmer of hope was cast when Esther, together
with her peers joined the Teenage Mothers Group introduced by ADRA Malawi
through the When Mother is a Child (WMC) project. What motivated Esther to join the group
was the direct link between her
situation and the goals and objectives of the project. She saw herself reaping
more benefits from her participation in the project activities including efforts
to go back to school and skills how to cope with challenges facing teenage
mothers in her community. In November 2014 Esther was elected chairperson of
Tikondane Teenage Mothers Group, comprising 20 members. Group members meet on
weekly rotational basis to discuss issues affecting teenage mothers and find
solutions. Her group has since mobilized
and reached out to 167 teenage mothers between October and December 2014,
encouraging them to go back to school and helping them how to cope with
challenges teenage mothers face. She
said that plans are in the pipeline to reach out to more than 500 teenage mothers
between January and December 2015.. She also said there were hundreds of teenage
mothers who have since been abandoned by their husbands and were going through
problems to cope with life. She said her group is geared to reach out to all
such girls and bring hope of a better future for them.
Meanwhile, Esther said she would like to go back to school in form 2
and continue where she left before she got married. She said when she completes her high school,
she would go for nursing course. She said that nothing would come on her way to
stop her from achieving her goal. She thanked ADRA Malawi through WMC project
for this wonderful project that has revived her hopes for a better tomorrow. “Not
all is lost I can now see my bright future” Esther said. The WMC project has since established 15 teen mothers groups.
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