Married at 14: Zambia’s Child Brides | Woman with Gloria Steinem

Worldwide, more than 200 million women have been

married

before the age of 15, excluded from their education and often become what amounts to domestic servants; It is an entrenched practice that keeps sub-Saharan Africa mired in generational poverty. We travel to Zambia to learn how the life of one girl in a remote village can shackle the future of an entire nation. We are in the Eastern Province where

child

marriage is the highest and we know a girl who is going to marry a 48 year old man, so "By meeting her in the last days of preparation, we will see how she feels and what happens by her head.

The practice of

child

marriage has been practiced for centuries. It is often a source of income for poor families who receive a payment for exchanging their daughters, but a recent economic crisis has engulfed much of Zambia. in poverty, meaning thousands more girls are at risk of being

married

off before the age of 18. The practice is technically illegal, but enforcement is rare. We are going down this path for a long time and it is very. Narrow, very hilly and in the middle of nowhere. After 8 hours of driving from the capital city of Laka, we finally arrived at the P district where the Inanga have been marrying young girls for generations before any can be celebrated. wedding, each bride has to complete a highly secret ritual known as chinam W. we are about to meet a young girl who has been spending the last 30 days in this cabin right behind me and is not allowed. speak and they do not allow her to leave this cabin and inside she is learning everything about how to be a wife and with my friend Sanga who is a journalist we are going to enter and she is going to help us meet the girl. and what happens in the cabin this is D her mother has accepted a cow from the groom in exchange for her daughter D she is 14 years old the first thing they teach a girl who is going to get married is to respect her husband because men are so particular about respect, it is very important in this tradition, that is why they would never allow a girl to marry or be taken with her husband before going through this process.

The women who perform the ritual are known as leny for this reason. Now you can go, she will show you where to hold them and how to hold them, this is how she holds a man whether you like it or not. I got a lesson of my own and then I start doing the waist like this. M uhhuh, right there you block your uhuh it feels like that. weird this feels so weird she's yeah and how do they think how's she doing she's ready she's ready with what have you been doing here at the cabin for the last 30 days so what do you expect your life to be like? teach you what you think about having a child or being pregnant what you did before 30 days did you like school when you get married are you going to continue with school how does it make you feel knowing that you are not going to go back to This at school made me very emotional.

They didn't teach him much about how to be happy. He was only taught how to make her husband happy and how to please him sexually and that is the most important thing, but in fact, as a result of this marriage, Dyas will face a whole series of much greater dangers. I just saw dles undergo an elaborate ritual before he could marry her new husband, but it was hearing D directly that affected me the most when I spoke to dyus and she told me she tells me how she loves school and she liked it. read. It's heartbreaking to know that the school is a 30°C walk from where she is.

What happens in Zambia in seventh grade is that many girls due to early marriage drop out of school to get married and now. Right now in this class there are four girls for every 12 boys, would you prefer to stay in school or get married? Although they would all rather stay in school than get married. Losing her education is one thing, but Dess faces a more immediate threat—statistically, she will. They are most likely to become pregnant early, and adolescent girls who are not physically mature are at much higher risk of complications during childbirth. We are going down this road and it is taking a long time and it is quite isolated from the main city and very, very bumpy.

We made the 2 1/2 hour drive to St Francis Mission, the closest medical center to D's Village, to find out what to expect if and when you go into labor, we will meet a doctor who will brief us on the patients. and what do they have to go through to get here if she's going to behave uh, continue drinking, continue with Bing, continue with the exercises, okay, so how worried would you be because she lives in a town near P? It's where there are no roads, there are a lot of potholes and how would you be worried about her if she is well advised and educated and listens to her advice?

She will be at the hospital before she goes into labor. If she doesn't, then she has a problem or she may have a problem because her pelvis is not there. still fit for childbirth she won't be able to give birth normally she needs a cesarean section if she is 40 minutes from uh from P then she may have a problem because she has to go to that hospital what do you think she is she? The most important thing the country needs right now Bo roads is more important than building new hospitals the problem is getting there has to do with the availability of objective care how can I get to a hospital where I can safely give birth Dr.

Jansen took us to meet one of his patients a young

woman

from a small remote town like d she is also from a very far away place about 6 seven hours by car and where is her baby? Her baby died. What do you expect to happen after you leave here? I wish you the best and hope you recover after seeing the patients here. It seems that they are the only lucky ones who come to this hospital, since it takes so much time and so much money to get to the hospital on time is not the only challenge that Dilas will face.

Zambia is in the midst of a devastating HIV AIDS epidemic and women are especially at risk. It is not uncommon here for married men who have extramarital affairs to contract HIV and then transmit it to their wives. In fact, Dessa's family has already been affected by the epidemic. Her father died from complications caused by AIDS and now her mother has also been diagnosed. When did you get sick? Is it because you're sick? That's why you got married so early so that your children are sick. Are you worried that, like some, God forbid? Something would happen and what would happen to D.

Are you concerned that many parents in this part of Zambia hope that marriage will protect their daughters from HIV AIDS by ensuring that they have only one sexual partner, but as D's mother has learned, that It's not a guarantee and what? What she can't know is whether D's new husband will become more of a threat than a savior. D's chinamwali ritual is coming to an end. It is now the night before her wedding and the whole town is celebrating that the bride is still inside the cabin that she is not allowed into. go out and all the men and women of the town are getting together, they're singing, it's all these festivities and on the other side they're cooking food, chicken and bread, and we're going to have this amazing party where everyone will enjoy it except the bride the bride just They will bring you food inside the cabin.

I sat down with TB Isaac, Dessa's husband, 48, to find out why he decided to marry a 14-year-old girl. The first thing I learned was that he is already married to someone else in many of these small towns male polygamy is an accepted practice, how long have you been married? 25 years then why are you getting married again? Tell me about D, how did you meet her or how did you see her? I know that in Zambia it is illegal to marry someone under 16, so why can't you just marry someone who is at least two years older than D?

That's D. she Now she's not in school. Do you think you can leave it? she goes to school because of the high levels of poverty in certain families, you found that girls maybe looked up to someone else to feel in the space and be able to buy them clothes and even simple things like cell phones and these kids then drop out of school. and they find themselves, you know, marrying older men according to the gender minister in condu. It is this cycle of poverty and lack of education that allows child marriage to persist. She believes the best way to eradicate child marriage is to attack it at the local level.

It is higher in the rural part of Zambia and the rural part of Zambia is governed by the traditional leaders the traditional leaders are campaigning by talking to the people in their chiefdoms using different methods popular theater and so on to tell parents not to marry their children to minister Louu and others in this fight it is very clear why child marriage must be eliminated. We are the people who make nations, so the healthier we are, as women, we will have healthier children and we will reduce infant mortality and also maternal mortality, so it is in our There is interest, no matter how you look at it, in that Child marriage must come to an end.

There is a group of women who have taken matters into their own hands working at the village level to educate men and women alike. We know we just have to moo and We're getting an incredible welcome from these beautiful women, they're saying we're moving forward, we're never going back and this is for women for change, moving forward for women for change, for women. women for change, the maso M are a collective of women who ride bicycles across the country spreading a message of female empowerment in an effort to end child marriage women for change women for change we are now touring the town and women misso women are talking about gender violence and early marriage why?

Do you think this program started here in the past there were many such cases here and it has really gone down? Do you feel different? Yes, if I say that I hit my wife today, these people come and Ales, are you married? Yes. I am friends with three, I have a boy and two girls, are they in school? Yes, would you consider marrying them to a married man? No, no, you get these women on bikes, fortunately these efforts are also gaining traction in the upper echelons of government anunga WIA is Zambia's first female vice president and a strong voice against child marriage.

You have made many efforts in the past to end child marriage. Why is it so important to you? We consider child marriage as one of the development factors. problems because we are losing girls 16,000 girls have dropped out of schools in Zambia in one year due to child marriage we want girls to be future leaders in their country to prosper but if they drop out of school it means the end of their future if you can put an end to it to child marriage in Zambia, what would that mean for the country? It would mean prosperity for the country because you can imagine 16,000 young people contributing to the economic growth of their country by participating in their careers and prospering. in those careers they definitely make a great contribution to the growth of the country the mandate to end child marriage is an idea that came from us Zambians we have realized what this means for the development of our country in the Eastern Province , it is time for 14 years old Dess to consummate her marriage with her 48 year old husband it is very dark and late at night and there is almost no ceremony, she was simply brought by a

woman

Alen Gizy and told that this is her house and that's all since we met dialis, she has given birth to a girl called a cleaner, who is as likely to marry as her mother, now that dialis is a married woman with a child, she is confined to a life strictly at home or In her village, although she would like to be, she is not in a classroom.

She will not contribute to the development of her country or reap any of its benefits. She dreams that one day she will return to school, but she knows that will be her husband's decision.