Girls Should Rise, not Fall!

On that fateful day that I discovered I was pregnant, my world came crashing. I had all kinds of hunting and silly thoughts running through my mind. I thought of how my classmates would look at me upon the discovery. I thought of how my siblings would feel when they hear that I was pregnant. I thought of how my poor parents would react to the devastating news. I need not emphasis the fact that poverty in itself partly led me into that mess. I was only a high school girl and all I needed to do was concentrate on my studies, but circumstances and ignorance played a fast one against me.

I was born and raised in a middle class home, but by the time I got into secondary school, my family plunged into the worse kind of poverty you can ever imagine. Feeding in our house at the time was an uphill task. Going to the farm became a daily affair. On several occasions, my siblings and I missed school because we had to go to the farm to either plant or harvest crops that aided in paying our school fees. Life was tough, but like they say "tough times don't last but tough people do."

I keep applauding my parents everyday because they didn't give up on our education. We were nine and we were all in school. I keep singing praises about my parents because even though they were so shocked and devastated about my pregnancy, they told me I did the best thing to not abort the baby. They wholeheartedly took my baby with them when he was only six months old and they sent me back to school. The opportunity they gave me made me take my studies as a challenge; I concentrated on my university education and graduated top of my class. Today, my parents are proud of me, not because I had a child, but because I proof our little society wrong. The very society that advised them not to send me back to school because I became pregnant.

Today, telling my story makes me cry because if I look back in the community that I grew in, my age-mates and classmates didn't make it this far. Many dropped out because their parents either did not have money to send them to school, or sacrifice to let them go to school, and in most cases, it was because they were women. If I look deep, I see my friends who dropped out because they became pregnant along the way and their parents stopped sending them to school. If I look back I see my age mates whom because of constant fee drive, they ended up leaving school, getting married early, getting pregnant early, and returned back to the farms that their parents have been toiling in. If I close my eyes and think deep, I remember friends who have died of HIV and other health complications because they didn't have the money and knowledge to take care of themselves. When I walk down the village, every time I visit, I cry for the teenagers I find pregnant and married along my way up and down the village. When I visit the lone Government Secondary School, I lament at the number of teenage pregnancies and girls drop out rate registered every year. My heart bleeds.

I am determined to change the paradigm. I want a world where girls will go to school and become great leaders. A world where girls will not only learn Chemistry, Literature, English language. I want a world world where girls will have the opportunity to learn sex education and leadership skills. It is for this reason, that my organization, Rescue Women - Cameroon has embarked on creating "Girls Lead Clubs" in the most Rural Secondary Schools in the country. We have launched in two schools this September, we will be moving on to different schools. When we launched in GSS Toko, the principal of the school appreciated our endeavor and told us that he registered 10 pregnancies and six crude abortions in his school last academic year -- a school that had less than 65 girls enrollment. He said the girls are naive, ignorant, poor and so they are easily brainwashed by the village boys who are also usually very poor.

Though we have been giving girls scholarship to remain and go back to school for the past three years, we thought it was enough. It is for this that we have embarked on creating these clubs that will give girls the opportunity to know more about their lives and strive for greatness.

Education is the key, I want all girls to get education. One step at a time, we will get there.