Theresa Kachindamoto is a hero unlike any you have heard about.
She is an heir of village chiefs in the Monkey Bay area of Malawi. She is also the youngest of 12 children. She spent 27 years working as a secretary at a city college before becoming senior chief of her village. Once in a position of power, she went about her mission of ending child marriage.
Kachindamoto did not expect to become chief of her village since she lived in another town and was busy caring for her five children. Her popularity and reputation superseded all these things and her people chose her as chief anyway. The job was hers rather she liked it or not, she explains.
The Child Marriage
While child marriage is a culturally accepted practice in the area and often the result of financial need, it’s also illegal as of 2015, though that did not put a stop to the practice since children could still be married with parental consent.
But Kachindamoto decided that she would no longer stand for a tradition that robbed young girls of their childhoods by turning them into wives and mothers long before they were 18.
Kachindamoto was determined to stop the tradition due to a feeling that it robbed underage girls of their childhoods. Her heart was broken upon visiting the Monkey Bay area she would govern only to meet girls as young as 12 with husbands and children.
While chief of the community of 900,000, Kachindamoto annulled 850 marriages involving underage girls. She was also able to send each of the girls she rescued from child marriages to school.
There are organizations present to counsel families in Malawi regarding marriage and childbirth among adolescent girls.
However, many families are unable to properly care for their daughters and think it better to marry them off.
Malawi has a higher poverty rate than most world communities and more than half of female children in the country are married before the age of 18.
Many pregnancies of young brides in Malawi have had complications due to the mother’s young age.
Another sad reality in the country takes place at the Kumasi Fumbi camps. At these camps, girls aged 7 and under are trained to provide sexual pleasure to men.
Many parents protested her actions but Kachindamoto did not back down. she knew she could never make them change their mind but she could change the law. She was able to persuade the 50 police chiefs working under her to abolish child marriages and annul on-site marriages.
Kachindamoto has received both insults and de*th threats for her work. And there are still girls who end their marriages before reaching adulthood. But Kachindamoto is at work and she wants the opposition to know she’s at the top until she d.i.e.s.
Source:apost.com,strategistsworld.com
