The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
HIDING themselves from the scorching sun in Beitbridge District under a zinc shed at Mtetengwe Business Centre, 25 young girls between the ages of 14 and 24 patiently wait for their mentor to arrive and deliver the lesson for the day.
Some of the girls can be seen breastfeeding, despite the fact that they should be in class. They dropped out due to unintended early pregnancies which saw them becoming wives and mothers.
The mentor, Ms Christine Moyo (49) is a villager from Ward Six who for the past 11 years has been mentoring young girls under the Sista2Sista programme and raising awareness about HIV and Aids as well as teenage pregnancies. Ms Moyo took an interest in the Sista2Sista programme in 2012 after noticing moral decay in the community as girls were falling pregnant at a very young age, infected with HIV and dumped by the fathers of the children.
“There was a lot of child sexual abuse in this community with pregnancies of young girls reported and parents were not noticing that it was wrong. Most children in this district, after completing Grade Seven, were crossing the border to South Africa as sometimes school fees was an issue, so they were going to find jobs there. However, some were falling pregnant at that tender age and even getting HIV infections and I attributed this to lack of knowledge as they stopped attending school at an early age,” said Ms Moyo.
Ms Moyo said that inspired her to take the challenge when there was a call for Sista2Sista mentors as she did not want the Mtetengwe community to lag behind in terms of HIV information and education.
“The girl child suffers a lot in this instance, even those that go to secondary school and do not have these essential life lessons, they too can fall into a trap and have unwanted pregnancies and HIV. So, I found it important that I take this role and mentor the young girls,” she said.
However, when she started teaching the girls about condom use in particular, she got a backlash from the community.
“When we started, I had several challenges as parents could not accept that the girls needed to learn about these issues around having protected sex, abstinence and contraceptives. But as time went on, they started to see the fruits of the programme and they have fully accepted that we teach them well. I have also started talking to the parents on some occasions so that they too understand the lessons their children will be learning here,” she said.
She said that had assisted in ensuring the girls and parents were on the same page in understanding issues around HIV and teenage pregnancies, saying the parents now encourage their children to attend the lessons religiously as there were changes in the community.
“There are many changes so far, when the programme was initiated, many people were being infected and dying from HIV due to lack of knowledge. When we enroll the girls, we do an HIV test for all of them, then those that are found positive are initiated on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) while the negative ones are encouraged to maintain that status. Upon completion of the 40 weeks, we retest them again to evaluate the lessons we are giving them. Our rates are declining and people are no longer dying from the virus than before. People can now protect themselves and those that are positive know how to protect others and not spread the virus,” she added.
Owing to the HIV interventions in the district initiated by National Aids Council (NAC) and their partners, there is a huge turnaround in behaviour change. Mr Mlaudzi, the NAC District Aids Coordinator for Beitbridge said the Sista2Sista clubs build social awareness, increase social aptitudes, and increase sexual knowledge and functional knowledge for the young girls.
“They have a manual that they use with their mentors where there are 40 sessions that they go through. There are various lessons that they take and this helps them to gain a better understanding of HIV, teenage pregnancies, and how to protect themselves. This has been working well and we are glad there is a change in how they view HIV now than before. This prevents them from venturing into sex work where they interact with truck drivers or omalayitsha and get infected with HIV,” he said.
Some of the beneficiaries of the programme said before they joined the club, they were unaware of the dangers of unprotected sex such as HIV infection, Sexually Transmitted Infections, and unwanted pregnancies. @NyembeziMu
