Years of Apartheid devastated family structure on the farms and villages. Single parenthood became a norm. The African family was formed by a young man paying dowry in the form of cattle to the bride’s family. After the wars with the colonialists, all the land the people owned was taken away from them and given to the colonialists as farms. The Africans were portioned out to the farmers as free labor.
Their cattle were taken and they were severely limited on how many cows they could own on a farm. When young men no more had cattle to pay dowry, this led to extramarital sex and the advent of the single parent family. Families that were already formed were broken up by the migrant labor system.
Men had to go and work on the mines or distant farms and their wives were not allowed to accompany them. Circumstances led to the men creating single-parent families as they migrated for work.
While we educate both boys and girls regarding the risks of teenage pregnancy, at this stage we can only afford to send girls to boarding school as they are more vulnerable, and carry the burden of the pregnancy and the baby.
The teen pregnancy rate is pretty high in this village. Girls have nothing to look forward to except to have children. Now, after the demise of Apartheid, the effects still remain. Teenage pregnancy and its resultant poverty and suffering remain intergenerational.
To try and break this cycle, we took some children downtown to be addressed by professional people, and for them to see what intact and progressive families look like.
The three professionals who came to speak to them happened to be engineers. After this experience, every child wanted to be an engineer! They were beginning to see the light.
Whereas every boy wanted to be a soldier or a policeman, and every girl looking forward to being a mother, now they found out that there is another world out there.
One of the engineers happened to be a woman. The girls also want to be engineers now.
While total immersion is the best way to learn a language, we believe that total extrication is the best way to get someone out of the negative and self- defeating aspects of his/her culture.
We selected three promising girls and sent them far away to a parochial school to see a different way of life and be immersed in it. The results are so encouraging that we want to send more girls and effect change in this severely affected village.
We hopefully will be funded well enough in the near future so that we may send boys also. The immediate problem right now is that girls get pregnant and boys do not, and the girls are left “holding the baby”.
We are lighting a candle, and we are asking you to help us light more candles.
