BY GETHSEMANE MWIZABI—

IMAGINE being six month pregnant at 10?
Well, the story of a 10-year-old girl with a six month pregnancy in Ndola’s Kaloko Township has shocked and broken many hearts.
Of course she will not go in the Guinness Book of records as the youngest female to fall pregnant.
The youngest case was in 2007 involving a five year –old Peruvian (South America) girl.
The Kaloko girl story is a total reflection of the state of Zambian children. For Zambia, she is a history maker, but it is a wrong history that has been imposed on her by a heartless soul.
Children are no longer safe in Zambia. Defilement has become a resident evil and if nothing is seriously done, thousands of Zambian children would have no childhood, and consequently would be deprived of a future.
True, deprivation is a characteristic of the lives of many of Zambia’s children, living in homes where relentless poverty is the norm, often in communities far from any services, denied education and in situations where the concept of rights and protection from exploitation is little known or understood.
For the little girl plenty of challenges: physical, psychological and social awaits her. Living in a place where people struggle to have three meals a day is definitely a sure challenge.
Kaloko, in Ndola’s Bwana Mkubwa Constituency is a settlement of some 15,000 people (a mixture children and adults).
Lots of people in the community survive by any means necessary. Several men and women work as security guards and maids respectively. Women in the impoverished community sell charcoal, vegetables, and sachets of mealie-meal, salt and so forth to barely make it to the next day.
When the community began to notice drastic physical changes to the girl, several people led by local councillor Vincent Mulenga approached the mother of the girl.
All along the mother had been mute thinking the child had just become fat. In her own words, she argued she never knew a thing until the child was taken for a scan at Ndola Central Hospital (NCH) and it was proved she was six months pregnant.
“I didn’t know my daughter was pregnant until she was taken for a scan.  I don’t even know who is responsible,” said 38-year-old Rosemary Tembo, who survives on selling small portions of charcoal in front of her mud house.
She believes someone within, probably close, in community defiled her daughter, who happens to have a mental disorder that causes her to wander around in within Kaloko.
Due to her mental condition, she has never stepped a foot in a classroom.  The mother never bothered to take her to the hospital but opted to take her for prayers, believing her mental condition was as a result of demonic influence. Her twin sister is in Grade three and has had a normal growth compared to her.
Ms Tembo is a single mother. Her husband deserted her several years ago leaving her to raise the children without any means. To this point, she does not know his whereabouts.
The face of poverty evident at her home: piles of old clothes, used-up plates and pots and so forth.
The girl happens to be a twin, but unlike her twin sister, she attained puberty as early as three years.
Her secondary sexual characteristics were experienced earlier than her twin sister which began to show at three stunned her mother and the community at large.
Secondary sexual characteristics include development of breasts and pubic hair.
By the time she was seven, she had her first menstrual period. In short, she attained menarche at seven.
Ironically, Ms Tembo is a mother of four, had her first child when she was 14.
According to Dr Sebastian Chinkoyo consultant Obstetrician-Gynecologist and head of Clinical Care at Ndola Centre Hospital it is possible for a child of 10 years to fall pregnant as long she has attained menarche.
Menarche is the first menstrual cycle, or first menstrual bleeding, in female humans. From both social and medical perspectives, it is often considered the central event of female puberty, as it signals the possibility of fertility.
Girls experience menarche at different ages.
The timing of menarche is influenced by female biology, as well as genetic and environmental factors, especially nutritional factors. The world-wide average age of menarche is very difficult to estimate accurately, and it varies significantly by geographical region, race, ethnicity and other characteristics. Various estimates have placed it at 13.
“The fact that she is pregnant at 10 does not mean she is physically and psychologically ready,” he said.
The doctor said the girl would need lots of support from the community and stakeholders for her to endure the pregnancy.
“She will no doubt, have to deliver through caesarean because her pelvic has not fully developed to allow the baby to pass through,” Dr   Chinkoyo said.
True, plenty of challenges await the little girl.
Children her age have a significantly higher risk of serious medical complications related to pregnancy than those over 20. Children born to teenage mothers are more likely to deliver prematurely, have a low birth weight, develop placenta previa, experience pregnancy-induced hypertension, and contract toxemia.
Now, the girl is half the age of 20, and it can only be imagined what awaits her.
Some risk factors connected to young age include: Under developed pelvis (Young women’s bodies are still growing and changing. An under-developed pelvis can lead to difficulties during childbirth), Nutritional deficiencies (Nutritional deficiency can lead to extra strain on the body that causes more complications for both the mother and child), and High blood pressure (High blood pressure can trigger premature labor, which can lead to premature and/or underweight babies who require specialised care to survive).
Thus, the Kaloko girls’ needs every support she can get.
It is good that the Ministry of Gender through the Child Protection Committee has finally come to her aid.
The committee is working out modalities of how to assist the girl especially that the person who defiled her who is not known.
Media Network on Child Rights and Development (MNCRD) executive director Henry Kabwe said the ugly face of defilement has and ripping family structures apart.
“In rural areas, young girls are being married off upon being impregnated as punishment to the man after charging him money,” he said.
The practice not only goes against the established legal processes where people who sleep with under-age girls should be prosecuted for defilement but deprives the girls of the developmental stages they should go through before being mature enough for marriage.
In Zambia, domestication of human rights treaties needs to be strengthened. Resources allocated to child protection are inadequate and there is insufficient reliable data to inform programming.
According to UNICEF, there is a lack of integrated family support services which increases the vulnerability of children. Though the frame-work for service delivery exists, coverage and quality are limited.
Further, the effects of the global economic crisis may threaten child survival and development, entrench chronic poverty, and create long-term harm for the poorest.
Vulnerable households include children living with non-traditional heads of households, such as grand-parents or children themselves. As these are groups that are dependants, not providers, such households are often incapable of generating adequate income or providing the care or protection that mothers and fathers traditionally provide.
In addition, many more households are headed by mothers and fathers who are also vulnerable due to high levels of domestic violence, unemployment, and substance abuse.
In a pregnant girl‘s case, she lives with a struggling single mother who has to scrounge for food, in a community where Kachasu brewing and alcoholism are every day affairs.
Child rights activist Prisca Sikana said no child should be deprived of their childhood no matter what.
True, the revelation of the abuse of the girl through the pregnancy also shows this young girl could have been constantly been sexually abused.
Zambian children are vulnerable to an extent that their abusers do not even consider their age and state of mind.
There is need for Zambia to raise and take action in order to give its children a life and future they deserve.
Nowadays, it is a big achievement to raise a girl child in Zambia. The girl child has become prey to all sorts of evil and abuse.
Just last year, the Zambian Parliament heard that between 2010 and 2013 over 6,000 girls were defiled.
Just in the quarter of 2014, The University Teaching Hospital (UTH) recorded four hundred and twelve (412) cases of defilement from January to April.
Defilement has indeed become endemic in a country where 80 per cent of the population professes to be Christian.
“We call upon the Government and other stakeholders to enhance existing measures of protecting young girls which have proven to have failed us. If the existing measures were working, definitely we would have been witnessing a decrease in these gruesome acts,” she said.
There is need to step up action.
When children come into contact with the law, either as perpetrators or victims, the existing laws and judicial systems are largely inadequate to protect child witnesses and victims of gender based violence (GBV), or give a fair trial to children in contact with the law.
In line with the passage of the GBV Bill, awareness-raising to high-light this issue is needed. Communities, including those most at risk, need to build resilience, working together to reduce the incidence of violence.
In response to incidents of violence, social workers, health workers and police officers need information and training about how children should be handled, their rights as victims/accused persons, and the services and resources available to them.
Non-Governmental Organisations’ Coordinating Council (NGOCC) chairperson Beatrice Grillo is sad that despite Zambia being declared a Christian Nation over two decades ago, moral levels have plummeted to their all time low, make the country unsafe for children and women.
True, defilement has become a resident evil; it is a reflection of the country’s moral thermometer Zambia is no longer safe for children and later on women.
A potential defiler could be anyone: a next door neighbour, a stranger, a blood relative and even a father. Stories of fathers, grand-parents, uncles, cousins, nephews defiling children have become so common in society.
Gone are the days when children were left in the care of male relatives or friends without having the fear of them being harmed.
“If little girls are in the television room with a male, one has to always wake-up to check if children were safe,” said Ms Grillo
Out of control sexual feelings resulting from increased testosterone levels among men who take sex boosters and later on pounce on children is indeed a major source of concern.
Northmead Assembly of God church bishop, Joshua Banda, who is also National AIDS Council (NAC) chairperson Joshua Banda, argues that without Zambia’s declaration as a Christian Nation, evil and immorality could have been even worse.
“It could have been worse. As a church we condemn every form of evil against children,” he said.
Ultimately, Society should return to its role of being a keeper for all children.
If everyone was looking out for children within their community, defilement and other evil acts could be avoided. Even the abusers would know that someone is watching.
It is sad that girls can be removed from school to work, while parents spend more time away working longer hours and searching for better jobs.
Some Children are left alone and unprotected. Others are even forced into prostitution to help support their families or themselves if they are living on the street.
Many of Zambia’s children need protection from the risk and harm that threatens their rights and well-being.
Exposure to poverty and deprivation is wide-spread, whilst many children are also exposed to violence, abuse and exploitation.
As for the 10 year old Kaloko girl, she does not need to be stigmatised by the community. If anything, she needs lots of support from them alongside the larger public at large.
It can only be hopped that the man or boy is responsible for her condition would be smoked out of the hole as soon as possible for justice to take its rightful course.