By GETHSEMANE MWIZABI –

JUST a short distance away from Ndola’s Central Business District, is the sprawling Mackenzie shanty Township.
The locals call it Kwa Makense. It is one of  the Copperbelt’s oldest slums with plenty of tales. It is surrounded by the affluent Itawa community and Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport in the north,  and  Ndeke residential area in the east.
If you have been there lately, you would be struck by the sight of  seemingly young girls carrying babies on their backs, milling around some tiny muddy ram shackles.
At first, one  might think  that babies being carried by these tenage girls, are their siblings. But soon afterwards, you will discover that these are actually real mothers to those babies.
Mackenzie is really a place of teen mothers some as youing as 14 years old.
Like any other impoverished community Makenzie with a population of not less than  five thousand people,  is a host of its own struggles among which is the high number child mothers. Teen moms are very common in Mackenzie.

• BEING a teenage mother is usually a challenge.

Most  teen moms are married while, some are single with many others divorced.
“I am married with two children. I dropped out of school in grade seven and went out with a boy who locked me in a room for three days,” said 17 year old Charity Mumba.
Before she got married, she used to live with her mother, who still survives by anything possible.
After missing from home, her mother forced her to live with the garden boy with whom she now has two children.
Her experience with two pregnancies does not leave any good memories with it.
Even though she has managed to have two children, her body was not fully prepared for the task of motherhood.
It is a proven medical fact that adolescent girls are more likely to die during pregnancy and delivery, because of their physical immaturity.Their babies are more likely to be exposed to the risk of death and serious illness due to being underweight or suffering from anaemia before the age of five.
Charity’s experience with labour put her on a knife edge.
“I lost a lot of blood and I was running out of breath during labour. I wouldn’t advise any teenager below 16 years to get pregnant but this  is happening in our community,” she said.
She used to and still walks to Masala clinic, some seven killometres way from her community to access sexual reproductive health services.
Together with her husband, they plan to have four children, but they can barely support the two they already have.
“I am on injection. Every three months I get an injection on my shoulder to avoid getting pregnant,” she said.
Her first born child is six years while her last born is two years.  Like every mother in the impoverished community, she complains of lack of sexual reproductive health facilities (SRH) in the area.­
True, in Macknzie, no one talks about reproductive health neither are there people who are adequately involved in teaching teenagers on the risks of pre-marital sex.
Most children learn about sex from the wrong sources and forums.
Joseph Mutale, a social worker who has lived in the community for i4 years blames it on the lack of recreation and proper fatherhood which is  a huge contributing factor to teenage pregnancies.
He complains that most teenagers are sexually active because of poverty, lack of recreation and alcohol among vices.
In Mackanzie, if one is not a security guard, then he is either a garden boy or just a street kid.
On the part of girls, if one is not a maid then she is a hawker, moving from door to door selling groundnuts or  vegetables with a huge basket on her head all day long.
“We live in the sidelines of the huge community of Ndola. It’s a subculture constantly bombarded with alcohol as the only escape to the daily troubles,” said Mr Mutale who plans to stand as councillor of the area someday.
There are four major taverns that have no specific closing hours in Mackenzie.  People, young and old, start drinking as early as 06 hours.
Every day, four Lorries carrying alcohol at different times, snakes through the narrow paths of Mackenzie to offload several litres into tavern drums.
Mackenzie is a prototype of other poor communities in Zambia.
The growth of slums which  are characterised with overcrowding, social and economic marginalisation, poor environmental conditions, insecurity and little or no basic social services, has been linked to appreciable deterioration of key urban health. As the case is with Mackenzie,   the new face of urban poverty is linked to adverse SRH outcomes for the urban poor such as high rates of unwanted pregnancies, higher fertility, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and poor maternal and child health outcomes.
There is no doubt that adolescent mothers often lack knowledge, education, experience, income and power relative to older mothers.
Information about the signs of complications should be disseminated widely to pregnant adolescents and the community at large, so that everyone knows when a situation becomes an emergency and what to do with it.
Adolescent mothers’ access to education, livelihood skills and information about how to prevent further pregnancies and their ability to deal with domestic violence should be improved.
“I got pregnant at 14 years old.  When I realised I was pregnant, I was so ashamed that I could not tell anyone or even ask for help,” said 16 year old Beauty Kunda who is now 16 years old and married with a two year old son.
She was so ashamed because she had so many dreams and that cut through her soul.
At school, she became an object of ridicule. Some pupils advised her to abort, but her parents warned her against the idea. She, however did not get enough support and counselling from them.
Alot  of people see teen moms as a burden and a bad influence to other girls. Many teen moms like Beauty  for example, are lonely and sometimes men try to take advantage of them.
“I dropped out school and got married to the father of my child. At the moment my husband and I are living under the roof of my grandmother,” She said.
Her struggle has continued even after giving birth. She blames her poor decision making to sheer peer-pressure.
“I want to go back to school but I feel trapped in a marriage. I have no means to go to school,” she said.
Like, Charity, she is on injection as a mode of family planning precaution.
At first she used to take pills but changed to an injection. She complained about the side effects of the birth control means, like headaches, lack of appetite, growing fat, and causes of infections.
She points out that going to a good health practitioner is important, but said there is no such access in her community; some of her friends feel lazy to access SRH outside the community.
Recently, Panos Institute of Southern Africa (PSAf) Regional Programme Manager for Health and Development Mamoletsane Khati said recently that, child marriage is a stumbling block to the realisation of the vision of a Southern African community that drives its own development agenda.
Child marriage is a direct form of discrimination against the child, who, as a result of the practice, is often deprived of basic rights to health, education, development and equality.
Finally, the significant role of poverty in the adverse SRH outcomes of the urban poor cannot be overlooked in policies and programmes. For Charity, Beauty and the rest, they remain stuck unless something extraordinary happens to their present circumstances.
“I have not had sex since giving birth to my two year old son.  I got pregnant during a one night stand, after the father of my son took advantage of me,” says 16 year old Rose Zulu.
Two years ago, on Independence Day eve, she went to celebrate with friends when they were chased by some boys. While others managed to run to safety, she was grabbed by one the boys who later pulled her into one of the rooms where everything happened.
“I never told my parents that part of the story because I was afraid that he was going to be jailed. All they know is that I got pregnant,” she said.
Rose is not married to the father of her son.
Ultimately, as Mr Mutale would argue, SRH of the urban poor needs to be looked at both from a development perspective, as well as from a health sector and service delivery scenario.
Without doubt, the need for multipronged approaches that include behavioural change, job and wealth creation remains essential to addressing the SRH needs of the urban poor.