WOMENAID µ INTERNATIONAL |
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GHANA'S PREGNANT STREET GIRLS FIND REFUGE Victoria was 15 years old, anaemic, exhausted and eight months pregnant when social workers found her sleeping in a rubbish heap behind the market in Accra. Like many of the 10,000 children - including 4,000 girls - living on the streets of Ghana's capital, Victoria had come to the city from a poor village, hoping to earn some money and eventually to return home. When she arrived in Accra, she found work selling bags of ice water in the market-place by day. But at night, she needed protection. So, like other girls in her situation, she acquired a male 'minder'. In exchange for sex, the girl got some security and a little extra food. But before long, she was pregnant, and her minder had moved on. This form of sexual exploitation makes girls like Victoria particularly vulnerable to pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Once pregnant or with a baby to care for, the girls often find that few people will hire them. As a result, many end up in desperate conditions. "What do you do with a 16-year-old girl living on the street who has a baby?" asks Father Patrick Shanahan, who chairs the Mamobi Refuge for girls living on the streets of Accra and has worked with such children for 10 years. "As a child caring for another child, she's at the lowest rung of the economic ladder." The Mamobi Refuge was set up in 1994 by Response, an umbrella NGO for children who live and work on the street. Run by Vida Asomaning, who helped conduct studies showing the need for a girls' refuge, Mamobi has provided food, a home-like environment, counselling and skills training to 140 girls. Recently, the refuge began its own NGO under the name of Street Girls Aid. It receives financial support from UNICEF, which has contributed $50,000 for 1996. Victoria was able to pull herself up a rung or two when she found Mamobi with the help of social workers who befriended her on the street. At the refuge, the girl spilled out her problems to a sympathetic staff member who helped her make plans for the future. Victoria shared the refuge with 11 pregnant girls and young mothers. Most girls remain for three months - one month before birth and two months after. Their long stay gives them an added bonus: they get the rare chance to socialise. The girls play games together, cook communal meals and care for one another's babies. For a while at least, they get the sense that they are not alone. "Without us, street girls give birth on the street, in a rubbish heap or a public lavatory, alone and in pain," says Father Shanahan. "They've had no ante natal care. Some don't even realise they're pregnant until they give birth. The other day, one of the girls was told she could terminate her pregnancy by eating ground glass, so she did, and now she's dead." After a month at Mamobi, Victoria gave birth to a healthy boy, delivered at the maternal and reproductive health clinic next door run by the NGO Urban Aid. The UNICEF-assisted clinic works closely with the refuge, providing pregnant girls with free family planning and AIDS counselling, health care before and after birth, and immunisations and check-ups for their babies. For two months after giving birth, Victoria and her baby stayed at Mamobi until the baby was feeding properly and had been fully immunised. The two of them then returned to her village, where they are staying with relatives. Not all young mothers choose to keep their babies. Some put them up for adoption; 60 per cent leave them with families in their villages. Staff at Mamobi leave the decision entirely up to the mothers. But for the staff, letting the girls make their own decisions is sometimes difficult. "At first we thought the answer to their problems lay in sending them back to their villages," Father Shanahan says. "We forgot that they were street children who had traded family security for independence and self-determination. Having a baby doesn't necessarily make them want to change that." One of the biggest problems girls face is not being able to support themselves. As a result, many turn to prostitution. "We are starting to see youngsters as young as 11 years old selling themselves on the street," says Ms. Asomaning. Some minders 'lend' their young charges out to clients as if they were prostitutes. Such was the case of Kakra, a 12 year-old girl from a town in the north of Ghana who ended up sleeping at the Central Railway Station, where she got a minder. "In a few weeks I became 30," she says. "My minder lent me out to older men. Some of these men were from my own people - they spoke my language. I thought I'd rather die." Kakbra did not get pregnant. She was, however, taken in by the Mamobi Refuge, which helped her find a foster family. She has also started attending school, an unfamiliar experience for many of the girls, 80 per cent of whom cannot read or write. To help children like Kakra, who want to go to school to learn a trade, Street Girls Aid and Catholic Action for Street Children, another NGO, offer boys and girls up to three years of scholarships for their education or vocational training. Victoria, meanwhile, is trying to find work selling ice water in her village. Off the streets for now, she might not have escaped them for good. The refuge staff cannot change the fact that as an unskilled, uneducated teenage mother, she faces a very tough road. Emma
Brooker is a London-based freelance journalist who recently travelled to
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