Life on the Line

Thousands of young girls across Africa are forced to forfeit their own lives for the survival of their families. Claire Butler met one young woman whose life was hanging in the balance.

For 16-year-old Rachel,* life in Malawi, Africa, was not about choice or opportunity. Rather, it has been one of survival and duty pressed on her by the circumstances of her birth and society. But then the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) began working with her community.

Rachel lives in the rural Ntcheu district. Her home is a one-room mud hut, shared with her mother, grandmother and four younger siblings. Rachel’s mother is HIV-positive and, because they do not have access to the district hospital, she is sicker than need be because she is not on antiretroviral drugs. This means Rachel has had to leave high school and stay at home to care for her family, doing household chores, such as preparing meals, washing and fetching water.

Realising the desperate situation her family was in, Rachel’s mother arranged for her to marry a 40-year-old man. In the matriarchal structure of Rachel’s culture, a husband comes to live with the wife’s family on marriage and brings a gift of money or cattle to her parents. The extra help and wealth a much older husband would bring seemed the only solution for the family’s survival. However, Rachel’s future with such a man would not be certain.

Her chance of contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases would greatly increase as they assumed it was likely a man of this age, in their area, would have had a number of sexual partners. At the very least, marriage for Rachel would spell the certain end of her education and any opportunity for her to gain independence or means of supporting herself.

Rachel’s village is part of ADRA–Australia’s Southern Africa Food Security and AIDS Response Initiative, which assists households in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia with health and food security issues, while also recognising the compounding impact HIV and AIDS is having on communities in Africa. As part of this project, ADRA helps facilitate the formation of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs). CBOs have a broad representation of community members and provide, among other things, forums for identifying community needs and ways of meeting them.

When the leaders of her village CBO heard of the plan for Rachel to marry, they intervened. With assistance from ADRA staff, they applied to the Department of Social Welfare for a bursary to pay Rachel’s school fees. While Rachel is at school, the CBO has coordinated a plan for other villagers to share the responsibility of looking after Rachel’s family and help with household chores. ADRA and the CBO have also arranged to have Rachel’s mother transported to hospital for antiretroviral drugs so that her rapid deterioration can be treated.

The support of ADRA has meant Rachel’s life has been turned around, and her future protected. Her second chance at an education will give her the opportunity to choose where she takes her life, allow her to get a job, and improve both her family’s fortune and her own.

*Name has been changed to protect privacy.