Girls in Nandi struggle to survive early marriages, motherhood

Men have been dominating the tea sub sector as tea pickers in the tea plantation under multinational companies in Nandi.

Traditionally, male employees painstakingly carried on their backs baskets of green leaves and hauled tea machines in the vast green belt in the Eastern Nandi.

But for a span of a decade, women have more than doubled in the tea labour industry, many apparently defiant to the cultural setup which confined them in the houses as wives.

What made women venture into the men's ruling industry? They are pushed by social challenges shrouded by teenage pregnancies, sexual abuse, poverty, and marriage breakups, and the women resolve to go out of their way to raise their families single-handedly.

Caroline (not her real name) is a solitary breadwinner of her family. She was born at Kisoiywa slums 23 years ago and early pregnancy graduated her to motherhood at tender age, and her education dreams slipped away.

“I dropped out of school in class seven in 2018 to take care of my son. It was a new chapter of my life, just from school and shouldered parental endurance that came with responsibilities,” she narrated.

She broke up with the father of her seven years old son. He deserted her with the child the moment when Caroline said that she needed support after falling out with her parents.

Caroline, being the firstborn of a family of six, her parents could not afford to provide for her anymore, and she was forced to relocate to her rental room at the outskirts of Nandi Hills town.

“I got employed in one of the multinational tea companies as a tea picker, though it was unpopular for women to engage in responsibilities designated for men because of the nature of the work. I had to learn to harvest tea leaves using machines,” she stated.

For Chemutai, her adolescence development shaped her physique thus she became a target of every man in the estate. Not only her light skin and beauty made her vulnerable rather than the money and goodies that was thrown into her way, she found it irresistible to decline.

When the coronavirus struck and the government issued measures to curb the outbreak of the deadly disease in 2021, Cherono, 24, said that she assisted her mother in the tea estate, and it was the end of the road in her education.

“I got married to a man older than me by 14 years. We used to meet in the estate whenever I accompanied my mother, and he used to buy me snacks and presents, little did I know that I had fallen in love with him,” said Cherono, claiming that pregnancy forced them to move into marriage.

Her dream of becoming a nurse was lost in the tea plantation. Though she is happy in her marriage despite ups and downs, Cherono is content working in a tea plantation with her husband.

According to the 2020 and 2022 county health reports, over 9,000 girls between the ages of 16 and 20 were impregnated during the two years of the Coronavirus. Half of the cases were reported at the tea growing zones in Eastern and Southern parts of Nandi.

The cultural norms, traditions an poverty are among the stumbling block in the fight against defilement and rape cases in the community, and thus criminals have ended up being husbands to the teenage girls or deadbeat fathers, abandoning young mothers with the children.

For Marlene Chepkemboi, a mother of one, she is struggling to make ends meet and provide for her son after parting ways with her husband back in 2023.

“When I got pregnant, my parents forced me into marriage, but it couldn’t work out since I was from school and not ready to settle with my boyfriend for marriage. I wanted to pursue my tertiary education,” she recounted.

Chepkemboi, who is a student in one of the Technical and vocational Training institutions, juggles between schooling and parenting, a situation she claimed that she never imagined she could find herself in.

Chairperson for Maendeleo ya wanawake Nandi caucus, Sarah Koskey, said that teenage pregnancies and early marriages are still rampant in the region, though they are not reported, and instead, the family resorts to community kangaroo courts for elders to resolve cases among the victims and the involved families.

“I am also a victim of early marriage and I have witnessed many girls subjected to social issues including sexual abuse, defilement and rape, but the affected victims and their families get compromise and they do not take legal action against the perpetrators,” she stated.

Mrs Koskey claimed that the tea estates are the marked zones leading with young mothers that need social and economic support to overcome psychological challenges.