As Kenya Keeps Schools Shut, Teen Pregnancies Are Rising

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In Nairobi’s Kibera slum in April, Nancy Andeka, 45, teaches her and her neighbor’s children at home as schools are closed due to the coronavirus.

Brian Inganga/AP

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Brian Inganga/AP

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Children run down a street past an informational mural warning people about the dangers of the coronavirus in the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, June 3.

Brian Inganga/AP

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Brian Inganga/AP

Children run down a street past an informational mural warning people about the dangers of the coronavirus in the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, June 3.

Brian Inganga/AP

«Children alive at home»

Kenyan children have been out of school since March. But even as the coronavirus surges in the country, the government opened up hotels and restaurants and, beginning in August, Kenya will open up its international airspace. So there was hope that children could go back to school in September.

But on Tuesday, the government said schools are in no position to reopen, because many of them have more than 100 children per class.

At the announcement, government officials were flanked by teachers, who agreed with the plan.

«With children crowding, it will be impossible to think of opening schools,» Akello Misori, a leader for a big teachers’ union, said.

But Damaris Parsitau, an education scholar at Kenya’s Egerton University, says she is «conflicted» about the government decision. On the one hand, keeping kids out of school for that long will undoubtedly result in learning loss and will further marginalize vulnerable children. On the other hand, schools in Kenya are in a «horrible state,» she says, and there is no way to guarantee students’ safety.

«I would rather have children alive at home,» she says, «than go to school and risk getting infected and dying and taking it back to their families.»

All of this makes her angry, she says, because it points to a government that has failed to build more schools, hire more teachers and prioritize education.

«All this to me goes back to corruption and the fact that the government has never really taken it seriously to invest in educational infrastructure,» she says.

Underage sex

Back in Kibera, Jackline Bosibori, 17, has been spending almost all her days in a tiny room. It has a dirt floor and the walls and roof are made of corrugated metal.

Bosibori was going to a boarding school but like all Kenyan students, she was sent home in March.

«I was just idling here,» she says. «I didn’t have anything to do. Sometimes, I was just here reading alone. I don’t have anyone to be with … so I decided to just be at my boyfriend’s place.»

In late March, she found out she was pregnant. Her boyfriend is 21 and has stopped communicating with her. In Kenya, anyone under 18 cannot legally consent, so Bosibori was raped.

Her mom Annah Nyamoko, 35, can’t contain her tears when she talks about her daughter.

Nyamoko has six other daughters. She says her husband left her because they never had a son. She works sifting through trash to find recyclables, earning about $15 a week. But somehow she had always cobbled together enough money to pay her 17-year-old’s school fees.

The dream was that Bosibori would go to college, become a lawyer because she loves a good argument, and then help the family out of poverty.

«I’m feeling very bad,» her mom says. «I don’t know what I can do now.»

Bosibori says she wants to give birth and go back to school.

«If you don’t have [a high school diploma] here in Kenya, there is no work for you,» Bosibori says.

But a 2015 survey of out-of-school teenage girls in Kenya found that as few as 10% ever return to school.

Bosibori doesn’t even want to think about that possibility, but huge questions hang over her: Who will watch her baby if she goes to school? Can her mom feed her siblings if she can’t work because she has to care for the baby? How does she pay for school fees? Will she be shunned? As it is now, she says people on the streets already stigmatize her, telling her she’s a disappointment.

«If I can’t go back to school,» she says, «I know my life would be miserable.»

• Coronavirus in Africa
• coronavirus pandemic
• COVID-19
• Kenya