I want education not marriage - Pupil

At first sight, 12-year old Seraphine Konsebe Laisso looks timid and frail in speech. But when she utters her laconic words, it portrays the ideological audacity of a child, who is determined to have a bright future.

She is filled with the ambition to rise through her educational career right to the University against all odds. She seems to have the spirit of an academic go-getter.

Konsebe Laisso towers above her classmates in Class six at the Government Primary School Doukoula in Kar-Hay sub Division, Mayo Danay Division of the Far North Region. The little girl is one of those who are breaking the myth in an area where the education of the girl child was hitherto not an issue.

Doukoula and other areas of the local Toupouri tribe make up the citadel of teenage marriages. Parents here simply sell off their girl children into early marriages, one observer remarked.

“If my parents want me to get married now, I will reject it. I want to have education right up to the university level,” Konsebe Laisso, told some journalists who visited her school recently. Though timid, her little voice was laced with an emotional quiver as she made the statement.

She said she is determined to avoid the unenviable plight of her elder sisters who did not go to school and were married off at very tender ages. “I want to study and pick up a career in the medical field,” Konsebe Laisso said.

As the best pupil in her class, the little girl said she has the feeling that some boys are jealous of her. “They threw slangs at me whenever I am answering questions in class,” she complains.

According to the Sub Divisional Inspector of Primary and Nursery Education for Kar-Hay, Konsebe Laisso is just the harbinger of the revolution that the girl child education is seething in the area. “In many classes of the 44 primary schools in this area, there are more girls than boys”, Domroua Mandre stated. “We have been sensitising parents here to understand that the best thing they can give their girl children is good education, not husbands".

The sensitisation campaign coupled with other strategies supported by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, UNICEF and the Japanese Government are paying off.

Parents here now have started sending their girl children to school instead of preserving them only for farm work and marriage”. He said out of the more than 12,000 pupils in the schools of the locality, 5000 of them are girls.

The inspector said local administration was fully engaged in the onslaught for the girl child education in the area. “We warn parents who scheme to withdraw their girl children from school for marriage”.

On his part, the Deputy Head Master of Government School Doukoula, Pierre Dikwe, said many parents are beginning to understand the importance of girl child education. He revealed that out of the 610 pupils in his school, 300 of them are girls. He, however, regretted that many parents were still holding their girl children home to work in the farms instead of sending them to school.

One parent who asked not to be named said they were giving out their girl children to early marriages because they are afraid that they will get pregnant without husbands. She said she is beginning to understand because she knows some girls from her village that have gone to school and are “working in offices in Yaounde just like men.”

According observers, UNICEF and the Japanese Government have contributed in no small way in encouraging the education of the girl child in the Far North Region.

They have been providing logistics, making sure that the school environment is conducive enough to attract girl children. It was in a bid to achieve this objective that the UN agency constructed 60 wells in 60 schools in the region in 2013.

They equally constructed 180 latrines and built classrooms. The Japanese Government bankrolled the projects with a circa FCFA 7 billion, according to UNICEF 0fficials.

This year, the Japanese are enabling UNICEF to carry out projects in the education, health and sanitation domains in five health districts of the Far North Region. They will cost close to FCFA one billion.

While appreciating the projects the Japanese Government has been carrying out in their locality, the Inspector of Primary Education for Touloum in Porhi Sub Division, Mayo Kani Division, Henri Bay, urged UNICEF to create a scholarship scheme to promote girl child education in the area. “Of the 16.577 pupils in the 43 primary schools in the area, 7668 are girls. We need to continue to encourage these girls,” he stated.