(ERGO) – Somali school girls in a small town in the southern Middle Shabelle region are dropping out of school due to early marriage.
Over 20 girls under the age of 16 have left Yasmin Primary School in El-irfid in the past year to get married, according to the headteacher, Ahmed Hassan Shakur.
The school has 150 pupils, among them 80 girls.
“The enrollment of new female students has gone down because parents expect them to get married tomorrow, so they prefer the girls to stay at home,” Shakur told Radio Ergo.
The primary school in El-irfif, 25 km south of Bal’ad, was built some years ago by Somalia’s former ambassador to Kenya, Mohamed Ali Nur Americo, who supports the school financially. The students come from several villages including Moalim-Matan, Aqablay, Dirmolay, and Muri.
The headteacher attributed the prevalence of early marriages to several factors including financial challenges of families, middlemen luring parents and girls with bride money, and cultural night dances that expose girls to men and boys.
“Without notice, you will hear that a certain girl aged 13 to 14 stopped coming to school because she eloped with a man the previous night. There is a cultural phenomenon and peer pressure telling the girl that so-and-so got married so you should too,” Shakur explained.
The school administration and the local elders are collaborating to inform parents on the importance of education and the need to ensure their girls, complete their studies before marriage.
One of Halima Hassan Mohamed’s daughters left Yasmin school after eloping with a young man from their village of Aliyale.
“As the youth get involved in Gabley, Aways and Bintow [traditional dances] the whole night, the girls are lured into eloping. My eldest daughter, who is 15, eloped last month, and now only my other two young ones are going to school,” Halima told Radio Ergo.
Hassan Tohob, an elder, told Radio Ergo that elders had launched a campaign to discourage the marriage of school-going girls.
“The little dowry that comes as a result of marriage confuses the parents and the naïve girls so they don’t think about the impact of such early marriages. These girls getting married are too young and cannot even bear the responsibilities of parenthood,” said Tohob.
Meanwhile, the headteacher said Yasmin school would start offering extra classes including henna hand design arts so that girls would have an income-earning skill if they were married off early.
