Teenage pregnancies turn school dreams into survival

For as long as she can remember, Naya* has loved watching Lulu Hassan, one of Kenya’s most popular television news anchors. While completing chores at home in Kakamega County, western Kenya, she would imagine herself one-day sitting before the cameras.

“To this day, I still admire her and hope to meet her someday,” says Naya, whose heart was set on a career in broadcast journalism.

The admiration has endured, but the path towards emulating Hassan has narrowed. In 2021, Naya was 17 and in Form Two at a day school when she became pregnant by her Form Four boyfriend. The pregnancy brought her education to an end.

The path to that moment had been shaped by hardship at home. Naya’s parents had separated, and her mother was supporting four children by selling food at the roadside. Money rarely stretched to school fees, clothing and regular meals.

“My mother was always stressed and angry,” Naya says. “I understand where she was coming from. There were four of us, and I was the firstborn. She could hardly make enough to buy us clothes, pay our school fees and give us three meals a day. We ate whatever we could, even if it was just porridge, to get by.”

Read: As schools reopen, adolescent mothers are still left at the gate

Naya found comfort in her boyfriend. He also offered small amounts of money that eased her daily hunger. “He would give me Sh100, sometimes Sh200. That helped me buy food and other things,” she says.

Naya says she accepted his sexual advances because she feared losing the relationship. Under Kenya’s Children Act (2022), however, she was a child and could not give legally recognised consent to sexual activity.