And everything changed...

Manero!

First of all, thank you so much for all your kind messages and encouraging words. It’s great to know that so many of you are supporting me. It’s a bit odd, being far away from everyone I know, but I have met so many nice people that I do not feel alone.

Yesterday was my last day in Chimanimani… The time went so fast and despite the fact that I am here for my research, I mainly had a lot of fun. I even got to see some of the beautiful nature. Thank you so much, Aoife, for driving us to the top of Pork Pie (you are an amazing driver!), where we could overlook the entire area. Side note: when “Pork Pie” was first suggested, I was terrified this meant I had to eat meat. Fortunately, the drive up there was harmless for this vegetarian, as it is just a mountain in the shape of a pie.

We tried to get to Bridal Veil Falls the second day, but this trip failed massively, as the park was closed before the official closing time. We still have no clue where the guy who was supposed to let us through was hiding. Sharlene and I may have been tempted to break the window of the ranger’s little hut to steal the key to the gate, but serving some time in a Zimbabwean prison did not sound very appealing… Maybe next time [e-1f643].

Before I summarise the findings of yesterday’s interviews, I would like to thank Aoife, Sharlene, and Courtney for their help, their company, and all the fun we had. Aoife, you have been truly amazing - I really cannot thank you enough for inviting me over to Chimanimani, showing me the work that the Rafiki Network does, and for all the meetings you organised. Maitabasa, shamwari! Sharlene and Courtney, thanks for all the great conversations we had and for welcoming me into the group. It was lovely to learn about your work and to hear more about the Shona culture from the two of you. I’m no longer sure who taught me the most… I guess Aoife still wins, but I let you decide thanks to whom I can now say “run run run”, “thank you” and “how are you” in Shona…

Before leaving Chimanimani and saying goodbye to all the amazing people I met there, there was one more special meeting to be held. In the morning, all the companions (community social workers) of the Rafiki Network came to our B[e-38]B to discuss child marriages in the area. Some had to travel quite far to get there. There were nine companions present. Among them were Augustine, who has partaken in research on the impacts of Idai on Chimanimani, and who gave me the full report with an incredibly moving personal message written in it, Phil, again clothed in an incredible outfit you would not expect in a rural area such as this, and Brice, who has helped me a lot in the past days.

As the companions offer psychosocial support to vulnerable communities across Chimanimani, they have an excellent understanding of what is going on in their communities. Every companion teams up with another, and they usually work in up to three wards. Some are active in Chimanimani Town, others work at the Mozambican border.Many of them report a lot of child marriages in their wards. It is a topic that keeps coming up in the trainings they receive from Courtney and Sharlene. Apparently, it is very hard for them to educate people about the harmful effects of early marriages, as girls are often married off to people with a lot of power in their communities. As long as these key elites are involved in these practices, it seems impossible to stop girls from marrying too young.

The companions are very familiar with the topic of child marriages. I could freely talk to them about this, which was a relief after the more restricted conversations with the young mothers and local communities (where I really tried not to say anything that would be seen as inappropriate). The conversations gave me a lot of insights. I thought I knew a lot about the status quo here, yet the companions were able to surprise me with their stories. Yesterday, I learnt that the connection between climate change, coping mechanisms, and child marriage is not as straightforward as I thought…

First of all, the companions and I talked about the normalisation of child marriage in Chimanimani. As girls are seen as lesser to boys here, it is uncommon for them to attend college or to pursue a career. The cultural expectation that women will marry and bear children has been passed down for generations. When a girl is 14 years old, she is seen as fit for marriage, especially when she is no longer in school. As marriage is seen as her destiny, people do not see why they should wait until a child is 18. The transition of childhood into womanhood is not the same as it is in Europe, and international human rights frameworks that have set 18 as the age of majority do not align with indigenous understandings of maturity. In the Shona culture, menarche has historically been the identifier of womanhood: when a girl menstruates, she can marry and have children.

In academic literature and among intergovernmental organisations, child marriage is seen as a problem. Ample of research has found that it leads to school drop out, early pregnancies and related health problems, the malnourishment of babies, extreme poverty, and severe mental damage. But in Zimbabwean communities, not everyone necessarily perceives early marriage as a problem. According to Sharlene, education and the adoption of international human rights frameworks have changed the perspectives of many Zimbabweans, but in rural areas, this is not the case. In fact, people may actually see the marriage of young girls as an achievement, because they believe it can relieve them from poverty. There is a proverb in Shona, which says that one can never get enough out of a son-in-law: even when lobola has been paid, a son-in-law will always be there to pay for your expenses.

When it is not seen as a big problem, its negative consequences are sometimes recognised, yet the issue is negligible in comparison to other problems, such as food shortages, the number of children in a family who can be fed, or education. Therefore, child and early marriage has always been used as a survival mechanism: in traditional Shona society, baby girls were promised to older men in exchange for food or money (this still happens to some extent in Chimanimani), and poor families would often offer their little girls’ free labour to an older man, who would marry her when she had her first period.

Child marriage is not only accepted by adults, but also seen as very normal among children and teenagers. From a very young age, girls are being told that one day, they will marry a rich man. Boys learn that it is their purpose to get an education. So, when girls are taught that marriage is destiny, they naturally perceive it as their primary life goal. The companions call this “structural violence”, because they see that girls are not taught to think for themselves, but are instead forced to live up to certain standards that often rob them of opportunities.

If you are not married as a woman, you are looked down upon. No wonder that here in Chipinge, people continuously ask me if I am married (I still call my mum for laundry instructions, how could I run my own household?). Men are afraid of unmarried women, especially when they are highly educated: they fear that too much independence means they are sexually “loose” and won’t be submissive wives, as prescribed by Shona culture. Women don’t want to be friends with unmarried women, as they fear they might become “tainted”. In rural areas, most girls marry between age 16 and 18. Men are expected to marry by age 25. Age standards are higher for both sexes in urban areas.

So far, I was not very surprised by anything the companions had told me. After all, I had read the same in academic articles. When we shifted our conversation to child marriage and climate change, I expected them to say that girls were married off because the money of the lobola is used by their parents to survive. Money is indeed a major contributor to the early marriages in Chimanimani, but interestingly, the exact situation was a bit different from what I had imagined.

First of all, the companions unanimously agreed that they saw an increase of child brides in their wards after Idai. However, few found that parents were the deciding factors. Girls were not necessarily married off because of lobola, but because of an enormous increase in unwanted pregnancies. This happened for a number of reasons. Firstly, many people in Chimanimani got displaced after Idai. In displacement camps, they were often in small rooms with adults having sex. As they could not attend school, teenagers were free to roam around and get to know people of the other sex. Girls found comfort in dating older boys and men. This would sometimes lead to early pregnancy, and eventually to marriage.

In many other cases, transactional sex was a huge contributor to child marriages. Like the young women I spoke with on Sunday, the companions shared many stories of girls who started working in prostitution to survive. Construction workers and employees of NGOs would offer sex or money for food. Girls as young as twelve were looking for clients, often together with their mums. When I asked if the decision to offer sex for food was a decision taken by the girls, or if the girls were forced by their parents to do so, the answers differed. In the end, the companions agreed that when a child had become the breadwinner after her parents’ deaths, she would often feel compelled to work in prostitution. When girls still had their families, their mums usually pushed hem, especially if these mothers were widowed or single parents. Transactional sex would, again, lead to many unplanned pregnancies. Girls who got pregnant tended to marry, as Shona culture prescribes.

There were also parents who did marry their children off, especially to aid workers, who had access to food. But, much to my surprise, it seemed like more often than not, early marriage was a result of transactional sex being used as a coping mechanism. One day later, I would learn that in Chipinge, the situation was even different from what I heard in Chimanimani…