YINSU: The Namibian Police Force (NamPol) in the Kahenge District on Sunday arrested a 14 year-old girl together with her mother after she allegedly buried her aborted baby in the backyard of her house.
The 14 year-old girl, a grade nine learner who was apparently six month pregnant at the Yinsu combined school situated some 150km west of Rundu apparently aborted last month on 30 August.
The minor girl is said to have been impregnated by a fellow learner from the class.The police arrested the girl’s mother as she is apparently the one who forced her daughter to drink some traditional herbs made up of water extracted from a tree roots locally known as ‘Ndimbwilisa’, well known for terminating pregnancy.
The girl’s mother after being interrogated apparently said she wanted her daughter’s pregnancy terminated so that her education is not disrupted. The learner buried her fetus using a traditional hoe to dig the grave in the backyard of her mother’s homestead.
When this reported visited the house backyard where the fetus was buried on Tuesday, the grave was found covered with some shrubs to prevent dogs from digging it out.
According to Leo Namwere, a teacher at the Yinsu combined school who reported the incident to the police on Saturday, said the minor girl’s mother admitted after she was interrogated, to having given her daughter those traditional herbs. What puzzles teachers at the school is that neighbors and some relatives living adjacent to them were not aware of what the learner and her mother had done.
The neighbors apparently only became suspicious and wondered what had happened to the girl’s pregnancy after realizing that her stomach was big anymore.
Namwere said he decided to report the incident to the police because what learner and her mother did was tantamount to a criminal offence.The minor girl and her mother are expected to appear in the Rundu Magistrate’s court on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Life Skills teacher at the Yinsu School Paulus Mbangu said the school was never aware of the learner’s pregnancy and that they only learned of it during the recently held school’s festival.
Mbangu said the decision by the learner to abort her baby girl was unnecessary because the Education Ministry’s policy on learner’s pregnancy allows a learner to continue attending school until four week before her expected delivery.The Life Skills teacher condemned the incident stressing that 90 percent of parents surrounding the Yinsu village have been sensitized of policy and are aware of it.
He thus failed to understand why the learner and her mother resorted to aborting and burying the fetus after several meetings were held at school on adolescent fertility and learner pregnancy by health and social workers.
He however indicated that the learner will be offered counseling upon her return to the school so that she can continue concentrating on her school activities.