A teenager who ditched her 57-year-old husband and had trouble joining secondary school has finally enrolled at Mitangani Mixed Secondary School in Bamba, Ganze, Kilifi County.
Zainab Sidi Karisa, 19, received support from the school’s Principal Francis Ouma and a bursary from a constituency fund.
About a month ago, Ms Sidi was about to give up on her dream of becoming a neurosurgeon after she failed to join a secondary school.
She has escaped marriage, sat twice for her Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and faced rejection and ridicule from her father when she became pregnant while in school.
“My father was not ready to take me to school. Since my results were released he had not bothered even to get me some of the items I needed. My teachers promised to get a sponsor for me,” she said.
Ms Sidi sat her first KCPE examination in 2018 at Silaloni Primary School in Kwale County and scored 263 marks.
Because her parents did not have money to pay her school fees, she stayed home.
After two months, as other students had joined Form One, she decided to repeat Standard Eight.
In 2019, she enrolled at Midoina Primary School but teachers placed her in Standard Six.
She went back to the same school after quitting her marriage and sat her KCPE examinations this year.
She scored 319 marks and was admitted to Ganze Girls Secondary School in Kilifi.
In an interview with Nation.Africa, Ms Sidi said she was forced into marriage because her father was mad at her when she became pregnant in February last year while in Standard Eight.
She dropped out of school a few weeks before schools closed down because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The man who made her pregnant told her he would only marry her after she finished school.
She said her father continued to mock her all the time.
Ms. Zainab Karisa 19, a former pupil at Midoina primary school in Bamba, Kilifi County. She scored 319 marks in KCPE and has received support to join Form One.
This prompted her mother to ask her to find a place to stay and move away from the frustrations and embarrassment.
“My father got angry with me and he told me that there is no need for me to go back to school because I will become pregnant again and that I should get married,” she said.
“It happened that he used to verbally abuse me every time he saw me.”
Several men came to her family’s home in Baakanda village in Silaloni to ask for her hand in marriage.
“Different men used to come every day and I used to tell them that I was not interested in getting married. This angered my father more, until I got tired of how he was treating me and I decided to get married to the old man,” she said.
She married the man in August last year.
Ms Sidi was unable to control her emotions and burst into tears as she narrated that the man had come to visit his relative in their neighbourhood when he took her.
“He sent my grandmother to tell me that he wanted to marry me. I decided to go with him and be his wife,” she said.
She said that the man had no family and he used to live with his sister and her children.
“I got married to the old man while I was still pregnant and I gave birth to my baby girl in October last year,” she said.
One day the man visited her family to inform them about his plans to pay her dowry, but she told her father that she wanted to go back to school.
“I refused to go back to his home and told my father that I wanted to go back to school. But the old man started insisting that I was his wife, “she said.
Sometimes her father would force her to talk to the old man.
“My father would come from the market and give me his phone to talk to the old man, and he would tell me that my father had told him that I wanted to talk to him,” she said.
Ms Sidi is now relieved that she has started taking classes to continue her education. Her mother said she was ready to take care of her grandchild while Ms Sidi goes to school. BY DAILY NATION