Keeping her pledge

She has kept her vow in the face of much resistance from traditionalists who wanted to know why the district had chosen a woman as its chief despite threats to her life and being someone “who wanted to destroy their culture.” Since her tenure from 2003, she has had nearly 2,000 child marriages terminated and the girls returned to school.

“As the chief, I am supposed to be the custodian of culture,” Kachindamoto said. “However, any cultural practice that hinders development of people in my area is not acceptable.”

She dismisses the arguments that poverty is the cause of child marriages. Once a girl is married off, parents are no longer “burdened” by her responsibility. “I tell them educating a girl child is the best way to end poverty, not sending them into marriage,” she said.

Two of the girl brides withdrawn from marriage and returned to school through Kachindamoto’s efforts are 17-year-old Maria Leonard and 15-year-old Elube Masina. Leonard has a five-year-old boy she delivered in 2012.

“I was impregnated and my parents ordered me to go to the man who made me pregnant,” Masina said. Masina, who has a two-year-old baby, got pregnant and was married at 13. She said although she wanted to continue with her education at the time, she failed to do so while married. The two girls are now back in school and both dream of becoming doctors.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, where almost one in two girls are married before 18, according to a report by the global research institute International Center for Research in Women. After persistent advocacy by the society, in February 2015, the Marriage, Divorce and Family