Covid-19 spawns gold panning, teen pregnancies among school drop outs

AT sixteen, Tafara Zhou of Buchwa in Mberengwa must have been in class with a headache of memorising algebra and formulas of simultaneous equations, but here he is, lying on his back in the sands of the snaking Ngezi River, shirtless and exposing his lean frame while covering his face from the scorching sun with a cap that has seen better days.

The river has been a source of community livelihood with its rich deposits of gold that extend kindly from the mineral belt – the Great Dyke and both the young and old have been living off it since time immemorial.

Parents especially women have been able to send children to school from alluvial mining proceeds which they call dhanidha. There is little regard to the environmental catastrophe they will be causing through their mining methods which is a standalone story for another day.

On normal school terms, Tafara would always join his brothers and sisters in the mining operations during weekends but now due to the Covid-19 inspired schools shut down, they have been in the river since March.

He and his peers, some even younger than him have sometimes been lucky. They have been getting a point or two or a gram on good days and selling them to small buyers from within the community.

During their first days of independent operations, buyers would dupe them while big guys would coerce them into submitting whatever they would have gotten from their toil.

But with schools not opening and through association with thugs and those that have been in business a little while, they have been hardened. They are no longer the innocent small boys, that teachers could tune into disciplined adults.

Tafara and crew no longer want to go back to school. Exposure to the world of gold panning, money, drugs and even prostitutes has made them see no more value in going to school. Their philosophy is that if people go to school so that they get something to do for money after school, then they have found a shortcut and therefore school is irrelevant.

“You see when you go to school it’s not always the fact that you will pass. Not that you will be dull but somehow you can not make the grade. So, if you can get something that gives you money without school then going to school is a waste of time,” he said without giving a second thought.

“We have seen graduates and bought beer for them at the shops, so tell me what value is school if the purpose of going to school is to live pretty,” he quizzes.

The false start to the school term after a strict lockdown regime that lasted almost three quarters of the year has not helped the situation either and if nothing is done to normalize the situation there could be a serious nose dive in the country’s education standards.

A number of factors have conspired to make things different and extremely difficult in both rural and urban schools. The official position is that schools have been opened but there is no learning taking place in some schools with teachers in no show, and this has perpetuated the happy-lucky-go attitude in school children such as Tafara.

The situation is not confined to Mberengwa only, it stretches the length and breadth of the country with a section of teachers pressing for better working conditions. An education authority who requested anonymity said the hardest hit were those particularly in the mining provinces of the country where boys have gone into gold panning while a number of girls out of redundancy have been impregnated.

“We have a serious challenge in schools. Most boys both primary and secondary especially those in mining provinces of the country have been introduced to gold panning on a full-time basis. No longer are they thinking of going to school and the fear is that even if they go back to class, chances are that they will now be rowdy and difficult to give instructions,” she said.

As for the girls, she said reports were that a good number have been impregnated while some have been married. Quizzed about the estimated national figures of drop-outs, she said they have not yet compiled.

“I do not have the numbers yet but a number of schools have reported shocking teen pregnancies and we assume this was caused by redundancy during lockdown. The youths lost the books and the moral compass and started engaging in immoral behaviour as pastime,” she added.

The situation has not brought any joy to the parents who see life with different lenses from that of the young ones.

“The situation in schools is bad. Stakeholders have to confront this collectively with a sober, frank and selfless mind otherwise we are going to have a problematic generation after Covid – 19. We are not creating a good future for the kids and it’s a question of attitude.

“Teen pregnancies have become fashionable and school drop-outs inspired by pregnancies in girls and gold panning in boys are becoming rife and it all feeds into our society. What sort of society are we creating as a nation. And if the situation where we have this dilly-dallying continues until December then we are facing the disaster of a grim future,” said a parent Ms Nomsa Dube who is a retired nurse.

She added that apart from dropping out of school teen pregnancies and early sexual engagement also increases the risk of girls having cervical cancer which is the leading cancer in Zimbabwe and one of the killer diseases among women.

Ms Dube said teenagers, despite mental immaturity have under-developed pelvises which increase the risk to obstructed labour, maternal deaths, paralysis and obstetric fistula. She said there was a huge cost to pay both socially and economically if the authorities do not act to salvage the situation by resuming classes before end of year.

“Parents should play ball in encouraging those like Tafara to go back to school and be disciplined and learn. We can not blame anyone for Covid19, it is the actions that we are taking now that are going to give us either positive or negative results,” she said.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) also posits that early sexual debut and sexual abuse of female adolescents increase the girls’ risk to unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV and psycho-social challenges in their lives.