Child marriage is a problem the world over. Each year, 15 million girls are married before the age of 18. That’s one girl every 2 seconds.
But, while awareness around the problem of child marriage is growing, for many people the question is still how is it happening. How is it that, in the 21st century, girls are still finding themselves being married off at such a young age?
today I Manyata Verma is going to share some stories related to this topics
Gloria's story
Gloria’s parents would spend every day on the river, hoping to catch enough fish to sell so that they could afford to send their children to school and buy food for them.
If they didn’t have a lucky day, however, Gloria and her younger brothers and sisters would go to sleep hungry.
When her father died, life got even harder for the family. It was up to Gloria’s mother to provide for herself and her 10 young children.
“I was supposed to be in school at the time I got married,” Gloria, now 17, told Camfed. “I was 12 years old when I got married to a 35 year old man. They said that the man would take care of me, my siblings, and my mother, due to the poverty levels.”
“I cried because I was too young to get married,” she continued. “I didn’t want to, I didn’t understand the meaning of marriage, I was filled with fear."
But Gloria knew that her mother couldn’t afford to feed her, buy clothes for her, or pay her school fees, and she felt that if she refused to get married, she wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.
However, rather than paying the significant dowry that Gloria’s family had hoped for, that her mother could use to support the family, Gloria’s new husband gave her family a single goat.
In her new role as a wife, Gloria stopped going to school, and instead took care of her husband, and searched for small jobs she could do to earn some money. She and her husband struggled to earn enough to eat. But the greatest loss, for Gloria, was her freedom.
“When I was staying with mum I was free to do what I wanted to do,” she continued. “Now in the house I was taken to, I wasn’t free. I was scared because he refused for me to do anything, and only he decided what should be done.”
As a child bride, Gloria also endured the terror. After six months, she discovered she was pregnant.
“When I was pregnant I felt so much pain because I wasn’t ready to conceive at that age,” she said. “I had no knowledge of this.”
When she was still pregnant, Gloria’s husband died. After the funeral, his brother and successor to his land and property, married Gloria. In her second marriage, she was often subjected to domestic violence, and she lost her baby. Under threat and oppressed, she felt unable to even seek help following her.
Years passed, until Gloria eventually became pregnant again. She was still pregnant when her second husband also died and Gloria, still only a child herself, was left alone.
“If my child could get an education, his life would be different from mine,” she said. “When children are kept in school, they get educated and they reap the benefits. I would like to tell others that when you get married at an early age, things are difficult and you lose all your rights and you suffer a lot.”
so hey guys this is for today I , your auriana will be back with a new story of real life
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