As the year’s second term begins, thousands of children in rural Zimbabwe prepare to embark on an exhausting and dangerous daily journey to school.
Children from Sanangwe village in Masvingo North walk over 18 km to their closest secondary school.
To get there, they must cross the perilous crocodile-infested Mutirikwi and Muzare rivers.
While many make this pain-staking sacrifice for their education, for others it’s too much. The number of school drop-outs and early marriages is on the rise in rural Zimbabwe, as they provide an alternative life away from school.
For many, an early marriage is a last resort. For many young girls, it means teenage pregnancy and being subjected to underage sex.
Speaking to Scrolla.Africa, parent Anderson Machaya, 58, said that walking long distances affects children’s performance at school because they cannot concentrate when they are tired, especially girls.
“This has contributed to early child marriages in our community because marriage is everything they would think of when they decide to ditch schooling,” he said.
“During the rainy season, learners are forced to stay at home for weeks because their school is situated between two big crocodile-infested rivers and they can’t cross when they are flooded,” he added.
Another parent, Grace Dhurumba, 55, said that the long distance learners need to walk to school is killing their motivation because they now find school uninteresting.
“I hope our government will honour their promise to build a school in our locality,” she said.
“You can see even when the children come back from school that they are very tired and it’s not healthy.”
Taungana Ndoro, spokesperson for the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, said the government is working on a solution so that children don’t need to risk their lives going to school everyday.
He confirmed that there are learners who are walking long distances, and said they are building schools across the country to reduce those distances.
Aspiring Masvingo North MP Brian Mudumi said that he has met with the parliamentary portfolio committee on primary and secondary education and their main concern is the establishment of a secondary school in the Sanangwe area.
“These are new settlements and the government is still in the process of developing them. To stop early childhood marriages and school dropouts, a nearby secondary school should be built,” he said.
Pictured above: Primary school children in rural Masvingo praying during assembly time
Picture source: Dalphine Tagwireyi