Here in Swaziland people talk about getting pregnant as if it’s something you just fall into. Child abuse, incest, promiscuity, polygamy and prostitution are rampant. The chances of a girl, ages 15 and up, NOT getting pregnant, in a years time, are close to zero!
Let’s suppose that I’m a normal Swazi girl who has just discovered she’s pregnant. I have a number of culturally acceptable options:
1. Drink poison to try to kill the baby, hoping only the baby will die and not myself. The odds are pretty good but a number of girls in my school do die every year from this option.
2. Somehow find the money to travel over the border to South Africa where abortion is legal. Then come up with the money to pay some “doctor” to perform an abortion for me.
3. Carry the baby to full term and then hand him over to my mom, who’s already taking care of 5 or 6 of my other sibling’s babies.
4. Give birth and soon realized I can’t, or don’t want to, care for the infant.
– I can try to pass the baby off to a relative or friend who doesn’t have any children.
– I can advertise the future use of my child as a household helper and someone to send to the market.
5. Or there’s always dumping, the newborn to 8 month old, in a sugar cane field or under a tree.
6. Selling my baby to an Indian may be the most self-beneficial. I’ll actually get some money by selling my kid into the human slave market.
7. Or I could attempt to care for my baby on my own probably with no job and no money. I can forget about asking the father for help – that is if I even knew who he was.
This is not comical.
This is not un-heardoff.
This is real life here.
PRAY PRAY PRAY for the country that will soon die off, if things continue as they are! People NEED the love of Jesus and the morality that comes with following Gods standards!
Some of the kids we play with every day
