Ayisha Togina, a Cameroonian Facebook user, shared the story of 16-year-old twin sisters who are pregnant for the same boy.
The pregnant teenagers and their father, according to Ms Togina, live in abject poverty and have resorted to sleeping with men in the Buea suburbs in order to survive.
Take a look at her post below.
Meet this family of three. A struggling father providing for his almost due pregnant daughters in the suburbs of Buea. Theirs is not a beautiful story but an example of the reality of life especially in crisis stricken English Cameroon.
This family lived in Tole, where both sisters (16 years old) were impregnated by the same boy their age in their community just before the armed conflict caused them to flee to Muea, where they stayed with their father’s friend who breaks stones for gravel.
They had to leave yet again, this time due to sexual harassment by a friend of their father’s. They moved to a community far behind Sandpit (Likoko) while still pregnant, where they live in a deteriorating plank house with no doors or windows. They sleep on the floor on a single mattress with no carpet, blankets, or extra bed sheets.
Their house is surrounded by a bush, which serves as a mosquito breeding ground as well as a habitat for other harmful animals and insects. Their toilet, which is accessible via a jungle walk, has no roof and only a single hole in the cement that serves as a floor. Algae and the branches and leaves of the trees surrounding it have coated the slimy, shaky cement.
Two mud-stained bedsheets are tied at the entrance to the three-block walled toilet with numerous holes for privacy. This family spends 5,000 FCFA a month in rent to be in that house, and they don’t even eat on a regular basis because their father can’t find odd jobs on a daily basis. Local guys in the neighborhood take advantage of this truth, forcing these vulnerable pregnant girls into bed, which they accept in order to support their babies.
I’m curious as to how we came to meet them. When these pregnant girls came at the Solidarity Hospital in Buea, we met them. We obtained their address and hired a car to go to their community to observe their living conditions and provide some basic necessities. We took these photos and videos with their permission in order to share their story with the rest of the world. Their story reflects the realities of poverty, conflict, and IDP lives.
It shows the vulnerability of poor girls as well as the negative effects of a lack of education. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter; we now appeal to the community, health organizations, female empowerment organizations, the government, and people of good will to help this family. Their antenatal care is taken care of by the Solidarity Hospital, but there is always room in their lives for every helpful hand.
