My name is Momade Ussene. I am a functionary of a catholic association and am going to speak of the reality in my country.
I myself have come across various cases in a number of communities. My country is still in need of an acceptable number of secondary schools, principally in the rural areas. Even when there are some students, they often stop going to classes because of the distance to be commuted.
The brothers, Miguel, 16 and Albertina, 14 live in a community near Miruthu, in the district of Namachilo. Every day they cover more than thirteen kilometres on foot to have access to secondary education, Due to the distance and the time it takes between their house and the school and vice-versa, they become hungry and tired. The majority of students who face this difficulty end up abandoning their studies.
As a consequence, girls and their siblings due to lack of conditions and in some cases on account of cultural traditions seek premature marriage. Seeing that they have no other activities during the day they are solicited by men to have sexual relations, which consequently leads to early pregnancy. The boys take refuge in poaching, digging for gold and sometimes since they are unable to continue their studies end up going to regions where there is some development so that they can commit petty crimes. As a way of appealing to the Mozambique government and to international co-operation the country is in need of an acceptable number of schools at secondary level in all the regions of the country seeing that every citizen has the right to an education.
My country has an elevated number of people who are unable to read and write (illiterates). With schools in all the communities of the country it would improve the number of people in the country with academic formation. It would reduce the number of children involved in hunting animals, digging for gold, marriage and even early pregnancy. Not only that, as regards the environment it would help in conserving animals