End Child Marriages

[00:00:00] Paula: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of chatting with the experts TV show with me, Paula Okonneh. I speak with women from Africa and the Caribbean who are professionals or entrepreneurs and they’re experts in their field. At the end of the show, we always try and leave you with a message that [00:01:00] inspires, empowers, or educates you, our viewers.
[00:01:06] Paula: So, today’s no exception. The topic today is about ending child marriages and stamping out the cycle of poverty. And with me to do that is a special guest. Her name is Bongai Mhloyi, and she’ll be joining me in a few seconds. There we go. Welcome to Chatting with the Experts.
[00:01:37] Bongai: Hello Paula, how are you today?
[00:01:39] Paula: I am great and I’m even better because you’re here.
[00:01:43] Bongai: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m so honored and grateful that I’m here talking to you today. Absolutely.
[00:01:51] Paula: So I introduced you as the experts person to talk about ending child [00:02:00] marriages and stamping out the cycle of poverty. So, but that’s just a snippet.
[00:02:06] Bongai: Yes.
[00:02:07] Paula: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself. I know your, business, your nonprofit, sorry, not your business, your organization…
[00:02:13] Bongai: Yes
[00:02:14] Paula: is dedicated to stamping out both those things I mentioned.
[00:02:20] Bongai: Yes. So yes, like you say, my name is Bongai Mhloyi. I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and I came to the United States several years ago. And, ending child marriages is one of my passions that I, you know, I do. I’m passionate about that because growing up in Zimbabwe, I witnessed something similar to that, you know, from my grandfather. So my organization is called… I call it End Child Marriages, but the coordinates that I work with is American and African, so it’s American and African Youth Leadership Foundation, End Child Marriages. So [00:03:00] that’s what I do, just the way it sounds, Ending Child Marriages, where we support young girls in Zimbabwe, vulnerable girls, that are forced into marriages due to poverty. So that’s, that’s what I do.
[00:03:14] Paula: So what I know you mentioned your grandfather senior grandfather 75 year old grandfather.
[00:03:20] Bongai: Yes, I can go a little bit deeper into that. I didn’t know how much time we have. So yes, I can. My grandfather, he was 75 at the time and I remember vividly I was about 12 years old myself, and he was 75 and here comes this young girl. It’s 12 years old, and we just told that. She’s going to be your grandfather’s wife, and, as we were told that the shock that, you know, was on our faces as we hear that, and the shock that was on her face just, you know, did the explanation that she didn’t want to be there. So yes, I did witness, child marriages, you know, in [00:04:00] my grandfather’s time when he was marrying this young girl.
[00:04:04] Paula: And I guess that’s what makes your work unique. Because that’s the question I had. What makes your work unique from others?
[00:04:11] Bongai: It is because, you know, because of the experience that I got growing up with this young girl, because we spent about two years of our lives together. We were all about the same age, my sisters and I. So we watched her going through this painful situation where she didn’t have any choice. She didn’t have any voice to say, I don’t want to be here, but she couldn’t do anything. So we watched her, you know, agonizing about that and my grandfather of course was enjoying because to him it was something normal to him and it felt like he was somebody special because he got this young girl, you know, as his wife, but the pain that she was going through, it was just horrific.
[00:04:58] Bongai: And, we became friends with [00:05:00] this young girl. And, you know, to make the long story short, we actually helped her run away from my grandfather because she didn’t want to be there. She was crying to us, you know, every day and, she couldn’t go to school. We were going to school. She couldn’t go to school. So one day she just say, you know what, I’m just going to run away, but I don’t know how to. So we just came up with an idea that, you know, you pick up your stuff and then you run away one day. We won’t say anything. And sure enough. She did that one day and she said, I’m ready. And we helped her off. She went, we didn’t know where she went.
[00:05:36] Bongai: And after this day, I don’t know where she went. I don’t know where she is. I wish I had asked her where you were going. Then at least I’ll be communicating with her. But just going through that… That’s really what made me unique because I witnessed it myself, and I didn’t like it. And as I grew up also to be a grown woman, [00:06:00] I knew then that I can do something about it. Although I was not able to help this young girl’s situation, at least now I can help other girls that are, you know, in similar situations. So I think that, you know. I feel like that makes me unique because I don’t think it’s a lot of people who witnessed, you know, child marriages and then end up doing something to eradicate, you know, the whole thing.
[00:06:27] Paula: And I’ve known you for some time and I know that has been your primary mission.
[00:06:32] Bongai: Yes.
[00:06:33] Paula: To give girls an opportunity to, you know, to have a life.
[00:06:36] Bongai: Yes. As I talk about it, I get so passionate about it. And sometimes, you know, it really makes me cry because these girls, they don’t have a choice. They don’t have a voice. And they are just told that, you know, pick up your stuff today. Tomorrow we are going, you are going to be marrying this man. You don’t know the man, you have never met him, and your people [00:07:00] will take you there, they leave you there with your little bag of, you know, whatever clothing you might have, and they go back, they leave you there with this man, and that’s your life. So, your dreams are shattered right there in front of your eyes, and you can’t do anything about it. You can’t do anything about it. So, yeah, it’s painful. It’s a painful, um, situation.
[00:07:21] Paula: So, yeah, I mean, just hearing you talk about it, I mean, yeah, well, I remember being 12. I have a daughter who was 12. I have nieces and, you know, so many nieces, grandnieces. So, oh my gosh.
[00:07:35] Bongai: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Paula: In doing the work that you do, I know you have experience or you’ve run into challenges. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:07:43] Bongai: Okay. Yeah, I’ve been doing this since 2010.
[00:07:48] Paula: Wow.
[00:07:48] Bongai: And I can’t say it’s easy. It’s not easy. Because I ran into, because remember now this is a cultural norm that was… for a lot of people [00:08:00] in these communities, it’s a normal thing. So here we come as an organization trying to break that norm. A lot of people will resist. They’ll be like, you know, who are you? We’ve been doing this for years. Why do we have to stop now? Even the law enforcement, you know, you know, people, they’ll be like, okay, we’ve been doing this for… this has been going on for years and years and years. You know, why stop now? So I would say the challenges that I go through is talking to these people in the communities, telling them that this is the 21st century. We don’t have to do what was happening in the 18th century, you know, girls are people as well, because back then, if you are born a girl, you didn’t have the same rights as the boys here, because boys were able to go to school with no problem, but the girls were not allowed to go to school just because they are girls.
[00:08:56] Bongai: So, as they go into puberty, the girls, they are [00:09:00] trained to be good wives, good mothers, and how to take care of their husbands and how to manage their homes, whereas the boys are allowed to excel and become mechanics, become teachers, become whatever they want to become, but the girls are not. So, to break that, you know cycle. That’s one of my biggest challenge. To break that cycle, and to educate the community to say. You know, your girl children, your girl child. She needs to go to school. We need to give her skills so that she can support herself. She can be independent. She can support your family once you get married. If she chooses to get married, you know, we have to give them choices. So those, I would say the main challenges that I, you know, go through that, you know, breaking the cycle of poverty and educating the community.
[00:09:54] Paula: Educating the community because I looked at some statistics that say that [00:10:00] only about 2 percent of boys are given in child marriages, but for girls it’s almost like 40%.
[00:10:07] Bongai: Yes, the numbers are just… it’s just, you know, it’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. And just to think that, you know, it’s still happening in 2024, you know, like, wow, it’s still happening. You know, we still have to fight this gender inequality. We still have to fight for our rights as women. You know, we still have to empower these girls and we still have to fight to give them resources so that they will know that, you know, if this happens to me you know, what do I do? So that’s the other challenge that I go through because I have to talk to these girls that, you know, if this happens to you, this is what you can do. This is what you can do. This is what you can do. You can go to this person. You can go to this person. So you still have to educate the girls as well, because sometimes, you know, with the socioeconomic [00:11:00] issues as well, that’s another challenge.
[00:11:02] Bongai: Because some girls, within their families, the poverty is just too much. So some girls will even say, okay, maybe I’ll just go get married. Then my father won’t have too many children to support. So let me just go and get married. And now I’ll be somebody else’s problem or I will be somebody else’s responsibility. So that’s another challenge that, you know, we have to, to fight, you know, against.
[00:11:30] Paula: Wow.
[00:11:30] Bongai: Yeah,
[00:11:33] Paula: as you rightfully said, as I know, yeah, fighting against tradition and cultural norms is not easy.
[00:11:41] Bongai: It’s not easy. And some of these people, there will be grandpas, they did that to their children, and then their sons now, they are doing that to their own children. So even if the girls go to grandpa and say, hey grandpa, you know, my dad is saying, you know, I have to go get married to this man. [00:12:00] Grandpa would be like, what’s the big deal? I did that to my own children. So she has nowhere to go. And like I say, the law enforcement people, leaders, some of them are, you know, older people. So they also did the same thing. Some of them might be married to someone when they were under 18. So if you go and report to them, they might still don’t give you the help that you are looking for. So the girls end up. With nowhere else to go nowhere else to go. Yeah.
[00:12:37] Paula: That’s terrible. That’s really terrible. So, I know you’ve been doing this since 2010 you said,
[00:12:45] Bongai: Yes.
[00:12:46] Paula: Can you talk about at least one of your greatest accomplishments. Oh, well, let’s let’s just narrow down to the last 12 months. What have been some of the achievements you’ve seen from this 14 years of pushing [00:13:00] for gender equality.
[00:13:03] Bongai: Yeah, when you say, you know, talk about the achievements that, you know, I’ve achieved, I feel… you can see that I smiled when you asked me that because I had so much, so many achievements, success stories, from the girls that I started off with since 2010, just to look at where they were in 2010. And when I look at where they are now, It’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. And also the relationship that I have with the community now that this particular community that I work with is unbelievable because now they know me, they know what I’m doing, they know my work, and they also see the girls that I have helped, you know, from 2010. So when they see that you know, maybe sometimes they’ll compare the girls that came to our program and those that didn’t come to our program.
[00:13:59] Bongai: [00:14:00] So the girls that are in our program, they see that they completed high school, they went to college, they graduated, they fell in love with someone, you know, of their choice. They had a wedding and they have children now. They’ll be like, wow. So those are the things that even now, when I go into these communities, I can share with them to say, okay, you have a 13 year old girl, you know, here. So instead of you getting her married off to someone, look at this one. We got here when she was 12, when she was 13 or 14. She continued on with school. Look, now she’s a graduate. She’s a university graduate. She is a teacher now. She’s a pharmacist now, whatever she’s doing. So they start seeing, oh, wow, so this is something good.
[00:14:52] Bongai: And the girls will also, you know, those that are working now, they also come back to their communities and [00:15:00] show them that, you know, going to school is good. You know, as a girl, you can do this, you know, you can help your families because once they finish school and they are waking. Not only them are benefiting, but their families are benefiting as well, because they come back to the communities, they help the other girls that are, you know, in the same situations, they help their schools, the school that they went to, they help their churches, you know, everybody’s benefiting.
[00:15:28] Bongai: That means the whole community now is benefiting from that one girl that continued on with school without, you know, being married off. So it’s, you know, it’s starting to show that people are starting to see now that, oh, it’s working. Although we still have to fight, you know, some hard-headed people, but I would say on the bigger picture, the community is changing. We have had, you know, initiatives in the communities that we talk about this, you know, [00:16:00] this way that we do and how beneficial it is to the whole community and eventually to the whole country, obviously, because they are members of the society and everything is… a good thing for everyone, the whole country is going to benefit, and eventually the whole world will benefit. Who knows, they might end up going somewhere to another country and be, you know, a doctor there, or whatever they want to do, you know, in another country. So everybody will be benefiting.
[00:16:32] Paula: Everybody gains, because I always say that. You educate a woman. You don’t just educate her, you educate her family and you educate the next generation to come.
[00:16:42] Bongai: Absolutely.
[00:16:42] Paula: What a difference that makes.
[00:16:44] Bongai: Absolutely, you are very right because you know I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You know, girls that are now working that come back and help their little sisters, their little cousins to say, you know, you need to go to school. You need to go to school. You [00:17:00] know, if somebody is threatening to marry you off, you can go to this, you know, organization, you can do this, you can do that. So now they are even educating the other girls themselves. So it’s just a win-win situation for everyone.
[00:17:14] Paula: Win win situation.
[00:17:16] Bongai: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Paula: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Bongai: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Paula: Yes. So, you know, I said at the beginning of this show that at the end, we want to make sure that whoever has watched this or listened to this because we make it a podcast as well, they would have learned something, been inspired, you know, so I’m talking about that. How can you educate us on how we in turn can help?
[00:17:41] Bongai: Okay, I really would like ,you know, I know you are aware of this situation, but I would like every woman out there to know that this problem is still going on. So I want to make every woman aware that we have this issue that we need to handle, and it is [00:18:00] possible that we can do it. If I can do it, you Paula, you can do it. Your neighbor can do it. Your friend can do it. Anybody can do it. You can help someone that you don’t know. It’s okay, but it’s really an issue that’s possible for anybody to do. And, you can see that, you know, if you help someone and normally a lot of people that are helping me because I do have sponsors that are helping me on this journey.
[00:18:32] Bongai: And a lot of them will tell me that when I sponsor a girl it’s not really for that girl only is also for me to get a sense of purpose, like, you know, why am I, what did I do? So if you look back and be like, Oh, I sponsored a girl. That was able to break the cycle of poverty in her family because of me. So, I can say that because I do have, you know, girls that I sponsor myself, [00:19:00] that I can say, you know, I was able to put them to a higher level from where they were before. Because of me, they did that. So if I can inspire another woman out there, because there’s some people might not know okay what can I do to, to help out.
[00:19:17] Bongai: This is something that you know anybody can do. And, it doesn’t take much to help these girls. I can tell you, I know, you know, this is in other countries, you know, other African countries even, you know, the Asian community is still goes on as well. India, I know they also have child marriages, but I’m going to talk about Zimbabwe because I’m quite familiar with, you know, what goes on there.
[00:19:39] Paula: Yeah.
[00:19:40] Bongai: So, when people hear that, you know, you can sponsor a girl, a lot of people will think that, oh, it’s going to take thousands of dollars to have this girl continue on with school. So I’m here to tell you that, you know, in Zimbabwe, I mean, 300, dollars you can really have one girl stay in [00:20:00] school for the whole year. For the whole year in high school is four years. So I always tell people that if you can make a commitment of four years, 300 a year, that’s only 1200 for four years that you can change your life. You can change the trajectory of her life just by 1200. For four years, and then she finishes high school.
[00:20:24] Bongai: And once she’s done with high school she can choose to do what she wants to do. She can go to technical school, she can decide… a lot of girls that I have some of them will say they want to go on to college. They can do that. They want to go to university, they can do that. I have a girl right now who is almost done with… she wants to be a doctor. She’s in medical school. I have two girls that are doing pharmaceutical work. They are almost done. One of them wants to be a pharmacist. She wants to own her own pharmacy. So when you hear story like that, stories like that, and it’s be, it is because of a [00:21:00] $300 a year sponsorship. I mean, if you can’t be inspired by that, you know, I don’t know what can, you know, what can inspire you. And, you also get to get a relationship with this girl because you are sponsoring her. You know, I go to Zimbabwe all the time. I take pictures of them. I talk to them. I take videos of them and I share with the sponsors, you know, when I come back.
[00:21:24] Bongai: So that they can get to see, okay, where did my money go? You know, what is the girl do… how is she doing? The girl that I’m sponsoring with the money that I gave it, what is she doing? How is she doing? You develop a relationship with her and she grows up with you. A lot of them, but, oh, that’s my daughter. You know, they are calling them, you know, their daughters because they are.
[00:21:47] Paula: They do become…
[00:21:48] Bongai: So, I just want people to be inspired and, and not to think that it is difficult to do and to think that it’s impossible to do. It’s not. It is quite [00:22:00] simple and it is doable. And if I mean, I already say if I can do it. I’m not a rich person. I’m not, you know, if I can do it, anybody can do it. Yeah, anybody can do it.
[00:22:12] Paula: And so I want to leave our viewers with a proverb that Bongai shared with me. And that is, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others.
[00:22:27] Bongai: I’m into that.
[00:22:29] Paula: Yes,
[00:22:29] Bongai: I’m into that. I just love that proverb and it encourages me. It empowers me. It inspires me every time I read it or hear somebody say it. I know that, you know, this is going to work. And I also practice it because when I do what I do, I use that proverb because I always invite people to come and help me on this journey. Like when I have sponsors, I said, come along, come along with me. [00:23:00] I can’t do it by myself. If I do it by myself, I probably would have helped maybe one or two girls by now. But with all these sponsors that I’m going with, I have more than a hundred and forty girls that, are at a higher level because of me and these other people. So go with others. You go far. I’m not even done yet. We are still going. So
[00:23:25] Paula: Beautiful. So if anyone wanted to contact you online, do you have a website?
[00:23:31] Bongai: I have a website is www. endchildmarriages. org And I’m also on LinkedIn. If you type in end child Marriages, I pop up. I’m on Facebook. I am on Instagram. So people can, you can reach me, you know, almost on any platform, especially my website. Like I said, you know, I say it again, www. [00:24:00] endchildmarriages. org. You can reach me there.
[00:24:05] Paula: endchildmarriages. org?
[00:24:09] Bongai: Yes.
[00:24:10] Paula: And I’m sure you have a contact page there.
[00:24:12] Bongai: Yes.
[00:24:12] Paula: So that we can find you
[00:24:14] Bongai: Yes.
[00:24:15] Paula: On the different social media.
[00:24:16] Bongai: Yes.
[00:24:17] Paula: Forms.
[00:24:18] Bongai: Yes.
[00:24:19] Paula: Wow. I say always, every woman that comes on this show, I’ve had a man too, and it’s always. I always end, having learned something and I’m sure you, my viewers and listeners have learned as well. And if you’d like to be a guest on this show, you can reach out to me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com. I’m also on Instagram. My handle there is at chat_experts_podcast. I’m on Facebook, just search for me under Paula Okonneh and I am on LinkedIn as well as Paula Okonneh.[00:25:00]
[00:25:01] Bongai: Thank you so much Paula and I also want to say thank you for what you do as well for us women from all over the, you know, continent. I thank you for what you do for us, for giving us this platform to share with other women what we do and to learn from one another. So I thank you for this opportunity to come and talk to you. Thank you so much.
[00:25:21] Paula: Thank you. Again, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go
[00:25:30] Bongai: with us. Come along.
[00:25:34] Paula: Come along. Thank you.