14 Mar 2016

Women Against Rape (WAR) has launched an anthology of short stories written by 20 students from five Secondary Schools of Maun.

The book titled Reflections, on child, Early and forced marriages, Anecdotes from Botswana, have stories that vividly portray the struggle that young girls go through in the form of abuse.

Some of the short stories in the book are A firm of Girls by Ashley Rainy which talks about sex slavery, Bride number Three by Refilwe Shamba and The Man, my Husband which is about forced marriage.

The project, coordinated by WAR, an organisation that deals with issues of gender disparities, was funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives to the tune of P103 000, according to WAR coordinator Peggy Ramaphane.

 Ms Ramaphane said the project was aimed at addressing issues of abuse such as forced marriages which resulted with some students forced to abandon school.

She observed that Maun and Ngamiland as a whole had such incidents, therefore the short stories project which chronicles the woes of abused children was a grandeur achievement.

The project, she said challenged students to reflect on how they viewed issues of sexual abuse of girls.

One of the facilitators for the creative writing skills, a renowned poet and author Legodile Seganabeng noted that the students were “blessed” to have their works published at a younger age.

Mr Seganabeng said their job as facilitators was to groom the students to write pieces worth reading. He said the exercise was substantial since it would encourage some students to pursue a writing career. The 20 students were from Maun Senior Secondary School and junior schools of Moeti, Tshwaragano, Tsodilo and Sedie.

In an interview, a Moeti secondary student Bofelo Mokomoto who wrote; The man, my Husband, said the project was beneficial to her as she aspires to be a writer of repute with many published books.

Bofelo also said she would encourage other students to take creative writing seriously.

Another student, Neo Kebalepile who wrote Weep No More my Baby also said the project was worthwhile to her.

Neo said she learnt a lot on creative writing and issues that contributed to early marriages and abuse. ENDS