Mandasi were her downfall.

The fried doughnuts that can be bought on every corner in Nairobi's slums destroyed Sara's life, that's how she sees it. But actually, hunger ended Sara's dreams.

She often went hungry, her mother's work in a laundry did not bring in enough income for the small family to buy enough food.

The father has been dead for ten years. But there was a friend.

The man who always slipped Sara a few donuts wanted something in return.

The 16-year-old girl lives in Mathare, the second largest slum in the Kenyan capital.

She had nothing.

He still found something he wanted from her.

She slept with the man.

Theresa White

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Now her stomach is bulging under the white T-shirt, sixth month.

Sara, whose real name is different, is looking at her lap while talking to a consultant of the project Linda Binti of the German Doctors in Nairobi.

It is embarrassing for her that she too is now one of those who have to take her school exams in the coming winter when she is very pregnant, that she too has to leave afterwards to look after her baby.

Linda Binti – "Protect the daughter"

Linda Binti is Swahili and means "Protect the daughter".

The project is located in the Mathare slum and is managed by the German Doctors, for whose commitment in the Nairobi slums donations are being collected this year with the “FAZ readers help” campaign.

The German Doctors want to set up a clinic in the Korogocho slum and expand projects such as Linda Binti.

They are already offering help to young women in both slums.

One in five girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in Kenya is pregnant or already has a child.

That's what the official statistics of the East African country say.

There are more in the slums.

And since the pandemic interrupted supply chains, prices have risen, schools have been closed for a long time and people are suffering even more hunger, the number has continued to grow, says Dominic Oyugi, who heads the Linda Binti project as a local worker.

His goal: to prevent teenage pregnancy.

That's pretty difficult.

Because contraceptives are banned by the constitution for minors in Kenya, which is heavily influenced by Catholicism.

So the employees go to the schools in Mathare and Korogocho, educate and preach abstinence.

They also teach the children how to defend themselves.

Because sexual assault and rape are the order of the day.

"What do you want to be?"

If all this goes wrong, Linda Binti has to pursue a new goal: to look after the pregnant women, medically, psychologically and with all the bureaucracy.

Six months after the birth they try to send the girls back to school.

Social worker Anne Ochieng is now planning the same thing for Sara, who has come with her mother to the inconspicuous, six-storey building in the north of Mathare for counseling.

"When prevention fails, we are always pro-life," says Anne Ochieng.

She has to say that.

Abortions are also banned in Kenya.

Very few women do, but it can be extremely dangerous as sticks or hangers are used to scrape the unborn child out of the uterus.

Adoption is also not an option – according to the law, young mothers may only give up their child for adoption when they are of legal age.

"Once they've spent a few years with the baby, they don't give it away," says George Audi, who, as country director, is responsible for all German Doctors projects in Kenya.