MINISTRY of education authorities in Kunene Region are aghast and currently at their wits’ end, following a suicide pact by two pupils at Okonguati Combined School near Opuwo, which left one of them dead and another admitted to hospital.
On Saturday afternoon, two 18-year-old female pupils from the village of Ovinjanje, one in Grade 6 and the other in Grade 9, agreed to take their own lives by drinking a concoction of unknown substance.
In a suicide note the Grade 6 pupil, who died as a consequence of the suicide, said she had decided to take her own life because she had been mistreated by her parents at home while the Grade 9 pupil alleged that she had been accused of being a witch, according to Education inspector for Opuwo circuit Chris Tjivikua.
Tjivikua told The Namibian yesterday that the Grade 6 pupil was found dead behind the Okonguati Clinic where she had gone to seek assistance after drinking the substance.
The Grade 9 pupil did not drink the substance at the school, preferring to do so only when she reached her homestead in Ovinjanje village, situated 12 kilometres from their school.
She drank the substance at night and her siblings alerted her parents who sought medical help for her. She is currently being treated at Oshakati State Hospital.
“Both girls wrote suicide notes. One alleged that she was accused of being a witch which turned into an animal at night while another alleged that her parents mistreated her at home,” Tjivikua said.
Acting Education director of Kunene Region Benny Eiseb said an investigation will be launched very soon as it was not the first time pupils at the school had committed suicide.
“An investigation will be launched and social workers will be dispatched to the school on Wednesday to help the pupils psychologically,” Eiseb said.
Three months ago, a girl at the same school, which has an enrollment of 400 pupils, committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree after she was accused of being pregnant by her schoolmates. The postmortem, however, showed that she was not pregnant.
In the suicide note she wrote that she did not want to embarrass her parents with the pregnancy, according to Tjivikua.
Both Eiseb and Tjivikua described the suicide pact as shocking, saying the suicide notes are with the police at Opuwo who are also conducting investigations.
The authorities held a meeting with the teachers at the school over the issue yesterday morning while another meeting with parents took place in the evening. – See more at: http://www.namibian.com.na/indexx.php?id=6250#sthash.q0Vewqs0.dpuf
