With a nine-months-old baby on her back, Claudine Musabyimana, 16, can easily be mistaken for a grown-up mother. 

Her story is one of despair  but it is also a tale of courage and hope for a better future.

The single teenage mother, a resident of the rural Mukura Sector, Huye District, lives with her mother, a poverty stricken widow who is unable to fend for both her daughter and grandchild.

To earn a living, Musabyimana–like her mother–spends her days near a stone quarry on the border between Huye and Nyaruguru districts. She is one of the many people who live off breaking stones into construction gravels.

Every day, dozens of girls, mothers and young men gather near the quarries in Huye’s Mukura and Nyaruguru’s Ngera sectors. 

Armed with hammers and hoes, the residents spend hours breaking stones into  gravels as others extract construction stones from terrifyingly deep  quarries.

Piles of gravels belonging to different individuals line the road to the quarries located in a remote part accessed through a non-paved potholed road that links the quarries to the Huye-Akanyaru highway.

"This is my bread earner,” Musabyimana says as she takes a break from the taxing job.

It is about 2pm and the single mother who has been breaking stones since morning is about to return home to prepare food for her son.

"On a good day, I earn Rwf700. But if it was not for the regular breaks to look after my son I would earn as much as Rwf2,000,” Musabyimana says.

Shattered dreams

Musabyimana has been in the "business” for several years now having started during her  primary school days.

As a child, she dreamt of studying, completing university and then going out to look for ‘a nice job’ or start her own business.

"I wanted to be someone important in the community. I wanted to study but I was not very lucky,” she says. 

Back in 2012 at the age of 14, while still a primary student, Musabyimana got an offer that she thought would transform her life. She was given a ‘job’ offer to work as a house-help.

Having been born in a poor family, she had been engaged in stone quarrying besides her studies but thought the offer would earn her more money.

"I thought my dreams for a bright future were close to becoming a reality,” she recalls.

Without seeking advice from anyone, she dropped out of school, packed her belongings and headed to the capital Kigali. 

However, instead of finding a place in Kigali as she had earlier expected, Musabyimana found herself in Nyamata, Bugesera District.

On arrival, she met a much older man who operated a retail shop in the neighbourhood whom she stayed with.

Two months later, her friendship with the 28-year-old man resulted into an unwanted pregnancy that worsened her situation.

The man responsible for the pregnancy later disappeared and his whereabouts are still unknown although there are rumours that he relocated to Kigali and changed his mobile phone number.

Left with no choice, Musabyimana headed back to her home village.

With no more chances to get a job in town to enrol back in school, Musabyimana observed helplessly as her dreams were totally shattered.

"Getting impregnated at that age is the worst mistake I ever made,” she says in a soft, shy and sad voice. 

"I was lied to, tricked and betrayed by someone who was more mature than me. I do  not want any other girl to endure this bitter experience,” she adds.

Back into quarries

Once she was back to the village, Musabyimana gave birth to a baby boy. In the beginning, Musabyimana’s ageing mother helped her cope with the situation but as she struggled to raise enough food for the family, the teenage mother realised she needed to work to be able to raise her newborn.

She went back to the quarries and joined others in breaking stones to make construction gravels.

"This is something you can do knowing well that at the end of the day, you will put food on the table,” she says.

"At least it helps me to survive though from hand-to-mouth. I have no other choice,” she adds.

 Musabyimana says she can not boast of anything in life that she has got from the  activity she is involved in.

She says she is doing the exhausting yet less paying job to survive and cater for the basic needs of her child.

Yet her hope for a better future has never faded.

"Now that my chances to go back to school seem to be  fading by the day, I want to be a businesswoman,” she says.

Though there has not been a comprehensive study about the state of teenage pregnancies in the country, the issue poses a serious challenge to adolescent girls.

In a report released mid-last year, the Gender Monitoring Office (GMO) said that teenage mothers in Rwanda increased from 4 per cent of girls aged between 10 and 18 in 2005 to about 6 per cent in 2010.

Globally, it is estimated that every year in developing countries, 7.3 million girls under the age of 18 give birth, according to the Motherhood in Childhood report released last year by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

UNFPA warned in the report that due to teenage pregnancies, girls paid the price in missed opportunities while dozens of thousands of others die each year from such pregnancies.