At 49 years old, Rose Wakasa Mayeku wakes up each morning with immense gratitude. Not because life has been easy, but because she is alive.
Last December, after returning from an international conference in Morocco, she suffered a blood clot that led to a heart attack. Her teenage daughter, who happened to be home on school holiday, found her and made the frantic calls that saved her life.
“I thank God every day,” Rose told The Weight She Carries. “If my daughter had not been home, I would not be here.”
That close call did not end her work. It refined it; and she emerged with renewed mission and drive.
For more than 15 years, this Kenyan humanitarian, educator, advocate, and founder of Bugoma Teenage Mothers Empowerment Organization CBO – a grassroots organization supporting teenage mothers and women in crisis – has carried the stories of girls society prefers not to see. Over 600 teenage mothers have passed through her hands, her counseling room, her small center, and her heart.
Rose’s work is deeply personal. She is not speaking from theory. She is speaking from lived experience.
Silence and Fear
Born the first child and only girl in a family of seven children, Rose grew up in a rural Kenyan household shaped by strict discipline and cultural expectations.
“I was guarded,” Rose said.
Her mother, a primary school teacher, carried her own burden: the pressure of being a “modern” woman in a traditional setting.
“We lived at my father’s birthplace. So because she was a primary school teacher those days, and everybody wanted my dad to marry a second wife, they just naturally did like her,” she said.
Rose’s mother buckled under the social pressure. She constantly scrutinized and judged her children. Mistakes, real or perceived, were met with punishment, not conversation.
“One of us would make a small mistake, and my mom could beat all of us in the house and say, ‘You will make people laugh at me.’ So we could ask ourselves, ‘What does this mean? It’s not me who made the mistake, but when the punishment comes, even I am severely punished.’”
That created a lot of fear.
And then there was the silence, especially about puberty issues.
Rose’s first menstruation was a nightmare. It happened at school. Blood stained her sky-blue uniform. Laughter followed. No one had explained what was happening to her body.
“I ran home. I didn’t know what it was. I thought something was wrong with me.”
When she got home, she quickly took a bath and washed her uniform.
“I was afraid my mom would beat me. I used pieces of an old mattress but had a lot of questions. What was happening? Could something have hurt me?
Nothing was ever discussed. Other people purchased sanitary towels for Rose, and for the next 4 years, it was as if her mother didn’t know her daughter had started her period.
Pregnancy, Rejection, and Public Shame
At 17, while waiting to begin university, Rose became pregnant.
What followed was swift and devastating. Her father issued an ultimatum: either Rose left the home, or her mother would have to. She was sent to live with the man responsible. He was much older, unwilling, and resentful.
“I went to live with a man who felt I had been forced onto him. My dad had threatened him and said so many things, and now this man had no choice but to accept me. I didn’t speak in that house; I was not welcome. So it really became psychological torture.”
Two months later, Rose miscarried. While still in hospital, the man packed her belongings and sent someone to deliver them to her parents’ home.
“What brought her here is gone,” he said. “I’ll pay the bill, but from the hospital, she must go back to her home. I’m not ready for anything like marriage.”
Rose returned home carrying the grief of losing her baby, the stigma of a teen pregnancy, and the rejection from a man who made it clear he did not want her. Worse still, everyone in her extended family knew.
“In my own family, my own brothers saw me as ‘second-hand thing. The shame was louder than the pain.”
Education as Survival
Rose eventually enrolled at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton. To survive financially, she worked long hours through the student labour program. She found favour with one of her lecturers who saw her potential and gave her office work instead of more laborious work.
It took over five years, but she earned her degree.
That persistence became a pattern.
Later, Rose married, hoping for stability, but instead found herself trapped in a violent relationship. Hospital visits became routine.
“I felt I couldn’t leave because now this would be the second time leaving a man’s house. And this time, I already had two children.”
One day, a supervisor at her workplace told her plainly: “You must choose whether to live or die.”
After another trip to the hospital, Rose’s father was called and he went to see her. His heart broke when he saw her injuries.
“No way,” he said. “You have gone through hell. We are still here to receive you. Come home.”
Rose left with her children and never looked back. Today, her son is a university graduate, and her daughter is graduating this year.
Pain Turned to Purpose
Rose has spent the past 15 years ensuring that other girls, especially teenage mothers, are not socially discarded the way she once was.
“I have forged a totally new life focused on teen mothers and women in crisis.
Her organization begins with trauma counseling. Many girls arrive beaten, bleeding, abandoned, or having delivered babies in sugarcane fields. Some are survivors of incest. Many do not know who impregnated them.
“Seven out of ten girls cannot name the father. These are children abused by people close to them.”
Rose negotiates with hostile parents, places girls back into school, provides vocational training, and partners with caregivers so young mothers can learn without abandoning their babies.
A Rotary-supported vocational boarding program for 60 teenage mothers has had zero repeat pregnancies — proof, she says, that safety and stability change everything. Rose is the recipient of numerous awards, including a UN Humanitarian Award, Best Community Development Award from Kenya Leadership Awards 2025, World Humanitarian Award by Leaders of All Nations International, recognition from the Kenya Red Cross Society, and more.
Rose speaks boldly about reproductive health and accountability, challenging parents, teachers, and government officials alike.
In late 2023, a report indicated that 54 girls in a school in Bugoma County were pregnant or had given birth that year. Officials blamed high poverty levels in the region, with some perpetrators exploiting girls by providing small gifts in exchange for sexual favours.
When one government official told the media that no one should support the girls to go back to school, Rose was infuriated.
“Immediately after he finished talking, I called him. I have his number, and I said, ‘Look, tomorrow morning, I’m putting all of them on a bus. They’re coming to stay with you in your house. These teenage mothers did not get pregnant by themselves.’”
A week later, he apologized and funded the university education for three teenage mothers.
The Hidden Crisis No One Wants to Talk About
In her community, children born to teenage mothers, especially boys, face lifelong rejection. Some are denied cultural rites. Others are told outright that they do not belong.
The result is a quiet epidemic of male youth eliminating themselves.
“These boys grow up knowing they are unwanted,” Rose said. “They don’t know their fathers. They are told they carry shame.”
It is a crisis rarely documented and rarely discussed.
Looking Ahead
Rose has known rejection, yet she remains grounded. Her work, her children, and her faith have sustained her. She believes her survival, especially after her recent heart attack, is purposeful.
“This was an attempt to take me out,” she says. “But God said no.”
Her vision now is a permanent one-stop center: shelter, skills hub, and healing space for teenage mothers and women in crisis, built on land she already owns.
She is training former beneficiaries to lead. She dreams of social enterprise: tailoring uniforms, producing reusable sanitary pads, drying and selling food products to sustain the work long-term.
“I want this to outlive me,” Rose said.
On December 31st, as she has done for eight consecutive years, she gathered teenage mothers for an end-of-year celebration.
“God has always provided,” she says. “Even when there is nothing in the account.”
Rose’s story proves that all things are possible with God. Even though she was once silenced, her voice is now stronger than ever and represents countless teen mothers whose lives have been changed for the better.
Vimbai E. is a content marketer, ghostwriter, and the founder of The Weight She Carries. With hundreds of articles and stories publishing online, in print and for broadcast, her love of language and storytelling shines through every piece of writing that bears her name.