On a 2001 visit to Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika with the Norwegian Refugee Council we met the Provincial Education officer, in this part of Katanga separated from the rest by the cease-fire line. We went through the usual questions about school statistics and drop-out and when we came to the question of girls’ drop-out in upper primary, the official told us that it was all because of the phosphorus … in the lake. This stopped us in our tracks. Checking that we had not misunderstood his French we asked for some kind of elaboration.

As though it was the most obvious thing in the world he told us that the lake was full of phosphorus, so the fish were also. Boys ate the fish, which made them randy and they made all the girls pregnant. So they dropped out of school. As an explanation it had a certain weird logic, and of course it is a problem everywhere in Africa that as girls get older and enter puberty they drop out of school. They marry (‘are married’) or get pregnant, or simply get badly treated by boys and teachers as they show the signs of womanhood.

Cogent arguments have been put forward for having separate upper primary girls’ schools to get them through these years particularly in slum or refugee camp environments.