dawn: adventures of a journeywoman

Many of you know I’m pretty passionate about women’s health. Last Monday and Tuesday were pretty much a culmination of this passion as I conducted a two-day seminar for the members of the Shikokho Women Group and five female secondary students. The last few weeks I’ve been working on developing five sessions on women’s mental and sexual health. With the help of two of the secondary school teachers, we selected five female leaders in the school to co-teach these sessions with five women from the Women Group. But to be politically correct, I had to invite the entire Women Group to my seminar-which meant buying 10 cabbages, 16 kg of ugali flour, 3 kg of cooking fat, 12 kg of meat, 5 kg of sugar…and 4 chickens for the lunches. I think I hosted the Luyia feast of the century. Also, I’m pretty sure I gave many Kenyans their first look at a mzungu (white person) carrying three chickens upside down in one hand over the market and through the woods. Now most of the women in the group are Quakers well over the age of 50, so that made talking about the five kinds of sex all that much more interesting. (I had to explain what three of them were).
But the best part was the enthusiasm from the joy-filled revelations. “So what is actually coming out of my body every month?” “You mean that’s what I look like inside!?” “How can I teach my daughters to be more assertive?” “Why don’t you urinate on a burn again?” “I think from now on we will not just yell at our children but encourage them to try challenging things so they can build this self-esteem you talk about.” “But if a pregnant woman takes a rest, people will say, ‘What? Are you carrying a mzungu baby?’” (my answer to the last one after I stopped laughing was to rest in secret so no one will know what kind of baby you are carrying). But the best comments were on my evaluation forms. I’m not sure my translator did the best job with the question: “What would you improve about session 1: Self-respect?” because I had answers such as (I couldn’t make this up): “I will improve in sex,” “I improve if by the breasts to be big,” and “Not to drink drugs”.
The highlight of the seminar was by far the condom game. To prepare for this game, I wrote 10 true or false statements about sexual health, STDs, or HIV/AIDS on slips of paper and stuck them inside condoms. I then (picture this) blew up the condoms like balloons and tied them off. Then I would start some rocking Luyia (it’s actually very famous) music and we would pass the condom around the room until I stopped the music. Whoever got caught with the condom in their hand had to pop it, read the statement, and decide if it was true or false.
But I also learned a lot about the importance of honoring your elders. The secondary girls and I had to serve the women all of their food, give them extra whenever they wanted, wash their hands, and clean their dishes. At first, I felt the women were being very bossy and a little rude but then I realized that they had earned it through lives of serving others raising ten plus children (the Luyias up until a few years ago had the highest birthrate in the world), and carrying sacks of lituma/maize on their heads.
But as wonderful as Monday and Tuesday were, Thursday blew them out of the water. Thursday morning I went with a few other interns (for moral support) to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Mukumu, which is the nearest hospital that can do surgery, the nearest place with an ambulance/vehicle, the nearest VCT (voluntary HIV counseling and testing facility), and the nearest place to receive ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs that can enable HIV positive patients to live healthy lives for 20 plus years). But it’s 10 VERY ROUGH km away. But in the course of an hour, I met with the matron (head nurse) and the administrator and explained our predicament. We have people dying right and left of HIV/AIDS but no testing or treatment and if there is an emergency in our village, it is near impossible to get out and get treatment (much less pay for it). In that short hour, they agreed to begin VCT outreaches at our clinic (starting this Tuesday!) and agreed to write up a contract and set up a deductible account for use of ambulance and treatment of emergencies (surgery if needed) of all of our patients. They then gave me all the hospital numbers to call, including the administrator’s, head doctor’s, and head nurse’s mobile to call when we have emergencies. God answered all my prayers and dreams for the future Shikokho in one morning!
But there was a catch: money. St. Elizabeth’s is a private institution. And hardly anyone in Kenya provides free medical care no matter what. They won’t even do life-saving emergency surgery if you don’t have the proper amount of cash: which is pretty hard for most people in my community to come up with. So to convince them, I said I had access to American donors who’d be willing to set up an emergency fund with them that they’d deduct from and give monthly reports of its usage. Also, for a monthly VCT day, it will cost around $70 U.S. (once again) mainly to account for the transport issue. I’m footing the bill on Tuesday with some leftover workplan money, but am hoping to drum up enough community support to convince them this should at least a monthly event. To this end, I bought 100 bars of (if I may say so myself) lovely, quality soap as an incentive for all who come to get tested on Tuesday. Not only that, but since it rained yesterday the only way to get down the road was by walking, so I carried the box on my head, African style (which earned me more brownie points from young men on the way who are constantly proposing). Today I held a meeting for the orphans’ families explaining that if they bring their child, they will go to the front of the line. Without testing, many of the guardians aren’t sure what the parents died of and we see some of the same kids in the clinic week after week. But I held the meeting out of fear of what implications a positive test could have for the kids. The last thing I want to leave Kenya with are poisoned orphans because of my zeal for testing. Hopefully this meeting with the counseling they receive will create understanding about this sensitive issue.
My week has been jam-packed with many more amazing stories that I don’t have time or room to share, so here’s a sampling: taking my African mother (this has begun to be confusing because people really think we’re related) to Kisumu to gawk with her in the cooking utensil aisle in the biggest store in Kenya, watching a boda boda (bicycle taxi) race, enjoying the flirtations of musei (old men) clowns, assuring my sister that she doesn't need to be circumcised like her older brothers were on Saturday, bargaining so far as to throw in a half pack of oreos to reduce the price by 100 KSh, and watching the sunrise on Lake Victoria while the fishermen cast their nets. I can’t believe in a week I’ll be “Out of Africa” and in school. But stranger things have happened.
Until then, the craziness continues...
"But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love and the hope of salvation" 1 Thessalonians 5:8