Adventures in Africa
Stressful/Eventful Day in Bungoma
Published Saturday, July 30, 2005 by orange you glad | E-mail this post
(Written from Bungoma after a stressful day)
I don’t even know what to say. First of all, we left early, early this morning to catch the plane to Kisumu. The flight was fine (there was actually more leg room than I’ve ever experienced and the seats were leather) on East African Airlines. Were picked up at the airport and driven the hour and a half north up to Bungoma, near the Ugandan border. The number of people on bicycles was astounding. Sugar cane and maize are the main crops and the land is lush and fertile. We went to the Youth for Youth (Y4Y) office in the regional government compound.
To explain Y4Y’s program and our involvement with them, this is a partner program that CSA is involved with coordinating and ensuring funding, alongside with Paula, a professor from UCLA who is the force (and much of the funding behind the project). The way Y4Y work’s is that it strives to form a peer to peer training and information program which trains kids in secondary schools in this highly effected region of Kenya to teach their peers about adolescent health regarding reproduction, including services available to them, myths, birth control, and safe sex. Considering the instance of HIV is close to 30% in this region and close to half of the children in the area have lost one or both parents and growing numbers of HIV cases in the PRIMARY and secondary schools - these are important issues. There are also serious issues regarding teen pregnancy as girls in the region are already under-educated and with close to 1 in 4 girls in a single class getting pregnant - there is a very serious lack of information regarding preventing these kind of statistics - save for abstinence promotion which is not really working (obviously). Their program does promote abstinence but also informs the kids of what birth control is, and what STDs are, as well as who they can contact for help. This information coming from their peers allows a freer discussion to take place. In addition, they are able to mentor primary schools (where there are a surprising number of pregnancies amongst girls 14 and under) as well as partnering up with health care facilities to ensure that the youth coming in for assistance are actually receiving adequate care rather than being sent home because they are too young to be treated for these STDs and questions about birth control.
Rosemarie and I were introduced to some officials and then, after a quick lunch, were taken to several of the schools to have quick meetings with the head teachers/principles who were assisting on running the program, and actually met quite a bit of the staff in several of the schools. At one primary school, the students were out on recess and as I was there to document the visit and gather some photos for the website, I snapped a few photos of the kids. Well, as I took a photo of a few of them, suddenly I thought I was in the middle of the wildebeest migration. The earth shook as dozens of kids ran towards and around me, wanting to pose for photos. I took a few and then showed them the photos on the view screen of my camera. More pandemonium. Once the kids were more comfortable they found great interest in my hair and would touch it and then say “Ewwww!”. Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule so I couldn’t stay there very long but it was an interesting stop. In this part of the country, wazoongu (foreigners) are unabashedly stared at. And all the kids want to talk to you and practice their English.
After that fun and light moment it was a bit of a crash down to the reality of the situation in Kenya and many countries in Africa as I had the opportunity to sit in on a focus group conducted by Y4Y with some teachers at a school that is participating in their program. I think that the teachers are actually the biggest hurdle in this fight against AIDS and reproductive health in this region. They had no idea what they were talking about. Most of them had never seen a condom before. They felt that birth control pills gave girls cancer and any kind of birth control should not be administered to girls until they HAD HAD A FEW CHILDREN, just to see their level of fertility. Well, seeing as it’s not uncommon for girls in this region to have 2 or 3 children before they reach the age of 20 (outside of marriage), then I would say that they don’t have to worry about how fertile the girls are. The things I heard! Like one teacher, when asked whether a broken condom was able to prevent the spread of HIV, answered by saying that people who have sex before marriage, regardless of condoms used or not, will get AIDS because that’s what sinning does - it gives you AIDS. This is a teacher who students go to for questions about these kinds of topics. It’s just so unbelievably frustrating. I understand that they don’t want people having premarital sex, and that they don’t want it to be encouraged. However, knowing that it is HAPPENING and that girls are getting pregnant and that STDs and the level of HIV infection is SO HIGH - I can’t understand why people are opposing this kind of education - it’s a health issue - it’s not a matter of education. How many millions of people die here because of this and they are still so very hesitant to even acknowledge that it is a problem. Many people who contract AIDS don’t even go and get testing even when the symptoms are clear. They refuse to admit that they have it. And guess what! They spread it around to their wives and girlfriends and everyone else. It was just hard to see that there are these programs out there to combat this problem, and it is being met with so much resistance, despite the horrendous damage it has done to this continent.
Not that everyone here is like that - pretty much everyone I’ve had a chance to meet who is Kenyan and working in the NGO sector is amazing. And some of the teachers we met at the other schools were so supportive of the program and THANKFUL for the results it has had, both as educational and health tools, but as giving the students something that is their own and giving them accountability and a part in the fight. So, it was a very eventful day. I’m a bit spent. Tomorrow is more meetings and sitting in on a presentation to some ministers before flying home on an evening flight. Now to sleep (under mosquito net).
I don’t even know what to say. First of all, we left early, early this morning to catch the plane to Kisumu. The flight was fine (there was actually more leg room than I’ve ever experienced and the seats were leather) on East African Airlines. Were picked up at the airport and driven the hour and a half north up to Bungoma, near the Ugandan border. The number of people on bicycles was astounding. Sugar cane and maize are the main crops and the land is lush and fertile. We went to the Youth for Youth (Y4Y) office in the regional government compound.
To explain Y4Y’s program and our involvement with them, this is a partner program that CSA is involved with coordinating and ensuring funding, alongside with Paula, a professor from UCLA who is the force (and much of the funding behind the project). The way Y4Y work’s is that it strives to form a peer to peer training and information program which trains kids in secondary schools in this highly effected region of Kenya to teach their peers about adolescent health regarding reproduction, including services available to them, myths, birth control, and safe sex. Considering the instance of HIV is close to 30% in this region and close to half of the children in the area have lost one or both parents and growing numbers of HIV cases in the PRIMARY and secondary schools - these are important issues. There are also serious issues regarding teen pregnancy as girls in the region are already under-educated and with close to 1 in 4 girls in a single class getting pregnant - there is a very serious lack of information regarding preventing these kind of statistics - save for abstinence promotion which is not really working (obviously). Their program does promote abstinence but also informs the kids of what birth control is, and what STDs are, as well as who they can contact for help. This information coming from their peers allows a freer discussion to take place. In addition, they are able to mentor primary schools (where there are a surprising number of pregnancies amongst girls 14 and under) as well as partnering up with health care facilities to ensure that the youth coming in for assistance are actually receiving adequate care rather than being sent home because they are too young to be treated for these STDs and questions about birth control.
Rosemarie and I were introduced to some officials and then, after a quick lunch, were taken to several of the schools to have quick meetings with the head teachers/principles who were assisting on running the program, and actually met quite a bit of the staff in several of the schools. At one primary school, the students were out on recess and as I was there to document the visit and gather some photos for the website, I snapped a few photos of the kids. Well, as I took a photo of a few of them, suddenly I thought I was in the middle of the wildebeest migration. The earth shook as dozens of kids ran towards and around me, wanting to pose for photos. I took a few and then showed them the photos on the view screen of my camera. More pandemonium. Once the kids were more comfortable they found great interest in my hair and would touch it and then say “Ewwww!”. Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule so I couldn’t stay there very long but it was an interesting stop. In this part of the country, wazoongu (foreigners) are unabashedly stared at. And all the kids want to talk to you and practice their English.
After that fun and light moment it was a bit of a crash down to the reality of the situation in Kenya and many countries in Africa as I had the opportunity to sit in on a focus group conducted by Y4Y with some teachers at a school that is participating in their program. I think that the teachers are actually the biggest hurdle in this fight against AIDS and reproductive health in this region. They had no idea what they were talking about. Most of them had never seen a condom before. They felt that birth control pills gave girls cancer and any kind of birth control should not be administered to girls until they HAD HAD A FEW CHILDREN, just to see their level of fertility. Well, seeing as it’s not uncommon for girls in this region to have 2 or 3 children before they reach the age of 20 (outside of marriage), then I would say that they don’t have to worry about how fertile the girls are. The things I heard! Like one teacher, when asked whether a broken condom was able to prevent the spread of HIV, answered by saying that people who have sex before marriage, regardless of condoms used or not, will get AIDS because that’s what sinning does - it gives you AIDS. This is a teacher who students go to for questions about these kinds of topics. It’s just so unbelievably frustrating. I understand that they don’t want people having premarital sex, and that they don’t want it to be encouraged. However, knowing that it is HAPPENING and that girls are getting pregnant and that STDs and the level of HIV infection is SO HIGH - I can’t understand why people are opposing this kind of education - it’s a health issue - it’s not a matter of education. How many millions of people die here because of this and they are still so very hesitant to even acknowledge that it is a problem. Many people who contract AIDS don’t even go and get testing even when the symptoms are clear. They refuse to admit that they have it. And guess what! They spread it around to their wives and girlfriends and everyone else. It was just hard to see that there are these programs out there to combat this problem, and it is being met with so much resistance, despite the horrendous damage it has done to this continent.
Not that everyone here is like that - pretty much everyone I’ve had a chance to meet who is Kenyan and working in the NGO sector is amazing. And some of the teachers we met at the other schools were so supportive of the program and THANKFUL for the results it has had, both as educational and health tools, but as giving the students something that is their own and giving them accountability and a part in the fight. So, it was a very eventful day. I’m a bit spent. Tomorrow is more meetings and sitting in on a presentation to some ministers before flying home on an evening flight. Now to sleep (under mosquito net).
Gotta love the church for that.