![Community Empowerment]()
Community Empowerment
From the activities that were going on in this compound, one would confuse it for a funny circus road show. Mzee Leseikono’s* compound was all focused on the traditional healer who was trying to ‘fix Laisa’s’ recent acquired bareness! It had now been three years and still no sign of pregnancy! The spirits must have been wronged and that is why she was being cleansed. Deep down though, Laisa knew exactly what was going on, she had gone to the hospital for the five year family planning method. This was her well-guarded secret and if she had to she was going to die with it.
Four years ago, CHATs CORP Lokipi met Laisa, at first she was frail and to be honest looked years older than her age-mates. “At a tender age of twelve, I was married off by my uncles to an old man as a fifth wife and am currently a mother of three, and as the latest wife, I was obviously a close successor to all his properties,” Laisa bragged. She was at rock bottom and needed assistance, but she was not sure of the kind of help she needed.
“By now, all my lucky friends are done with the high school education, something that I did not get the opportunity to go through,” Laisa confirmed.
CORP Lokipi saw this young-looking mother all stressed up and could not understand her predicaments and since “I always try to help individuals and couples through counselling, I tried to enquire what her problems were, only for her to introduce herself as Laisa. She told me of her predicament and as a counselor, I planned to meet her the next day at the nearby dispensary so that we could discuss some few issues that included family planning relating it to ecological awareness where she was able to understand the rationale and how this could be an opportunity of bettering her life - and with that Laisa suddenly decided to settle for the five year contraception protection method. And that is how Laisa ‘acquired bareness’ together with the help of the facility nurse,” Lokipi remembers their first encounter.
“Later I was told of the activities at Laisa’s homestead and decided to visit and to my surprise, I met Mzee Leseikono,” Lokipi says.
“I have three trees growing in my compound and my wives are small scale farmers as they cultivate kales and onions of which we eat and others we sell as a source of income. All these thanks to my young wife-Laisa who after meeting with one Lokipi, showed her how to live healthy,’ Mzee Leseikono affirmed.
With this, Lokipi sensitized him on the importance of how to allow his wives to space their children “imagine then with all this domestic work at his fingertips they would have the strength to make his home the envy of his peers!!” And Lokipi slowly helped him understand the importance of contraceptives, after-which he agreed for all his five wives to be allowed to choose a method – after all the service was free and readily available. This now made Laisa safe with her long hidden secret.
“It is important that everyone understands the co-relation between saving the environment and planning our families!” said Lokipi.
“I heard, know and believe that the first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else and I am now on a mission to ensure that my people understand and practice the same,” Mzee Leseikono attested.
To support young mothers like Laisa and the community in general, CHAT has in the two months been able to reach a total of 19,734 individuals with Family Planning encompassing ecological awareness information of which a total of 8,685 women chose and took different family planning methods
“Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim.” » Martin Luther King, Jr.
![Share on Twitter]()
![Share on Facebook]()
