Saving Kenya's Environment Through Family Planning

*Not their real names

As the CHAT motor mobile team was settling into camp in Ntepes in Samburu after a days-long work, Nurse Ann noticed CORP Ntoijoni was seated at the furthest end with a woman. They were in deep conversation. She was curious thus decided to approach them. She found *Lesempa looking all scared but at the same time hopeful.  She wanted to know why the lady had taken her time to come to the clinic only to sit there reluctantly, not sure what to do. She led them to the tent so they could talk more.

*Lesempa had come to the clinic to find a solution. She is 35 years old and has ten children. She doesn’t want any more. She was married at 20 years, which was an achievement since her sisters and peers mainly were married at only 15.

Her reason for getting FP was that she wanted to be able to send all her children to school, all the way to the end. Her youngest child is just 1 ½ years old, and she says she is scared if she has any more children, she won’t be able to afford school for them all. She had seen how Ntoijoni was able to educate her children and had learnt that recently, one had just finished high school and was attending computer classes in Maralal town (That was such a big deal to *Lesempa) . From the frequent interactions CORP Ntoijoni had with *Lesempa, she always encouraged her to plan her family whilst consideration of her recourses. Once Ntoijoni correlated the success of her children to how she planned her family, Lesempa started to see the light. She began to understand that the most significant benefit of FP is for her children’s future.

She was initially scared that her husband would be adamant and say that she had to continue having children. But to her surprise, he was in full support of her going for FP which was so admirable. She had never used FP before and said she used to fear because she heard lots of stories that it would do bad things to the body and make one sick. At the end of it all, Lesempa was able to get a five-year implant that would protect her from getting more children.

Thanks to GG support, in the past three months, CHAT was able to reach a total of 12,134 individuals with behaviour change information (bcc)  with 3,912 family planning clients receiving different contraception methods, of which 3,001 chose the long-term methods - 3/5-years protection against unwanted pregnancies.

“Family planning is an integral part of development planning. It is an essential part for the reason that you cannot hope to plan other forms of production if you cannot plan the production of the main resource – the human beings.” Mwai Kibaki