Saving Kenya's Environment Through Family Planning

Sameli* is a pretty 25 year old and asingle mother of five children living in Umoja slums around the ranches in Archers Post, an all-female matriarch slum and a sanctuary for homeless survivors of violence against women and young girls running from early/forced marriages. “I had been married for 10yrs, but ran to the slums as my parents had married me off to an old Samburu man who used to molest me as he claimed that he paid my parents enough wealth that he was free to do whatever he wanted on me. This is the only place I call home, I have to provide basic needs including food and shelter for my kids as am the sole breadwinner,” Sameli recalls with tears rolling down her cheeks. “The only way to feed my kids is through charcoal burning –of which I and my fellow women have exhausted all the trees around and we have to walk far away in search of more trees,” says Sameli, as they sat under a tree explaining the negative impact charcoal burning causes to the environment and future natural resource conservation to Jane and Susan–CHAT’s Family planning &ecological activist.

“Looking around, there is heavy soil erosion resulting to erratic rainfalls, thus famine, lack of water etc. and hence, unpredictable deaths. All these suffering would be reduced by practicing family planning which has various choices,” Jane explains. It took a lot of time for CHAT mobilizers to provide thorough information for Sameli to understand and forget the myths and misconceptions she had in mind about the artificial family planning contraception methods and she finally chose the five (5) years implant. Afterwards, she ran back to the slums and called other fellow charcoal burners to come get important information from the mobilizers and five more women received five yrs. Implants and left while discussing on how to redirect their efforts towards small scale business instead of destroying the children’s treasure-environment. “Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, maybe we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment,” Sameli said happily.

“I support Sameli’s saying as we have noted that high birth rates are common amongst schoolgirls as young as 13 years old and an average woman getting 7-9 children within a life span of 30 years of age especially in most of the often poor and remote communities we have visited with the motor mobile. These many children not only gives pressure to these hopeless women but also to the environment, thus scrambling for limited resources and family planning is the only cure to women’s suffering and environmental pressure in these remote, disadvantaged and vulnerable areas, as it’s the norm in so many underserved poor communities as 40% of maternal health issues could be mitigated if women could access contraception protection,” CHAT nurse Nunu confirmed.

 Between June- August 2016, thanks to your donations (cost shared) CHAT reached 13,335 individuals with family planning/ ecological awareness information, of which a total of 1,237 patients were treated for different conditions & 6,855 women with different FP contraception methods of their choice in 9 excluded counties in Kenya.

CHAT continues to empower the communities it servesas, “Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth,” World Scientists