When Jane Otai walks through the Nairobi slums, she is no stranger. No stranger to the women living in corrugated-metal shacks or worse, no stranger to the poverty, overcrowded conditions and health problems devastating families. Most of all, she is no stranger to the huge boost that family planning services can provide for the urban …
For pregnant women living in the slums of Nairobi, walking to the health facility to give birth can be a dangerous endeavor. The dim, narrow lanes hide real dangers. It’s not unusual for these women in labor to be assaulted and robbed by neighborhood youth as they travel. For young men like Dedun and Song, …
“Until I met the community health worker Penina, I did not know that one can have sex and not get pregnant,” said Wanjiru, a participant of the Tupange Family Planning program. Wanjiru is not different from many women living in the slums of Nairobi. Women in these communities believe that they have no control over whether or …
To be a girl in the Viwandani slum of Nairobi, Kenya, means sleeping in a one-room shack with as many as eight members of your family. It means convincing your parents that your monthly school fees are worth struggling to save for. It means scrounging for rags or old mattress stuffing to fashion a sanitary …
Today is World Toilet Day, a chance to think about the billions of people in the world who don't have toilets. People like me. I grew up in an informal settlement in Kenya in the 1970s. When nature called, my only option was to visit the community toilets. These were toilets you squat over. You'd pour …