From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2013
Winnie from Nanyuki, Kenya writes: “Dear Editor, I read with keen interest your News Dispatch on how our young girls procure abortion at a high rate. This is shocking as a parent. I also read about the bad use of phones and internet.
I have just been reading today’s Standard (yesterday) how crooked doctors mint money from young girls who go for abortion and how commercial sex workers among minors is alarming in Kenya. I fail to understand why all these do happen and we are just watching”.
Fr Boniface Silayo from Kakamega, Kenya writes: “Dear Fr. Omolo thanks for the articles particularly those about the use of cell phone, internet cyber café as a source of entertainment instead of being means of communication and enrichment of knowledge. This behaviour is leading to many youths into a dangerous disease of addiction, psycho-neurosis similar to drug addicts, alcoholism, depression etc. It is important to recall the moral fabrics to these youths before it is too late.
It is also important to provide enough recreation facilities to the youth and even adult people living in towns. The social fabrics that existent sometimes back in our traditional African setting is rapidly dying away and many people are entering to solitude life without values. Please treat this apostolate with the all the Christian and African means of rebuilding values to the young generations and the cities dwellers who are so much exposed lonely lives”.
Sentiments of Winnie and Fr Silayo are the same to many of our readers. This topic has also been the centre of Fcebook debate since I posted it to my time line. It demonstrates how our society is concerned about our beloved young ones.
Winnie is referring to yesterday story on Standard Newspaper where nineteen-year-old Victoria reenacted how a ‘doctor’ at a clinic in Huruma pumped out blood from her womb using some straw-like plastic. She was 17 then.
Victoria didn’t even know she was pregnant until she started falling sick. She shared with a friend, and she said we need to check out and get rid of it, fast. They went to a local ‘doctor’ at the backroom of a two-roomed, plywood partitioned clinic asked her not to scream. The pain was unbearable. Then the bleeding was unstoppable.
After a few months, she was pregnant again, but unlike the first time when she was asked to pay Sh2,000, she was asked for Sh5,000. Many young girls like Victoria flock such backstreet clinics because it is shameful to be with pregnancy.
Some parents are the first to take their children in such deadly and risk clinics. Some deaths have been reported because some of these clinical officers are not qualified to perform abortion.
For Victoria abortion was the only option because when her parents realized she was pregnant they would disown her- And for parents who encourage their girls to abort do so because of shame or because they wanted them to continue with their school.
But women like Victoria rarely learn from mistakes. After her second abortion, Victorial joined a local high school and settled down for her studies. But soon she met a garbage collector who would smile at her everyday, then started buying her chips and giving her bus fare. After a while, she was “in love”. She fell pregnant for the third time. She was in Form Four. She went ahead and sat her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams last year while pregnant.
At eight months, she decided get rid of it. She paid Sh6,000 to another ‘doctor’ who told her that it was a small matter. This time, the doctor injected her hand and then used a tool that look like a crochet needle.
Winnie also raised a concern on commercial sex workers of underage girls taking place nearby towns of Mai Mahiu and Gilgil where the crisis is coupled with a recent increase in cases of defilement with majority of the minors affected belonging to the sex workers.
With a prevalence of 7.1 percent, the trading center emerged the top with the high number of truck drivers and commercial sex workers attributed to the number. The increase in cases of defilement in the area is recording between 3-5 cases per week. Mai Mahiu, Kihoto and Karagita estates are some of most affected areas with parental negligence blamed for the increase.
A survey conducted by Kenya’s national statistics bureau suggests 10,000 to 30,000 children under 18 are involved in commercial sex, according to Grace Banya, chief technical advisor for the International Labour Organization, which works towards eliminating child labour.
“What is terrifying is that some of the children involved in commercial sex are as little as 10 years old yet this is the worst form of child labour,” Banya told the Standard.
Part of the reason for involving in sex worker is due to Government’s failure to stem unemployment, which now stands at 70 per cent. Many parents can’t afford taking their children to school due to lack of employment. Many of these underage girls sex workers are school dropouts in class 8-their parents can’t take them to secondary schools or any course.
Kenya’s National Aids Control Council estimates there are more than 7,000 commercial sex workers in Nairobi alone while more are spread in main economic hubs of Kisumu, Eldoret and Mombasa as well as border towns of Busia and Malaba.
Approximately 7,000 sex workers operate in Nairobi per night with each having an average of 3-4 clients, which translates to between 21,000 and 28,000 sexual activities a night.
In Kisii township underage commercial sex workers is located at Kisii old bus stage, stretches downwards to the junction that connects to Kisii’s capital round about. This area is active from as early as 7pm, with skimpily dressed ladies some young enough to be in late primary or high school.
The street is lined up with parked trailers and trucks until the wee hours of the morning. These girls flock to truck drivers and turn boys who give them food and money after the service.
Around the area the lodging landlords are making a killing from the trade due to the unique way the workers ‘sell their goods’. As the night progresses the sex workers will be fairly distributed across the town CBD with higher concentration around major night spots and drinking dens selling cheap liquor. This scenario is more compounded on weekends starting Friday through Sunday, game nights and holiday seasons.
Apart from local sex workers, at least 50 girls, aged between ten and 15, are sold every week to tour operators and tourist hotels at Sh60,000 each as sex workers and to star in pornographic movies according to recent report released on Tuesday by the International Peace Institute (IPI) which says that the girls are trafficked or smuggled to Nairobi from North Eastern Province and Somalia.
The report says the girls are taken to massage parlours or beauty shops, where contacts from tour operators and hotels come to select the ones they wish to take as sex workers. Tour operators and hotel workers also operate as traffickers and brokers.
The report says the trafficked children are then taken to scheduled villas in Mombasa where sex tourism thrives. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has estimated that about 10,000 people are trafficked into Coast Province each year.
Mombasa is a destination for people trafficked from as far as Uganda, Somalia, Tanzania and Ethiopia. The report claims that most traffickers are Somalis and those who head and control the network are known as makhalis.
In Nairobi and Garissa, the report claims that some traffickers operate as travel agents for airlines. They pay taxes for their legitimate businesses to ensure that they do not attract queries from Government authorities. There are at least five to ten makhalis in northern Kenya and in Eastleigh in Nairobi.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002