On December 12, 2012 I got an
invite by one of MCF’s employees(Titus) to do an interview with a woman that
they are considering for test program. The program is built to assist young
women with children under the age of 5. I’ll go more into that later.
Now unfortunately, I’m not a
weathered interviewer nor have I been known for my note taking skills. So I don’t
have a verbatim story to tell you. I do have extensive notes of what this woman,
whose name is Elizabeth Esther Atieno, told me though. So although this will
not be present in a normal interview Q&A style, I can assure you that her
story and truth are here on this website.
I’ll introduce her as best I can
first. Elizabeth is 21 years old and has a 4 year old daughter named Brooklyn.
At the time of the election she was in Form III (Junior year) of High School.
She lived in Nairobi with her family. I’m not sure the exact location, but it
was clear that it was much better off than a home in Mathare.
Now some background to the story.
I think it’s possible that I've mentioned the 2007 election violence in
previous posts and also in some conversations with some of you. In short, the
Luo party which was not the incumbent party, had been leading in the election
polls. Heavily. Three days after the election, however, the results came out in
favor of the incumbent Kikuyu party. The country went into a tailspin, and some
politicians called for action. Action they got. There were riots and killings
everywhere. In Mathare, it was particularly bad. It was basically a tribal war
between the Kikuyu and Luo tribes. That’s the politics behind what happened to
Elizabeth the night the results were announced.
Elizabeth had been at a friend’s
house that night. She hadn’t even looked on the television. She hadn’t heard
the news. She left to walk home, and within half an hour she had already been
shot at 3 times. She began to hurry, and as she made her way she was approached
by 10-20 armed young men. She described them as a gang and couldn’t give me a more specific number
than that. She was so astonished and surprised that she couldn’t scream or
move. The men moved around her and beat her into unconsciousness. The next
thing she knew she was being taken advantage by many men, and she was
completely helpless. They knocked her out once more and left her in the street.
In the following weeks she learned
that she had become pregnant, and she tested positive for HIV. Her family
disowned her, and she moved in with a man who routinely beat her. When the baby
was born, she left him for fear that he would harm the child. So she went to
the streets of Mathare. Her days are now filled with the struggle to put food
on the table and keeping her child alive. Brooklyn did not test positive for
HIV when she was tested a couple years ago, however, she has been very sickly
of late and Elizabeth fears the worst.
There’s also a dualism living
within Elizabeth at the moment. In tears, she explained to me how she
constantly associates all of her problems with Brooklyn, but at the same time,
when she told me that Brooklyn might be HIV+ she almost couldn’t take it. She
said, “I have considered suicide of many occasions and Brooklyn has been the
only thing to keep me going. If I lost her, I don’t know if I could help it anymore.”
I did get some other information
on Elizabeth to lighten to situation because I wanted her to feel like I didn’t
just want her terrible story. I wanted to know her as a person. I learned that
she is a singer/songwriter and she used to do plays in school. She writes short
stories, poems, plays, and music. She also is proficient at the piano. Her
favorite artist is Mary J. Blige because she is true to her past and never
forget where she came from.
I asked her at the end of the
interview if there was anything in particular she wanted to say. She spoke for
a moment about the tribalism issues within the government. She wants people to
stand by the flag of their nation rather than the flag of their tribe. Her
final quote which I did write down was this:
“I would like if my baby could
live in a world where my child is not judged by her tribe. I have refused to
give her a tribal name for that reason. She is Kenyan. She is Kenyan.”
MCF is looking for Elizabeth to be
the face of a new program that they are beginning for young woman with children
under the age of 5. The idea is that they will facilitate the training of the
women in certain trades like basket weaving, tailoring, etc. In the meantime,
they would provide daytime car of the children. There are also plans for the
women to be given parenting classes and other basic social working skills. They
are starting with 10 mothers to begin.
MCF also has a couple of programs
dealing with the education of street children in the slums and also another new
program that is attempting to institute student governments in many of the
schools in and around Nairobi. There have been many issues with kids going on
strike within schools in the past few years, and by way of this “Children’s
Right of Say” program they are attempting to combat the issue.
Day to day, MCF is day center for
450 students and they have put 114 of those kids in different boarding schools.
They try to place many children back in their tribal homes, and they build
relationships with the families so that children with no place to go actually
do in fact have a place to go. Every kid gets basic medical attention. The
center hires a doctor to come in every so often to do checkups. If their
children are not in the Mathare area, they pay for public hospital services.
They keep children in school from Kindergarten all the way through University.
They host life and parenting skills programs and classes for many of the
parents in the slums. They work with roughly 70 different schools in the
greater Nairobi area.
Their programs are the Right of
Say pilot for children in schools, Young Mother’s with kids under 5, and they
put up multiple informal nurseries and day care centers. They are looking to
become self-sufficient in the next few years. They have plans to acquire a small
farm (shamba) and from their build their very own school.
In MCF, there are 4 workers, 3
from Kenya and one from Austria. They are great people, and as soon as I find
the right camera-to-computer cord, I will post their pictures up here.
It’s a good program, doing good
work. This is just a taste. If you have any questions, you can obviously send
me an email, but you can also look at these websites:
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/secure-8000-children-right-of-say-in-running-of-schools/donate/
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