Common Hope for Health

Ugunja commemorates International Women's Day

 

"If you want to perform a difficult task, employ a man. If you want to perform an impossible task, employ a woman."

"The bodies were then eaten by dogs. It was so heartbreaking as a mother to witness sons and daughters killed. It is only women who undergo labor pain."

Women members of St. Paul's Health Centre's HIV program voluntarily shared their experiences of living with HIV: "Being positive is not the end of life."

 

 

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Dear Friends of Common Hope for Health,

The new year has brought sudden, sobering challenges to Common Hope for Health and its Kenyan sister organization, Ugunja Community Resource Center. The political stalemate and incendiary violence that have paralyzed Kenya since the disputed presidential election on December 27th have humbled all of us at CHH and UCRC. Our priorities, so bright and sanguine at the end of 2007, have taken on a much harder edge: tend to the maimed; feed and shelter the homeless; comfort the angry and aggrieved; and most of all, stop the senseless violence and destruction that have torn apart this beautiful country and its beautiful people.

Thankfully, on February 28th, Kenya's political leaders signed a power-sharing deal that promises at last to bring an end to the political nightmare that has engulfed Kenya.

On reflection, we have learned an important lesson: We must take nothing—least of all, peace and stability—for granted. St. Paul's Health Center, the joint initiative of Common Hope for Health and Ugunja Community Resource Center, had operated since 2005—and UCRC itself since 1987—in a bubble of protective peace. That bubble has burst.

Truth be told, for years, every passing peaceful day was its own minor miracle. Kenya has long been fractured along steep, jagged lines of wealth and poverty, opportunity and powerlessness, health and sickness—chasms as dramatic on the country's social landscape as the Great Rift Valley on its physical landscape. A country cannot hold together under such conditions. In December, the grinding, shifting tectonic plates of Kenya's inequalities at last ripped apart at their seams, and the resulting quake had devastating consequences.

Common Hope for Health and Ugunja Community Resource Center have tried earnestly to respond with justice, solidarity, and vision in this setting of violence and suffering. At a time when many US-based nongovernmental organizations have drastically scaled-back their activities in Kenya, we have garnered international recognition for our far-reaching, holistic, community-driven response to the political crisis. We must always do more, but let us also celebrate small victories: in two exhausting months, against all odds, we—a student-led nonprofit in the US and a villager-led community organization in rural Kenya—have impacted thousands of lives and spurred an entire province to mobilize for peace and reconciliation. Never have I been more proud to belong to such a dynamic, humble, authentic community of change. Thank you for being a vital part of this community. Please continue to follow along with our activities through this website.

Even if the recent power-sharing deal holds and the acute crisis ends, the journey to recovery will yet be long. There is now—and will continue to be—an immense need for healing—not only in the literal sense of treating the sick and consoling the traumatized, but also in a broader social sense. The deep, malignant structural pathologies of modern Kenyan society—extreme poverty, widespread joblessness, gender inequality, land dispossession, disease and hunger, lack of education, abuse of democracy—must be addressed. Healing these ills—these cancers—is key to healing the body and spirit of the Republic of Kenya and, indeed, the whole human family.

This is the restated task before us: Common Hope for Healing. The effort has already begun, and your support has been critical. Thank you. Let us continue to struggle together—hands and hearts intertwined with the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the homeless, the imprisoned, the sick, the poor, the orphaned, the bereaved, the dispossessed—toward a world in which all members of the human family are accepted and embraced with love.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Scott Lee, MPhil, MPA
President
Common Hope for Health

 

 

Peace Deal is Reached

Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images

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Siaya Peace Weekly, Issue 4

 

What Happened to Daddy and Mummy?

By DAMAS OGWE

What started as a normal day for two young girls has turned into a bad dream.

Their parents left for work one January morning and never returned home that evening as they usually would.  To make matters worse, the following morning, an angry youthful crowd gathered outside their house in Kisumu wanting to burn it down. Reason: the owner of the plot which housed several families was from the ‘wrong community’ hence his property was not wanted.

The youth began by removing the roofing materials and doors. Occupants of the houses left. Some salvaged a few items that they could manage to carry. For 16-year-old Nicole and her younger sister Nancy, the shock was too much for them to even think of carrying anything from the house. They left with nothing, not even books.

This is what the two girls have gone through during the post-election crisis which has hit Kenya. They are feeling the full brunt of it and they never even voted.

What happened to their parents? “We have no idea," says Nicole. "Mum was a fish seller in Kisumu while Dad used to repair plastic items such as troughs and buckets all over town. When they did not come back that evening, we thought that hey may have been held up in the riots that had rocked the town." But three weeks later, they have not seen either of them.

With nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep, the two girls left and flagged down a truck which was loaded with mattresses. At least they could remember their maternal grandmother's home to be somewhere near Ulwan Primary School--a stone’s through away from Ugunja. The driver pitied them and dropped them at Ugunja from where they asked and found the way to their maternal grandmother’s place.

Nicole’s elder sister, Jane Atieno (17), had already moved out of their house in Kisumu and lived with a friend nearby. One day she left to see the family and was shocked to find only a shell left where the house stood.

She re-united with her sisters on the 10th of February at their maternal grandmother’s home. Their grandfather, 74-year-old Michael Adipo, is a sickly retiree. With his meager pensions he cannot fend for the new additions to the family.

 

Read the full issue:

 

Election Crisis: Official Update, February 18, 2008

 

Relief and Peace-building

Despite a momentary calm, in Siaya district, and in all of Kenya, the feeling of insecurity and vulnerability continues to pervade.  Kenyans have lost their homes, their income, their access to food, and in many cases, their health.  UCRC is dedicated to providing acute relief, but as an independent community-based organization, resources are extremely limited.  The Kenyan Red Cross has provided a mere 15 bags of maize to support UCRC’s relief work; otherwise, UCRC is operating with virtually no assistance from international relief organizations.  UCRC and CHH have reached out to these large organizations, but we have been met with demands for formal surveys with “hard numbers and statistics” to prove that there is genuine need.  We believe such a response reflects a morally egregious strategy of inaction; in emergency situations, to demand data and proof is to imply that first-responders should be consumed more with passive observation and analysis than with the immediate matter of saving lives and alleviating acute suffering.

In the absence of support from large organizations, Ugunja Community Resource Center is uniting with indigenous, citizen-led groups to respond to the election crisis.  UCRC staff members are currently in Nairobi for national meetings focused on citizen-led peace-building efforts.  These meetings have been spearheaded by the Peace and Development Network (PeaceNet), for which UCRC serves as the western Kenya representative.  Together, the participating stakeholder organizations are acting upon a widely held sentiment in Kenya:  Kenyans are yearning for an end to the instability, and they aren’t waiting for politicians or diplomats to bring peace.  “No one wants to go through this again,” Aggrey Omondi, Executive Director of UCRC, notes. “So, Kenyans are moving forward and forging a constructive plan for lasting peace.”  Stay tuned for further updates.

 

Health in Ugunja

Back in Ugunja, the demands at St. Paul’s Health Centre have expanded dramatically.  The vast majority of St. Paul’s patients are women and children, and the health effects on these two groups have been catastrophic.  Cases of acute malnutrition among children have skyrocketed in the wake of displacement and rising food prices.  For women, sexual violence has increased, and rapes are recurrent.  Many women do not know where to go to receive adequate care.  St. Paul’s is responding earnestly to those who arrive for treatment, but the clinic staff are already extraordinarily overstretched by the influx of displaced families needing medical attention in addition to the clinic’s normal patient load.  In this setting, the staff are struggling to provide the full array of physical, mental and emotional services that rape victims require.  Even basic medical care has been compromised, as medicines and supplies are scarce throughout the country.  The deleterious health effects of political violence and instability have never been more apparent.

 

What is to be done?

Short-term relief continues, but long-term peace-building will require a broader-based effort: youth employment and rehabilitation; health care; nutrition and agriculture; civic education.  Incidentally, these are all established program areas of Ugunja Community Resource Centre, and thus UCRC’s role as a dynamic, indigenous force for community rehabilitation and development has taken on greater, renewed importance.

“The tragic violence and insecurity has placed a heavy burden on our organization and community,” Aggrey Omondi reflects. “The scope of our work has been forced to expand to the uncharted territories of humanitarian relief.  Nevertheless, we are unwavering and committed.”

UCRC and CHH will together continue to provide and promote relief, reconstruction and rebuilding.  But we are all sober: it will take time and will require sustained resources.  We need you to be a part of this.

We need you to make this happen.  Please join us.