EMILY AWUOR -19 years
We don’t have to own 200 panties to be clean!” Those words blare from a screechy microphone from a facilitator talking to teenage girls gathered in a tent in Suna West, Migori County. It’s graduation day for the Binti Shupavu program where these giddy and hopeful adolescent girls – 25 of them – went through a life skills course on sexual reproductive information, menstrual hygiene, communication skills negotiation, GBV, and hard skills like soap-making. Today, they are released into the world, there is music and laughter and jubilation.
Emily Awuor, 19 years old is one of the graduates, a mother to Kimberly Maya, almost two years. “When I discovered I was pregnant I knew it would break my parents heart. They had dreams for me. I had dreams for myself.” She says. She wanted to join college after high school and study hotel management. Her boyfriend wanted her to abort. She thought about it for a second but she had fears that if she aborted she would never be able to get a baby when she wanted one. “I knew God would punish me for it, so I didn’t.” In the wake of this decision to keep the baby, her boyfriend took to the hills and has since remained there.
“I only got to hear about Binti Shupavi when I came here for my ante-natal clinic.” She’s at Kitbul Dispensary, one of the four supporting health facilities that have partnered with the program. There are 90 of the same in Migori County. “One of the greatest help I got here is, first they taught me about contraceptives, something girls like me in the village had no way of learning about. I opted to take the Depo as a contraceptive because I don’t have any immediate plans to get pregnant. I intend to work hard and study hotel management.” she says. The soap-making skills she acquired have given her purpose to work towards her objectives.
“It’s not easy selling soap, the margins are low and I have to peddle it village to village the whole day.” She says, “But I’m glad it puts food on the table and the savings will work towards getting me into a
hotelier course.”
At the event, many girls – some of the young mothers – expressed their confidence in handling their newfound freedom to take charge of their futures by the use of contraceptives. “We now know what we should have known,” Emily says. “But it’s not too late, we can still achieve what we have longed to do.”