One By One Field Visit in Kenya

-- By Nora Otondo, fistula survivor and One By One Regional Representative (pictured below)

One By One Let’s End Fistula project held a field visit between 15-17 October 2011 to rural areas of Western Kenya including: Bukhalarire, Port Victoria, Khwisero, Kakamega Women’s Prison and finally to Cheptais, Mt. Elgon.

The field visit team consisted of our leaders, Heidi One By One’s co-founder and executive director based in the US, Sarah Omega our Kenyan Outreach Manager, Habiba Mohamed a community social worker, and me, Norah Amisi Otondo alongside ten of our newly trained Regional Representatives. The Regional Representatives took us on field visits and we discovered that fistula is a rampant condition among women in the Western Kenya region. However, the sufferers and the affected are living in ignorance of what fistula is. This has led to family breakup, abandonment etc.

One By One has extended its loving hand, through the Regional Representatives, to reach out to these destitute women to find them, sponsor for their treatment and also to create awareness by teaching the community about fistula, specifically its treatment and prevention. This is what happened in the field trip and continues to this day.

BUKHALALIRE

Meet these women (above) who welcomed One By One with song and dance, most of them fistula survivors. And their song: “Thank you one by one for giving us back our lives, we were in darkness, worthless, abandoned, and hopeless being looked down upon but now we have life, are fine, dignified and smiling again. Thank you.”

Here also meet area Chief Patrick Obuya (pictured above), who is enthusiastic and interested in women’s affairs working to mobilize the community as an administrator. He states that women have suffered so much not knowing there is a remedy for fistula .He thanked Heidi for One By One’s efforts to sponsor women with fistula treatment and encouraged her to keep on. He told us that he would help identify the women for treatment at Gynocare Centre.