Update - yes another miracle............they just keep happening

Family Planning for men in Odede....you read it right, while it probably seems pretty normal to you all out there, here in Odede or Kenya, the one thing that men just don't do is talk about family planning. Let me tell you why................well just the words Family Planning mean all of the following..........that if you have Family Planning you can give birth to cats.......if the woman speaks of Family Planning it means she wants to sleep with other men...........Family Planning causes birth defects and the list goes on.

So Kate the other volunteer and I were talking the other day, and being a nurse she is always saying, just sterilise all the women............well maybe not all but the truth be knows, the major problem here in Kenya is the number of children, particularly to families that have no way of feeding and caring for them, so while I told her we can't sterilise them what we can do is encourage them so off she went with her ideas.................Kate has initiated some great programmes whereby she paid the transport for over 20 women to go to Kisum and have hormonal implants as well as tubal ligation........she was smiling secretly............she also came home one day and said that she has asked a doctor to come and talk to the men about Family Planning............and yes you guessed it, Alex and Kate presented it to them and they agreed............so last Thursday the doctor came and the men had a Family Planning Seminar.................it is probably just as well that we couldn't understand what they were saying as they were asking many questions and we got the odd word like, condom, sex and you all of those type of words so we both sat there tentatively and looked interested. The men were encouraged to talk to their wives and were also informed of all the myths associated with the words Family Planning................it was an amazing experience not only for us but for them. It seems that these men are just opened to doing anything we suggest,. it is wonderful.

Another great initiative of Kate's was that we have had T Shirts made for selling to Volunteers etc. and all profits go towards supporting the Child Rescue Centre...............Infact Kate has purchased the first 50 T Shirts and she has requested that the profits go to 'Guess What'....Family Planning......you know as I thought more about it, it showed me that it is the perfect placement of the funds as it completes our 'Exit Strategy' for our children..................how it works is this, we rescue the children, a programme is then developed for the families and then the real issue of Family Planning as in all cases, is addressed. The children rescued from these families are one of many and I heard alarming statistics the other day from our doctor and that was our area here in the province has the highest mortality and maternal rate in Kenya...............so alrming that it showed that we must focus more on developing Family Planning programmes so that the real issues of poverty and starvation don't continue.

So wait to see our T Shirts, they are great....................the saying on the T Shirt front is World Youth International - Odede Child Rescue Centre and on the back it says, Our NGO Nurtures Good Opportunities................here in Odede we don't use the typical meaning of NGO as a Non Government Organisation as we believe we are Nurturing Good Opportunites.................so think of us the next time you read NGO...........

So all in all things are moving along in leaps and bounds and every day I thank God for putting me in this wonderful village with these wonderful people and this woman called Kate................I just want to say hello to Gwen, (Kate's mother) and thank you for reading my Blog's, it means the world to me that people are interested in what I am doing...............thank you to all.

I just want to say that "What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, doors open for us"

Cheers - Marilyn