We’ve received the following posting from Dr Catherine Maternowska, who works in the Mombasa hospital featured in last month’s film on child sex abuse in Kenya.
The hope among the hospital’s staff is that the film – and Catherine’s blog – will promote awareness, both at home and abroad, of the problems Kenyan children face.
We’ve alerted UNICEF and Britain’s Department for International Development to the film, as well as the Kenyan Department of Tourism.
Dr Maternowska says there are many stories of Kenyan mothers arranging for their own children to have sex with men, because an “asset is an asset”.
Across East Africa, the current drought and the global downturn are believed to be forcing more villagers into this awful position – of selling their loved ones, or selling themselves.
Jonathan
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It’s the tourist season now on the coast of Kenya. Beastly heat and humidity have given way to breezy tropical days on the gentle Indian Ocean. Wealthy Kenyans and Europeans flock to the resorts and the white sandy beaches. A brochure describes Mombasa as “a colourful palm-fringed coastal destination for holiday fun seekers”. With the influx of visitors, the pace in Mombasa picks up. Poor landless Kenyans hustle just about anything to generate badly needed income. But despite the increased opportunity, something clings to the edge of these resorts, a dark desperation.
A Unicef study estimates that annually some 15,000 young children are pushed, if not forced, into sexual exploitation on Kenya’s coastline. Child sexual exploitation in Kenya manifests itself in many terrible ways – child prostitution, incest, early child marriages, rape, sodomy, indecent assault, and defilement. Children are turning to prostitution as a means of survival.
Too small to carry loads, many children are forced to beg, but too often the begging turns into selling, and the selling turns into brutality. There are many stories in Kenya of mothers arranging for their children to have sex with men in order to earn their school fees. It’s a perverse sort of logic, but in a place like Kenya, an asset is an asset. A child of 12 years or less can ask for about $13 for sex, 10 times the average pay for an odd job in the informal sector.
Mombasa’s Coast Province General Hospital is keenly aware of the problem and established the first Gender Based Violence & Recovery Centre (GBVRC) in a Kenyan public hospital in 2007. With the help of local NGOs, the clinic provides specific training for health care providers within a newly refurbished building. The initial goal was to improve immediate care for survivors of rape and other forms of violence to prevent sexual transmitted infections (including HIV), unwanted pregnancies and to provide post-trauma mental health care and medical follow-up. Since the centre opened, over 1,300 survivors have been seen and treated but shockingly, 78 per cent of those survivors are under 15 years of age.
The staff are determined to improve community-based outreach to children. In addition to providing appropriate and safe services, the hospital believes that protecting and supporting children’s rights, raising awareness in communities and establishing community alarm systems may be the best way to stop the abuse of Kenyan boys and girls.
Donations to the clinic will be earmarked for specific child-friendly outreach activities which will be monitored and evaluated to assess the effectiveness in supporting Mombasa’s children.
Donors providing email addresses will receive reports on our progress. Cheques can be addressed to the Coast Province General Hospital-GBVRC.
The postal address is:
Dr. Heltan Maganga
Chief Administrator
Coast Province General Hospital
PO Box 90321
Mombasa, Kenya
East Africa
Thank you.
Dr Catherine Maternowska
Director Social Science & Policy,
International Centre for Reproductive Health, Kenya.