Kulea Lulu fights to end stigma against teen mums

Nakuru

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

KNA by Anne Sabuni

Anisha Atieno, is trying to come up with a solution to solve the rising number of teen mothers and the stigma that they suffer from the society.

Her experience working with organizations dealing with street children and young mothers, coupled with her career in Counselling Psychology pushed her to want to help more.

“The trauma of being a mother at a tender age weighs these teen mums. The society emotionally bullies them around and discriminates against them, for being ‘loose, too early in life’, starts us off Atieno.

Ushering us into her office, a shop, that has a number of artwork on display. Gift bags made from ankara water hyacinth products like photo frames mounted with portraits, decorations made from beverage cans.

We are lost for a while as we drown in the world of art. The work of the hands, Atieno and a group of teen mums as well as her colleagues, have made.

“I started Nish creation in 2020 mainly to help the disadvantaged in the society and to solve the problem of unemployment to the society but later on, this gave birth to Kulea Lulu, as I tried to train the teen mums so that they could also gain a skill to earn a living, from,” continues the CEO of Nish creation.

Together with a friend, she only referred to as Margaret, the team opted to be taking young girls off the streets of Nakuru City. Teenagers, who had given birth at a young age and from disadvantaged background, were also incorporated in the programme to benefit from psychological counseling because she “did not have enough money to offer them for upkeep.”

“We later had to devise ways of keeping them on toes and having them open up to us. We started teaching them hands on work, such as making Ankara products and decorations from plastic and glass bottle waste.

“This not only served as a way of solving their trauma but also as a way of earning them a living, as we put on sale all the wears they made, while under our facility.”

Atieno takes a stroll at the shop, just to check that all was in perfect display. She stops to admire an Ankara bag made by one of the teen mums and remembers her story.

“These girls are always impregnated by their age mates whether it is by force or on mutual agreement. In such like situation, punishing either one of them or both will not solve this and for that reason we have to find a possible solution by counseling both parties,” Atieno says, suggesting a solution to this problem of baby daddy responsibility.

Suzan Adhiambo, 20, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Nish creation. She lashes out at society for the wrong mentality of viewing young mothers as the ill-mannered.

“Being a teen mum is just a mistake like any other mistake and they should just be given a second chance in life to help them make it to attain their goals,” said the mother of two daughters.

Adhiambo, while justifying how she took a lot of time to overcome the trauma which made her to nearly resort to suicide, is thankful to Atieno who came to her rescue.

Zeck Jamoga a graduate of Egerton University, views Art as the number one therapy for anyone managing a psychological problem.

“It is not easy for someone to pour out her problems to you but through art I have been able to know what the ladies undergo and find a possible solution to them. I always ask them to draw, and in artistic work a picture is an interpretation of something and therefore they put their problems on paper, even unknowingly.”

Jamoga also addresses the issue of unemployment saying that the fact that he graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Science and Horticulture, he has made life out of his artistic work by training anyone interested in this field.

Lucy Wangare, an orphan who was taken by Anisha from a children’s home after they could no longer manage to finance her says that indeed she sees Nish creation and Kulea lulu growing to higher levels just the same way she has rapidly grown from it, solved her depression problems and sharpened her art skills.

Nakuru city has been ranked among the most densely populated counties with teen mothers in Kenya with a total number of over 15,000 teen mums aged 10-19 from the statistics recorded in 2022 from the county health department.

A report from Nairobi-based charity Kenya Children of Hope shows that around two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand children in Kenya are street kids with around half of them aged between eleven to fifteen and 63 percent of those homeless children have been on the street on part or full time basis for up to five years.

Courtesy ; K. N. A