In order to continue with the continuous and transversal development of Maternity Home's first phase of formation and awareness this month we began a new cycle of workshops related to the general health of women, to the maternal health and to the sexual and reproductive rights with the aim of taking a step forward in achieving empowerment in the area of women's health in Lamu. Throughout this month, a wide range of workshops will be given to local traditional women and midwives by the hand of Esther Pérez, a nurse from Barcelona who has arrived in Afrikable ready to do her bit on the way to the empowerment of women.
Having already taught several workshops and talked on wider and more general issues, such as HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, first aid or family planning, in this new cycle, workshops dealing more specific and directly related to sexual and reproductive health of women.
We started with a very basic training and at the same time fundamental to settle the contents and knowledge of the following workshops: an anatomy workshop, aimed at all the working women of Afrikable, in which we have reviewed the male reproductive apparatus and, above all, the female one, and we had explained in detail the processes of fecundation and gestation, as well as the phases of fetal development. The knowledge of the functioning of the body itself and the processes that are developed in it are the best tool for the empowerment of women in aspects such daily and important as the acquisition of appropriate habits for optimal development of the foetus or prevention of risk behaviours during pregnancy.
Once again, the need for this type of training has been evidenced, since the nervous laughter, the questions and doubts of the girls, and their faces and screams of surprise have revealed the ignorance on these themes and the importance of fomenting and to provide information and training of this kind on an island where female sexuality is taboo and where women's rights are far less a priority.
Author: Marta Heredia | Translator: Sheila Castro
