Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/63982
Tackling Women's Health in Rural Kenya How an exchange of letters became the catalyst for a rural health project that Araceli Alonso—and a legion of students—could not ignore "Hello, my name is Ara. How are you?" That was the simple phrase Araceli Alonso penned in a letter to a woman she had never met. They were paired as pen pals, part of a literacy program aimed at improving the quality of life in rural Kenya by boosting English and communication skills. Over the course of two years these letters evolved into more than lessons in English— they became an exchange between two women interested in each other's lives and cultures. And though Alonso never planned to meet her pen pal in person, an opportu- nity unexpectedly arrived. An associate faculty member of the De- partment of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Alonso was offered the chance to travel to Uganda—an interior African country that shares a border with Kenya—for a health care study. Alonso knew that if she wanted to meet this woman, who had become her friend, it was now or never. The only problem was getting there. To reach rural areas where roads are nearly impossible to travel or nonexistent, Alonso made her way by every mode of transport possible. Days later, she arrived in Godo, a small village near the southern coastal tip of Kenya, rolling in on a motorbike. Final- ly, the two women came face to face. "It was very surreal. We just stood there laughing," Alonso recalls. For the next few weeks, Alonso stayed in Godo, learning about their culture and daily lives. They were just as eager to learn about her. Alonso shared her past—how she grew up in Spain, became a registered nurse, and ultimately traveled to the United States to pursue advanced degrees in histo- ry and medical anthropology. After learn- ing she was a nurse, the village women began to approach Alonso for answers to their health questions. "They'd tell me about an illness their 42 BRAVA Magazine April 2012 baby was born with or show me a rash they had. And I would ask how long they had it, hoping to hear a few weeks. But they would say a few years," Alonso says, the shock still fresh in her voice. "A rash! This could be taken care of with basic medical supplies." Not only were women in the villages cut off from the modern health care facilities found in larger Kenyan cities, they often lacked simple, life-saving knowledge. Alonso returned home to Madison, thoughts of the health woes facing the women of Godo fresh in her mind. And she had ideas about how to help. What the women needed was fairly basic: medical supplies and the knowledge of how to use them. But what had been keeping this help from reaching the villages was simply the challenge in getting there. "It occurred to me that I had [already] learned the model for working in remote villages," she explains. Her answer? Motorbikes. Alonso's ini- tiative, Health by Motorbike, was born. Freshly inspired, Alonso described the conditions—and her goals—to her students at UW-Madison. Instantly, several volun- teered to help. Within a year, Alonso was on a plane back to Africa, this time with four students in tow and plans to conduct health education camps for the women in Godo and surrounding villages. With them, they carried supplies, such as medical items to help meet basic needs and mosquito nets to stave off malaria. For days, they traversed the region of Kenya surrounding Godo, meeting women and holding health classes along the way. Since that time, HBM has become a patchwork of health services programs. Funded by grants and donations, they not only deliver health training—reaching both everyday Kenyan women and professional "health promoters" in the region—but also medical supplies, water tanks to boost the supply of clean water, a health library filled with books donated by Madison's A Room of One's Own bookstore, and more. Now in its third year, a fresh crop of 12 students, plucked from a waiting list of nearly 50, are set to embark on HBM's next