Akorino faithful at a wedding ceremony: The sect is extremely conservative and does not condone pre-marital sex. FILE PHOTO | BILLY MUTAI
Francis Wambua is a member of the Akorino religious sect, an African indigenous church and a minority worship group originally from Central Kenya, notoriously known for defying family planning practice.
The Akorino believe in ‘filling up the world’ and use Biblical teachings to justify their stand, claiming that family planning defies the God’s orders to mankind.
However, Wambua is now moving against the tide and is preaching the importance of family planning to everyone in his church that gives him an ear.
Premarital sex saw Wambua get married early, after impregnating a girl (now his wife) because he “did not have access to family planning methods”.
Wambua says that he does not want anyone to become a victim of circumstance like he claims he did, and has started an initiative he calls ‘Ndugus for Dadas’ as a way of encouraging men in informal settlements take up family planning.
And even after a long fight with the church elders and a short stint of excommunication, the 22-year-old is not about to back down from his latest calling, and his effort has gradually seen him get allowed by his church to educate the youth on family planning methods and planned pregnancies, albeit in from outside the church.
Shy youth
“I come from the Akorino religion, which is extremely conservative and does not condone pre-marital sex — actually they do not openly speak about sex and family planning.
“The youth are the group of people that I am reaching out to, and I have now been allowed to do it outside the church because it is still regarded as a taboo. They are also shy and come to me secretly to ask about the family planning methods,” says Wambua, who lives in Kangemi, Nairobi.
Moses Kengere, a policeman, is also one of the men walking the family planning talk. The father of six is a family planning advocate, having undergone vasectomy. The police officer now encourages other men to take a lead in family planning.
“Vasectomy has not changed my sex life with my wife, in fact, we now worry less about having another child. There is no point of leaving the burden to women alone, men should help where they can,” he says.
David Opoti, a pastor at Christ Bible Church in Dagoretti, is another family planning champion, who hopes to get all men take part in family planning.
Opoti believes that it is high time people talked about family planning as a way of stopping the pre-mature deaths of mothers, and encouraging couples to have the number of children they can comfortably raise.
He further believes that lack of information is the greatest challenge against getting people to embrace family planning in Kenya.
“Men of cloth have been the greatest impediment towards family planning in Kenya, who from time to encourage their followers to ignore institutions calling on women and men to plan their families,” says Opoti.
The pastor believes that because Kenya is a predominantly Christian country, people would embrace family planning more if church leaders used their position to educate Kenyans on the advantages of managing their reproduction.
“I was able to learn about family planning through public forum. If pastors are given clear and true information regarding family planning, and if they get involved in disseminating of information then the situation can be changed forever,” he says.
Family planning in Kenya has for a long time remained a bedroom affair where couples talk about the subject in hushed tones.
Public discussions regarding the subject too have in the past have been minimal as the topic has been considered one that should not be heard of by children and youth.
Sex education
In addition, male involvement in family planning has for decades been negligible with African culture still rating a man’s potency by the number of children he can sire.
However, men like Wambua, Kengere and Opoti have taken up the mantle and are now trying to bash traditional thinking by offering sex education to the young and old.
“There are so many myths and misconceptions regarding family planning such that when anything that affects reproduction happens, it is blamed on family planning,” says Dagoretti sub-county medical officer of health Rose Misati.
“But you know myths and misconceptions are fuelled by ignorance. So to stop this we give people factual and scientific information.”
Misati notes that as more men rise to support family planning, girls and women are now able to remain in school longer and play more important roles in the society.
“Because men are the decision makers, we like talking to them more often because when they understand the information they share it with their spouses and children,” says the medical doctor.
The penetration of family planning in Kenya stands at 58 per cent as an additional 746,000 new users were added between 2012 and 2015, according to the FP2020 (where Kenya is a member) progress report. The FP2020 is a global partnership, which aims to reach 120 million women and girls before 2020.
According to the report, due to the use of contraceptives more than one million unintended pregnancies and 4,000 maternal deaths were prevented in Kenya.
The report further envisaged that if contraceptives reach the intended 120 million people, maternal and newborn deaths would decline by 35 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively.
To this end, Health Cabinet secretary Cleopa Mailu said at a recent press briefing on family planning in Kangemi that there is a need to break stigma and misconception about the practice to get the men on board.
“We need men at the centre of family planning. They are crucial to the success of the uptake because they are the key decision makers in a family,” said Dr Mailu, adding that men can play an active role by adopting male-targeted options like vasectomy.
