African Woman and Child Feature Service

When bloodshed erupted after the general election results were announced in Nairobi at the end of December 2007, a bewildered Magdalene Mwati expected the inflamed passions would calm down after a short while.

Mwati kept assuring herself that things would not get any worse.

“Little did I know that it was the beginning of the most traumatic experience of my life. This has changed my life forever, most of the faces I saw on the night I was raped are those of people I know,’’ says the 21 year old standard eight drop out.

Magdalene was in the shack she shares with her parents and four younger siblings in Kibera when all hell broke loose. Some of her neighbors had already begun to seek refuge at the nearby Jamhuri Park in Nairobi but she had decided to stay home.

“It started seeing people running away from Kianda, Gatwekera, Makina and other parts of Kibera abandoning their houses out of fear but I really didn’t feel threatened,’’ she adds.

What she did not know was that trouble was just brewing in her direction. Magdalene realized all was not well at about 7.30 pm when a group of young men knocked at her door.

Her parents and two of her four siblings had traveled upcountry on 26^th December in order to cast their vote and had not returned to the city.

“When we heard the banging on the door, we decided not to open but it was useless, in a split of second, six men were already in the house,’’ she recalls amid tears.

With no money or material goods to appease the attackers, Magdalene was raped in turns by three of them as the others watched and cheered.

“My brother and sister who are ten and twelve years respectively, watched in horror as the culprits did the unthinkable.’’

Needless to say, Magdalene’s life will never be the same again; she received medical attention a week later because at the time, she did not know what steps to take. Her priority was to keep her siblings alive in a slum that had been viciously torn apart by violence. Unfortunately her situation is not unique.

“Most of them seek medical attention when it is a little too late to avert  the chances of conception or contraction of a sexually transmitted disease such as HIV/AIDS, but we still try to help them deal with the psychosocial trauma,’’ says Lucy Kiama who oversees the gender violence recovery center at Nairobi Women’s Hospital (NWH).

Since the violence erupted, Lucy says they had received over 115 rape survivors and the number was still rising by the day.

Of the 115 rape survivors, 49 were children while 66 were adults. The youngest survivor is a one-year old baby and the oldest so far has been a 58 year old woman.

“From what the survivors have told us, the culprits of this nature of assault are mostly young men in the gangs of two and 10,’’ says Kiama.

Although the general opinion has been that only women are either raped or seek medical attention, 10 of the 115 cases involved men. Where men were sexually assaulted, physical assault was largely used a tool.

“These are incidents recorded from Nairobi,” says Kiama, “The number is not a true reflection of the situation on the ground, as these are the survivors who were able to access our facilities.’’

Initially, transport was a problem and even when it was available, survivors either had no money or they simply did not realize the importance of visiting a hospital immediately after the attack.

Although NWH has been providing ambulance services for those who have been sexually or physical assaulted, Kiama says many people are not aware that these services exist.

“After I was raped, I only took a shower and hoped that all would be well,’’ says19 year old Anita Oloo who was raped by two men.

What Anita and others in her circumstances are unaware of is that taking a shower and delays in seeking medical attention jeopardizes the quest for justice.  Medical evidence secured by samples and documentation related to the case can be used against perpetrators to seek a conviction against them when the matter reaches the courts.

At NWH, structures are already in place to deal with rape cases. “A survivor does not have to wait in long queues,’’ says Kiama.

In addition, Lucy says that preventive treatment against HIV/AIDS involves taking daily antiretroviral routine of three drugs for 28 days, which has to begin within 72 hours of exposure.

Other than offering rape survivors protection against contracting HIV/AIDS, emergency contraception is offered in order to prevent conception.

The nature of treatment is not only preventive but also curative “When a woman is raped, sometimes due to the force used during penetration there is some tearing and stitching has to be done,’’ says Lucy.

Although rape incidences have for a long time continued to be a major cause of distress, where there is escalation of violence, the incidents also rise alarmingly.

About three months prior to elections ,the pre-election violence had also caused an  increase in the number of rape casualties: “Around that time we would treat about 250 cases per month and those were cases from across the country,’’ Lucy says.

The gender violence recovery centre at NWH aims at providing free medical and psychological treatment to survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence and is the only such facility in Kenya as well as in the East and Central Africa.

Since the post election violence erupted, the number of patients seeking health care at NWH is high and continues to rise.

Experts now fear that with the increase in the cases of rape, there are high chances that cases of unwanted pregnancies will arise which will lead to a chain of catastrophic events.

With an unwanted pregnancy, a woman may resort to unsafe abortion and this causes more social and medical problems.

A study conducted by human rights organizations revealed that 300,000 unsafe abortions are carried out in Kenya annually of which 2,000 cases result in death and another 20,000 causing long and short term injuries.

“There is no way on earth I can rear a child born out of rape, I wouldn’t even carry the pregnancy to term and then later give it up for adoption, I would have the pregnancy terminated with no qualms whatsoever,’’ said Jackline Ama, a displaced woman at Jamhuri Park.

An AWC Feature