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 

By Meagan Parrrish

“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 opportunity unexpectedly arrived. 

An associate faculty member of the Department 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. Finally, 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 history and medical anthropology. After learning 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 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 initiative, Health by Motorbike, was born. 

Freshly inspired, Alonso described the conditions—and her goals—to her students at UW-Madison. Instantly, several volunteered 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 trip in May.

The challenges to improving health in the remote villages remain numerous. Transportation to clinics is often nonexistent and education on providing proper care in many scenarios is sorely in need. Each day, villagers not only face the threat of many diseases, including AIDS, but their health is at risk in situations that should be more routine, such as giving birth. 

Yet, at the same time, the Kenyan women have taught these American students just as much about life in Africa. For Alonso, the exchange of information, culture and friendship is something her students say leave them forever changed. 

“We’re not there to give, we’re there to share,” she says. “We eat with the women, we dance with them, we celebrate life with them. Every single year I hear from students that they thought women in Africa suffer a lot, but they find out they actually laugh a lot.” 

To learn more, visit healthbymotorbike.community.officelive.com.