Building a house is building a life

Do you remember these pretty faces? Of course you have seen them before! In June 2006, the BBC put up their picture when they reported the death of the sister Pamela, how time flies, one of them was a baby in her mummy's arms. When I saw them today, they stole my heart! Too precious. In their family, their mum fears that the cruel hand of self mutilation might take their lives away when they are teenagers just like their sister. But history will be made in November 2010 when Woman of Paradise will administer our Positive deviance model to hundreds of girls in the presence of TV Cameras. These two angel faces will be rescued from self genital mutilation. Besides that, they now have an elder sister in me and I will commit myself with my friends to make sure that they get an education and become women who can give back to their community. Their story is too powerful to loose.

This little girl has no idea that in two weeks time, she will be sleeping in a bed for the first time in her life, you better eat you candy and keep your smile Missy, we are coming for you, that right there is you new home!

The house is going up and with every part that is added, we always celebrate and dance!

The main architect and carpenter of the community at work here, how nice to see them become part of Ms Julia's journey. She said she never imagined that one day she could afford to call the community carpenter to her home and ask him for even a small repair. What could he repair? Of course nothing, when you own nothing, when you live in a house with not chairs, no beds just mats that you sit on, could you need a carpenter?

Laying a strong foundation; The house we are building has been set on two courses on the foundation. My team tells me that it will last for at least one hundred years because it has been well grounded.

I could never have imagined the power that hope can bring to a life until this day! Everybody in the community has been raving about the excitement on the face of Ms Julia, she is beginning to smile. If I could try and wear her shoes for a day, I am sure that I could feel how she feels these days. She has began to believe that in life, there was a glimmer of hope after all. Our team in the field tells us that she has been noted to be the woman that every woman in the village knew before Pamela died. In my culture, women are great "singers" they sing their way out of pain. When they are cooking with open fire that they blow all the time and inhale toxic fumes they sing, when they are in the river fetching water they sing, when they are collecting fire wood they sing, when they are tilling the ground they sing, even when they are just at home doing house chores the song is in their heart. I am aware that these days Ms Julia has started singing her songs again! As a musician I know how it feels to not have the ability to sing your song again, when life has dealt you a bitter side sometimes I struggle to also sing. The song is back!

I have noted that with every picture I get, Ms Julia is not wearing shoes, I was made aware that she always borrowed shoes and clothes to pose for the pictures that we always ask from our team. I look forward to having her fully dressed with a shoe that she owns when the house is officially given to her in front of TV Cameras. With every stone that we lay on that particular ground we are building the lives of a family of 8. How nice we feel when we find that a stranger that we could never repay has done us well? I have been so emotional of late, I always find myself having the experience of a life time, the one that you tell God, "thank you for creating me" If I could actually be used of you to bring hope with all my friends. Ms Julia's husband has stood beside her all the way, they have become even happier in their relationship.

I am aware that he has been telling people that one of the girls from the community has decided to become a blessing to them. This is humbling for me because in my culture, the girl child is just an "item" to be sold. She is supposed to immediately get to work when she can walk. I struggled so much growing up in the city because my parents always treated me like a child, not that those girls in the village are not children, but the culture subjects them to abnormal responsibilities. I remember going to the village during the holidays to visit my grandma, and the other girls in the village were always the experts, though we were about 5 years of age, they could already gather water in large barrels and carry that water with accurate balance on their head and their back, they could do house chores including ( cutting animal fodder and grass and carrying it home, clean the goat, sheep and hen's pen, milk the cow, start a fire without burning the whole house, cook dinner, baby sit the children, wash the children and put them to bed) I was always trying to do at least one thing, but I always failed, when I touched the heifer to milk it, one day it spilled all the milk that has been milked by my cousin and my grand ma was not amused, when I tried to balance the water barrel from the river, I fell several times. All these experiences gave me such respect for these girls who some today are mothers. They are the women of paradise, the things the endure, I cannot even imagine, but I can come to their rescue when they go through too much pain like loosing Pamela.

The Journey Home!

I could not wait to show you the above pictures so I started by showing you people at work :-) This is lovely to my sight! A group of volunteers that accepted to work for food, yes food! I cannot even express the joy that Ms Julia and her family are beginning to experience. I will leave that to the end of the "show" But one thing I know is that if somebody came to my house and told me that my house is fully paid I would not have the words to thank them. Your house is you haven of safety, when it feels good to be home, then life feels good everywhere.

Our team got ready to work, we quickly gathered volunteers that understood the plight of the late Pamela and we immediately got busy. The whole community decided to come aboard to help this family. The tractor guys got ready to split the finest pieces of timber from the forest. On the first week of October 2010 the construction work began. The pictures speak for themselves. But I can tell you that I was very emotional, I tried to put myself in the feet of Ms Julia and I just could not! It is hard to give hope to a person whose name the whole wide world knows in a grief stricken way. How else could we make it up to her than to finish her story and reveal it to the whole wide world in another way. As the work continued, I kept on looking at the picture that the British Broadcasting Corporation had put out the in world wide web. I kept on looking at that picture in my table at the office. I smiled a little because I know that the BBC will now have "perhaps" a smiling picture of Ms Julia.

Erasing the memory of Pamela's demise will not be easy for any of us including my team members, but for sure, we feel her courage in our fight against female genital mutilation. A comforting thing to think about is that she is rested near the place where we are building her mother a home. When her family receives this new home, I cannot wait for the candle light night when everyone will celebrate her life and at least make her memory count. She will be remembered forever because sadly,through her death her family is breaking the cycle of poverty forever. Her mother told me that she had many dreams concerning her. She dreamt that she would build her a house and establish her in business. How precious it is that those dreams are becoming a reality even though female genital mutilation took her away. I love you Pamela, all week I have been singing a song by Lionel Richie that says " my heart is breaking just for you, my tears are falling just for you"

I hoped that the world will one day know that Ms Julia is no longer the woman who they have known to have lost her daughter in such a devastating way. When I also looked at the pictures of the other children, I hoped they could smile again. We could only do this much, just to bring hope to them once again. From my conversations with Ms Julia, I knew that she could never even function as a normal business woman without a small glimmer of hope. As much as we wanted to break the cycle of poverty in her life, she was not in a right state of mind to live her life again. Giving her this home would change her name and wipe away her shame and she would no longer be called the "Woman whose daughter shocked the world by mutilating herself" I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that her name is changing. From when she got the news that our team would like to help her protect her two little girls from female genital mutilation, at least she could rest her fears. What hurts so bad is that the whole community though that when Pamela died they lost a very hardworking girl. I kept on thinking that maybe is she had the opportunities I had in life, she could have been another "me" If we had two types of me in Tigania, imagine how many people would have been helped. It is true what the economists say when they have recently proved in the world economic forum in Davos in 2009 that "smart economics is investing in a woman" that if you educate a girl you educate the community and that a girl who is educated and employed will bring back 90% of her income to the family as compared to the boy who brings 30% - 40% I believe that because I am giving back to my community with every opportunity I have been given.

A Home for Ms Julia Kanuu ( The Woman Of Paradise)

The first house is the house where Ms Julia and the husband live and the second house is the house where Pamela died in.

I cannot express the pain that my team and I felt when we visited Ms Julia in her home in Tigania Meru. Dr James Mithika (Woman of Paradise Reproductive health director) assessed the living conditions of this family. They live in a dangerous structure made with sticks, mud and scrape metals, rain water often floods their house. I was particularly interested in the house where Pamela lived and passed away. When we saw that house we all shed tears, we bolled for many days imagining what her last few hours must have felt like. She died of excessive hemorrhaging on her reproductive organs, she had asked for a cup of Kenyan tea which her mum prepared with an open fire in their poorly ventilated house. I can imagine that even the toxic fumes emitted by burning biomass contributed to her respiratory system's failure, of course we all know that the WHO says that toxic fumes from many kitchens in rural homes claim the lives of 2 million people prematurely. In their homestead, their family lives in separate structures with the parents in one structure and the little girls and boys sleeping in a poorly ventilated kitchen. Poverty is so cruel! I cannot imagine growing up without knowing that I can wake up in the middle of the night when am "scared" and run jump into my mummy's bed. Was it possible for these children to experience that? absolutely not! how can you walk out of this structure in the night and run to mummy?

I would like for you to have a look at these pictures and judge for yourself if any living soul should live in such a structure. This family has been living in this house where they cannot even lock the doors and you can imagine the dangers that they have faced including wild animals at night and some classified experiences that you will get to read someday in a publication.

Meet The Woman Of Paradise

I choose to call Mrs Julia Kanuu the Woman Of Paradise because she embodies that. Her life has been a life where she lives in some what paradise despite the pains she has endured. She was raising a happy family of ten, they did not have much but they were happy, of course they were happy because they were in paradise. They live a simple life, no worries, they all woke up every morning enthused about life. Her husband Mr Jacob Ntongai works in a seasonal job where her earns $0.2 a month. This family has raised eight children five girls and three boys.

Family picture ( Agnes and Hellen are absent)

Their first born daughter Pamela Kathambi and her two younger sister Agnes Kananu and Hellen Kaimuri went through female genital mutilation. Pamela performed this on herself because her mother had a conversation with her and told her that she did not want her to go through female genital mutilation but instead get an education. The fact that Ms Julia could not afford to educate her daughter she lost her to this horrible rite of passage. Pamela's younger sisters Agnes and Hellen also went through female genital mutilation but they survived. As of today, Agnes dropped out of sixth grade after going through female genital mutilation and was married off as a child bride. Hellen also dropped out of school in third grade and by the time our organization received their request for help she was about to be married off as a child bride. Ms Julia is also a mother with two other little girls, they are so pretty and innocent. She feared that if we did not help her, the two younger girls could end up dead like their sister. Our organization will protect these two girls from female genital mutilation by educating them while Ms Julia is established in a clean cook stove and solar lamps business. Ms Julia told me that since her daughter Pamela died, she has endured the stigma of being labelled as the "woman who could not even afford to educate her daughter causing her to perform self mutilation" I could not agree more because the whole world has labeled her as the mother of a child that shocked the world due to self mutilation. Their story is all over the Internet and can be specifically read on this British Broadcasting Corporation URLhttp://http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5109094.stm

Our journey is just beginning, we are about to write her story once again! We would like the media to write it with a good ending.

The Dream Never Dies!

This is the journey of Woman of Paradise and Extreme Hope Canada. The visionaries and leadership of these organizations have embarked on a journey that will transform the lives of women and children around the world. The month of October 2010 is a month of many activities that will culminate with a dream that never died becoming alive once again.

The story starts with a girl named Pamela. On June 23rd 2006, the British Broadcasting Corporation pitched camp in Tigania Meru to report a sad story about the death of 15 year old Pamela. She had performed female genital mutilation on herself because of extreme poverty. Her mother Ms Julia could not afford to take her to school and so the girl succumbed to the pressure of the community to perform FGM on herself so that she could be married off as a child bride. Esther Gatuma of Woman of Paradise responded to the hundreds of messages that she received from her friends and fans around the world.

They wanted her to take and action and therefore she founded Woman of Paradise. As you follow this journey, you will be encouraged, enthused and pleased to see how these families dreams did not die with their daughter. Woman of Paradise is changing their story, we would like the world to write their story once again. We would like the BBC to finish the story that surrounds Pamela's demise. That is what Woman of Paradise is about! Its about another chance to have your story told to the world. Follow this blog for updates.