News stories by Susan Anyangu-Amu, page 2

An arrow points the way from a busy street along a rough pathway; visitors clutch their bags more closely. The door is open: sachets are displayed on the table with labels indicating treatment for ulcers, diabetes, hypertension, fibroids. But not the contraceptive pill IPS is looking for.

A group of women huddled together sitting on stones in front of traditional birth attendant Elizabeth Sibuor's home in Nairobi's Mathare slum. One of them, 21-year-old Eunice Okoth, is heavily pregnant, her face anxious. She rises as quickly as she can and follows Sibuor into her one-roomed house.

Pregnant mothers who are HIV-positive could soon find it challenging to access life-saving HIV drugs because Kenya was denied 270 million dollars in funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Gideon Lepalo describes growing up in Loiyangalani, 20 kilometres from Lake Turkana, as magical. However, he fears the building of Gilgel Gibe III dam in Ethiopia, upstream of the Omo River, will soon mean that his childhood memories of the lake will be exactly that - memories.

Margaret Atieno, a 38-year-old mother of six, says she wanted to avoid her last pregnancy. But consistent stock-outs of contraceptive devices at her health care centre in rural Siaya, western Kenya, gave her no choice but to fall pregnant once again, albeit the fact that she did not want another child.

Lillian Mutuku, a 34-year-old mother of three, describes her home in Katine area, in Kenya’s Eastern province Tala, as a harsh place to live. The soil is poor, she says, the sun beats down mercilessly and vegetation is sparse.

The droughts in the Turkana region were less severe when she was growing up, says Laura Letapalel, and pastoralists could still find some grass and water for their animals. Now, she laments, the droughts are longer and there is nothing to eat.

The threat by influential Christian leaders to mobilise a vote against Kenya's draft constitution if it does not explicitly prevent any expansion of abortion rights appears to have succeeded.

The testimonies of women who survived sexual violence during post-election conflict in 2008 should be heard, say advocates. The magnitude of the crimes committed against women because of their gender must be recorded and prosecuted to prevent such violence from occurring again.

When Nairobi was founded in 1899, it took its name from what the Maasai called the place: Ewassi Nyirobi, 'cool waters.' A century later, the river has something stuck in its throat: millions of plastic bags and other waste, threaten to choke it.