My Mother’s Son

I learned the way a man should stand and walk
From my mother, whose lowly, luminous hand
Guided the flame and kept the bitter draft out.
She taught me strength is not a frozen thing,
But something fluid, like a mountain brook
That yields to stones yet finds its own deep way.

So if I seem a trifle soft to you,
Or if my eyes should cloud and spill a tear,
Know that I’m built of different wood and sap.
I do not fit the narrow, leather shoes
The world has cobbled for a generic foot,
They pinch the heel and bruise the natural step
Of a man who’d rather walk a grassy path.

One may be pressed to edges, sharp and cold,
To please a neighbor’s sense of how things look,
But there’s a boundary where the self begins,
A stone wall built of choices, not of spite.
I’ll stay within the garden I have grown,
Where fruit is sweet and every branch can bend.
Let me be just as I was meant to be,
I have no need to wear a stranger’s coat.

@doddyokelo

The Performance

The plastic turns to liquid under the lighter.
It is the only thing that speaks clearly to me.
A hot, heavy drop,
a sting that binds me to this earth
when my mind wants to surrender to a sky with no sun.
They call it pain.
I call it a reminder that I am still here.

I am an actor who has forgotten the script,
so I improvise.
I borrow a smile from the person next to me.
I mirror their laughter until it sounds real enough
to pass the inspection of friends.
“I am fine,” I say,
because the truth is too heavy to carry in public.

I do not know what happiness is.
I have seen it on others,
like a coat that doesn’t fit my shoulders.
I tell the joke, I wait for the reaction,
and then I whisper that I am kidding.
But I am not.
I am just a person standing in a room,
waiting for the fire to tell me I am alive.

@doddyokelo

The Opportunity Cost of a Lost Girl: Why Adolescent Health Is an Economic Issue

To address the structural challenges of adolescent health in Kenya, experts are increasingly viewing the Triple Threat, the intersection of teenage pregnancy, HIV, and gender-based violence, as a singular public health emergency that requires a unified institutional response. The gradual erosion of national pregnancy rates, which dropped from 18% to 15%, is seen by policy analysts as a sign of progress, yet one that masks deep-seated regional inequalities. In areas like Samburu, where the rate remains at 50%, the crisis is viewed not merely as a health issue, but as a systemic breakdown of the protective social infrastructure intended to support the girl child. This crisis is compounded by the Triple Threat synergy, a lack of agency to negotiate safe sex often results in a simultaneous surge in new HIV infections and unplanned pregnancies, frequently rooted in gender-based violence.

Education remains the most significant predictor of reproductive outcomes in the country. Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS, 2022) indicates that only 5% of girls who complete secondary school become pregnant, a stark contrast to the 40% observed among those with no formal education. Institutional experts emphasize that education is thebest contraceptive, serving as the most effective long-term shield for a girl’s future. The current Education Re-entry Policy is designed to treat pregnancy as a temporary pause in a girl’s development rather than a permanent exit from society. By mandating that schools readmit young mothers without conditions, the government is prioritizing the long-term economic viability of these young women. We must support her return and protect her potential to mitigate the massive opportunity cost to the national GDP.

With the rollout of the Social Health Authority (SHA), there is a strategic move to eliminate the financial barriers that often drive transactional sex. This phenomenon occurs when girls, particularly from the poorest households, exchange sexual favours for basic necessities like sanitary pads or school fees. Health administrators argue that removing the cost of maternal care is a pivotal step in normalizing adolescent health services. When girls can access youth-friendly clinics without the fear of financial strain or the stigma of judgment, the likelihood of safe deliveries and the adoption of postpartum family planning increases. This approach frames reproductive care as an essential public service, similar to the management of other chronic health conditions.

Sociological research highlights that the social death of a pregnant teenager is frequently a by-product of community-level shaming. While childbearing rates are significantly higher in the lowest income bracket, they drop drastically for the wealthiest, suggesting that pregnancy is often a symptom of economic desperation. The community’s role must shift from isolation to integration, especially as new threats like digital grooming emerge. Experts suggest that a girl’s destiny should be shaped by her dreams, not her zip code, and that ending thesocial death of teenage pregnancy is Kenya’s path to a stronger nation. Breaking the cycle of poverty requires community leaders to stop negotiating defilement cases through traditional settlements and instead move toward formal legal accountability.

For Kenya to reach its development goals, the focus must remain on the enforcement of the Sexual Offences Act at the grassroots level. Legal advocates insist that justice cannot be settled with livestock or secret payments. Every instance of legal accountability sends a clear signal that the safety and education of the girl child are non-negotiable national priorities. By aligning government policy, community action, and economic support, the goal is to ensure that every girl has the power to decide her own future on her own terms.

@doddyokelo

What Next for Kenya’s HIV Response?

Otieno, a resident of Kamwango in East Kamagambo, Rongo Sub-county, sits on the edge of his bed, the weight of the world pressing heavily upon his shoulders. He looks at his wife, Achieng, who is meticulously organizing their remaining ARV tablets, and their seven-year-old daughter playing by the window. For years, those pills have been their lifeline, a daily ritual of survival. But the news on the radio is cold. Following the transition in Washington on January 20th, 2025, and the looming impact of March 2026, the whispers in the clinic queues have turned into a dull roar of panic. He hears that the containers might stop coming, and the thought of the virus waking up in his daughter’s blood because of a political shift thousands of miles away is a terror no father should carry.

For 23 years, Kenya has been receiving roughly 69% of its HIV funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This massive investment, totaling over 8 billion dollars (approximately 1.1 trillion Kenyan shillings) was the backbone of the national response, paying for the very ARVs Otieno’s family is counting on, the laboratory reagents for viral load testing, and the salaries of over 40,000 health workers, nearly 18% of the country’s total health workforce, who now face an uncertain future.

The crisis has ceased to be a storm on the horizon, it has become the drying of the well, a sudden, natural silence where the ever-flowing vein of supply once lived long. Since the executive freeze in early 2025, approximately 34 million dollars (4.5 billion Kenyan shillings) worth of life-saving commodities have been caught in a logistical gridlock. This disruption was triggered by a stop-work order that deactivated the payment and distribution systems managed by U.S.-funded agencies. By March 2026, the buffer stocks that once protected patients like Otieno from supply shocks will have run dry. In many facilities, doctors have been forced to ration medicine, moving from three-month prescriptions to one-week emergency packs, a desperate measure to ensure that at least everyone gets something, even if it isn’t enough.

To bridge this gap and heal the mess of daily adherence, there is a growing call to develop and deploy long-acting treatments for reactive individuals. While currently available injections like Cabenuva require a visit every two months, the dream is to innovate even further, creating a once or twice yearly injection specifically for treatment. Such a breakthrough would be the ultimate sustainability tool by replacing 365 daily reminders with just one or two clinical visits, the government could drastically reduce the logistical nightmare of monthly pill distribution. It would solve the adherence crisis for families like Otieno’s, ensuring that even if a shipment is delayed or a clinic is crowded, their protection remains locked in their blood for months. This transition to long-acting treatment is the missing piece that could turn the tide, making the 2030 goal of zero transmission a reality by removing human error and pill fatigue from the equation.

The physical landscape of care is also shrinking. Community Drop-In Centers, which provided a refuge for vulnerable groups to receive medication away from the prying eyes of the general public, have begun to shut their doors as their rent and staff costs were tied directly to the now-paused U.S. grants. This has pushed thousands of patients back into overcrowded outpatient clinics where stigma remains a biting reality. The shift is driven by a fundamental pivot in U.S. foreign policy toward domestic rescissions, clawing back billions in global health aid and leaving a Sh30 billion hole in Kenya’s 2026 health budget.

The Kenyan government has responded with urgency and strategic redesign. Health officials, led by the Ministry of Health, are frantically working to integrate HIV services into the new Social Health Authority (SHA). The goal is to move HIV care from a donor-funded silo into the national insurance framework, essentially treating it like any other chronic condition. To prevent a total stockout, the government is also fast-tracking licenses for local pharmaceutical companies to manufacture ARVs within Kenya, aiming to break the cycle of dependency on foreign shipments that can be halted by a single signature in a foreign capital.

Sustainability is the ultimate goal, but it is a bridge built under fire. The National Treasury is being asked to ring-fence emergency funds to unlock meds held in private warehouses, while civil society groups under the National Empowerment Network of People living with HIV in Kenya (NEPHAK) have taken to the streets to demand that laboratory tests, like viral loads and CD4 counts, remain free under the new insurance scheme. While the move toward a Kenyan-led, self-reliant system is the only long-term solution, for Otieno’s family, the immediate reality is a month-by-month struggle to stay undetectable while the country waits for the first gears of its own factories to turn with purpose.

@doddyokelo

Walking for Nothing

The hunger has moved past the belly now.
It sits in the hands that have nothing to touch,
and in the eyes that track the sun
across a sky that offers no shade and no work.
I’ve walked the soles of my shoes thin
on roads that lead back to the same closed door.

She stands in the kitchen,
her judgment a cold draft under the door.
She sees the way I sit and calls it a choice,
thinking this weight is a slow rot of the spirit,
a laziness that grew where the ambition died.
She cannot see the mountain I am carrying
just to walk from the bed to the gate.

The plate stays clean because the pocket is dry,
and the throat is too tight for swallowing anyway.
It’s a heavy thing, to be a man of use
in a season that has no use for him.
The tools in the yard are losing their shine,
turning the color of dried blood in the rain,
waiting for a hand that isn’t shaking.

I am not sleeping when I close my eyes.
I am only trying to hold the world up,
bracing my back against a falling ceiling
that she thinks is just the empty air.
It is hard to plant a future
when you are buried in the present,
waiting for a wind that doesn’t blow against you.

@doddyokelo

Still Home

Your touch was magical, a sudden and quiet healing
that reached through the skin to the very bone of me.
It was a gentle conjuring, a way of saying yes to the light
until my eyes danced with a glee I had long forgotten,
shining like smooth stones at the bottom of a clear, bright river.

Your look was intense, a steady fire that did not burn
but saw through the masks I wore for the world.
And oh, your talk, it was a pure water, a holy sound
that pulled me in like a song you’ve known since birth.
There was no struggle in the falling, I simply leaned
into the grace of you and found myself finally home.

But now the rooms are wide and the air is thin and still,
and I am singing the melody of a name I miss too much.
I am holding a place for you, built out of my own heart,
waiting for your footsteps to wake up the morning once more.
Come back to the warmth you started, come back soon,
for the joy in me is waiting for your hand to lead it out.

@doddyokelo

He Spends the Gold of Her

She is beautiful, yes,
but beauty grows fangs in the dark.
She tells you she’s out with a friend,
yet her truth is curled on another man’s chest,
his heartbeat pounding, the thud of wanting,
a sound you were never allowed to hear.

His fingers roam through her hair,
slow, sure,
mapping a tenderness she once withheld.
She loves it,
the salt of his sweat,
the wild brush of his chest hair,
the animal warmth that keeps her there.

She is not busy, brother.
She is not home.
She is answering a call
you were never invited to,
the quiet work of sheets and bodies
moving without guilt.

Her phone isn’t dead,
your name is.
Blocked.
So silent you can hear your own hope collapsing.

The things she hoarded from you,
laughter, softness, time,
fall easily into his open hands.
She gives him the light she swore she never had.

Rise from the wreckage,
rebuild the kingdom of yourself.
Leave her ghost behind
and grow into your better name.

There is life beyond this wound.
And love, real love,
will meet you where you stand,
yours to keep.

@doddyokelo

Let it Rain, Brother

Hey, broken man,
you don’t have to hold the sky tonight.
Let it fall. Let it rain through your chest.
Strength is not silence, it’s the courage to shatter
and still call yourself whole.
The world taught you to be iron,
but even iron rusts when it holds too much sorrow.
So cry, let your saltwater baptize the pain,
let softness be your rebellion.

You are not weak for weeping,
you are simply human enough to heal.
Tears don’t strip your masculinity, they cleanse it.
Let them fall, and when they do,
may they wash away every lie that said you shouldn’t feel.
Even lions cry, brother,
we just never stay long enough
to hear them mourn.

@doddyokelo

Man Enough to Cry

I know, I’m a man, yes, the great pillar of might and muscle,
The one who never trembles, never falters, never feels.
Society’s favorite statue, polished, silent, hollow.
But save that sermon, really, keep your “men don’t cry” gospel.
I am human, not granite shaped for your comfort, I bleed too, I just hide it better.

Oh, how noble it must look, dying quietly inside,
Smiling wide with a cracked soul, calling it strength.
You call it “African masculinity,” I call it emotional suicide.
I can’t drink your bravery forever, it burns going down.
Sometimes I just want to exhale without the label “weak,” without the world mistaking honesty for failure.

Let me speak, even if my words leak salt and sorrow.
Don’t hand me depression and call it dignity.
If tears offend your tradition, good, let them flood it.
I’d rather drown honest than live pretending I’m steel.
After all, even lions cry, you just don’t stay long enough to hear it roar in pain.

@doddyokelo

Stay With Me

I have never known a pain this sharp,
a hurt that stays in every breath,
as if sorrow has built a home inside my chest.
I sit here drowning in my own silence,
tears spilling like tides I cannot command,
wondering how I strayed,
wondering if I’ve lost the best part of me,
you.

I keep replaying my mistakes,
each one cutting deeper than the last,
and I fear that in their shadow,
your love for me might dim.
The thought alone unmakes me.
It is a heaviness I cannot outrun,
a shame that knots itself into my bones.

If only regret could mend,
if only apologies could erase,
I would gather up every fragment of your hurt
and carry it away until you felt light again.
But healing, I know, is not so quick.
It asks for patience. It asks for trust.

“I’m sorry” feels too small,
too fragile for the weight of what I mean.
Yet it is the truth on my tongue,
and I speak it with trembling hope.
Because we have weathered storms before,
you and I,
and somehow we’ve always come through
stronger, side by side.

Still, I know you deserve better
than the hurt I’ve caused.
I hate myself for placing this burden on you.
But if your heart can find space
for one more chance,
I promise I will spend every day
proving love right again,
proving us right again.

@okelododdychitchats