I am going back to Mukurweini after a two-year, eight-month hiatus. I am wondering, as the train chugs along on its hundred-year old tracks, whether this would be as successful as the last time. The railway had fallen into disuse for the previous twenty-odd years during the reign of the previous president who was more keen on promoting his people from a backward part of the country, than on developing new or even maintaining the existing infrastructure. Lately, however the Railways had embarked on a rehabilitation programme. Now the ride was much smoother and less noisy. The country after we left the capital was rather flat and featureless, but we were now going through very hilly Murang'a. This meant that the track had to go through numerous bends, making the journey much slower. I was not, however in any great hurry, as my meeting with the Archbishop was not until the next morning, so we could arrive even after dark without disrupting my schedule.
His Grace had called me about a week ago. "My officers tell me that the birth rate has dropped again all over my diocese. Not good at all."
I knew his concern was that the population of the region would be lower than neighboring areas, thus attracting fewer government dollars in the national budget. It also meant that they would be unable to support a candidate from among themselves into the county assembly. Therefore women must continue having babies at the normal rate. The previous time I had spent more than three years in Mukurweini 'treating' women who had reproductive issues; but this was merely a front. The real drive was to counter the very low birth rate owing to the young men taking to drink in an alarming way. They would start drinking in the morning hours, rendering them incapable of having a decent meal, or of taking on any kind of useful work from which to draw an income to take a care of their families. When they got home in the evenings empty-handed, marital frictions would render the marriage bed a frigid waste. In time the number of children born to couples dropped to an average of just over one child. In one year, just 1,290 children were born to an adult population of over 2500!
The result was that school admissions dropped so alarmingly that the leadership was seriously concerned. In some cases, schools were forced to merge as there were not enough children in either school.
In the time I spent in that region my clinic, far from treating actual diseases, was more of an insemination centre. My 'patients' were mostly young women of childbearing age who had not had a child for years running due to their husbands being insensate most of the time. Some even told me that when they insisted on the husbands doing their duty by their wives, the men took to sleeping on the sofa, and one even said her husband would duck under the bed to escape her pleas!
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