Picture Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Ever since I was a child, I have always known that I want to be a lawyer.
Lawyers to me then were this characters that I saw on TV who were glamorous, savvy, sweet talking people that I longed to emulate.
Somewhere inside me also was a passion for justice but the glamour came first
But there are defining moments in one’s life – moments that change the course of one’s path through life irrevocably. I would like to share three such moments with you.
While I was attending law school at the University of Nairobi, I worked for 3 months with a legal aid clinic run by the Christian Lawyers Fellowship. We mainly represented suspects on remand, facing capital offences as well as children who had been defiled, mothers seeking child support from fathers who had deserted their children and indigent people who could not afford legal services.
And as I visited prisons that were dank, dirty, and smelly, saw the indignity to which Kenyan prisons subjected suspects and inmates, talked and cried with mothers whose children had been defiled and for whom the wheels of justice were not moving fast enough if at all, haranged police officers and court officials to do their duty without expecting bribes, I realized that law was more than just glamour – law was a means to bring justice and change to the society around me.
However, I still wanted the glamour so when I graduated I joined a prestigious law firm with four partners names in its title and the sure prospects of one day acquiring a corner office with a view of the skyline of Nairobi.
I would pursue the glamour and somehow make some time for pro bono legal work. But God has a way of throwing a spanner in the works. One day on my way home from work, I had a road accident.
A novice learning how to drive in a residential estate turned round the corner too fast, stepped on the brake instead of the accelerator, hit me and banged into a will, pinning me under the car. As the world went black around me and I thought I was dying 2 things happened. I screamed – God, I don’t want to die and all the things I had not yet done streamed before my eyes – a phone call to my mother that morning to find out how she was doing, the great and glamorous career I was longing to have, the change I wanted to make around me.
Oh God, I was not ready or willing to die yet. By the Grace of God, I survived with a broken right arm and dislocated right knee. As I lay in my hospital bed and as I went through 6 months of very painful physiotherapy to recover use of my limbs, I reevaluated my life.
I realized it was too short to waste time not achieving world changing things and I decided to eat life with a big spoon. I currently work with the Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILA) where we offer technical support to Members of Parliament and other policy makers to draft legislation and lobby for policies and laws that though politically not expedient can significantly change the lives of Kenyans for the better.
The Kenyan Tobacco Control Bill 2007 was one such law that had stuck in Parliament for 10 years due to strong lobbying against it by the tobacco industry. We picked it up as the first bill ILA worked on and as you can see from my short profile, the rest is history.
Though I got into tobacco control primarily from the perspective of drafting and lobbying for legislation, it quickly became a lifelong passion. Tobacco control, like smoking, is addictive.
I come from a continent of much potential – numerous raw materials, a mainly young and energetic populace and lots of opportunity available for those like me who are willing to eat life with a big spoon.
But I also come from a continent whose health care systems are groaning under the burden of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and early infant mortality from diseases like diarrhoea.
A continent which cannot afford the death, disability and disease caused by tobacco use and exposure to second hand smoke. I come from a continent that though strongly supported the FCTC, has relatively little domestic legislation on the ground, poor capacity to enforce whatever little legislation exists and has high rates of illiteracy.
I come from a continent that the tobacco industry has identified as one of its emerging markets- a continent where advertising and marketing tactics like billboards, single stick sales, use of misleading descriptors which can no longer be used legally in the US, can be used liberally with devastating and intended consequences.
A continent that shows rising smoking prevalence among children below 18, many of whom smoke their first cigarette as early as 9 years of age.
However, I also come from a continent with people like me – tobacco control advocates who will work relentlessly, often without funding and political will, to get our governments to do the right thing – ratify the FCTC, enact and enforce domestic legislation and policy, protect our people from the tobacco industry.
As I stand here today to receive the 2009 Judy Wilkenfeld Award for International Tobacco Control Excellence, I am humbled – humbled in some small way to be seen as mirroring qualities like respect for diversity, consensus building, being a role model for others, and leadership – qualities which Judy Wilkenfeld possessed.
I am honoured – honoured that the tobacco control community, out of numerous nominations received of equally outstanding and dedicated advocates, saw me as the fitting recipient of this years’ award I am excited – excited at the opportunity this Award gives me, not for personal edification, but to further the work that myself and all other tobacco control advocates in Africa are doing to prevent the death, disability and disease that tobacco use is wreaking on Africa.
And so I dedicate this award to my family (represented by my sister Katie) who have stood by me even when they have not understood the passions that drive me, to the other tobacco control advocates in Africa (comrades in the fight) and to the God who spared my life that fateful day in 2003.
Friends and colleagues, Aluta Continua with tobacco control
Thank you.
RACHEL KITONYO
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You can also read Rachel's interview on Rendez-Vous.
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