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The more you have children, the more the benefits - Babow Abdow Hansi, who is pregnant with her ninth child
“If I get many children, only God can plan how they’ll get their food,” Babow Abdow Hansi told Kenya’s Standard newspaper.
Expecting the birth of her ninth child, Hansi lives in Kenya’s drought-hit northern lands. She and her family have depended on food relief for as long as she can remember.
Some 3.7 million hungry Kenyans need food aid, mostly pastoralists living in arid lands where they herd livestock for a living.
“The more you have children, the more the benefits you have because they will assist you when they grow up,” she told the paper.
“I see that those with few can feed them easily. But, in future, I will have more benefits than the ones with few children."
North Eastern Province is Kenya’s poorest. It also has the highest fertility rate with an average of 5.9 children per woman.
Illiteracy rates are high in the region while reproductive health services are few.
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