Blessed are the hands that giveth and the ones that taketh(Bob Marley). So living in peace love and harmony makes the community a place to be.

It's always said \" half a bread is better than nothing\". As a community worker, I meet women and girls whose situations are horrible and pathetic and since the outreach work is extended in other areas of the communities, I meet girls and women who are also suffering from epilepsy or seizure disorder. During my talk with one of this girls, that's when she told me about her situation how she has two children and she is suffering from epilepsy and she is always raped and she don't know the people accountable for the pregnancy. When she goes to fetch water from the tap or stream, that's when she is caught and carried to the bush and the act is done on her.

Epilepsy or seizure is an unpredictable seizure which causes other health problems and as we know health is wealth. Public misunderstanding of epilepsy cause challenges that are often worse than the seizure and it is also related to the brain injury or a family tendency, but often the cause is unknown. The community has a misconception of the treatment of persons with epilepsy and is often a big problem because the location of the event, how it spreads, how much of the brain is affected and how long it last. Have someone affected with the disease can affect her safety, relationship, work etc.

The lack of awareness and education can make seizure to last for some few seconds when it mild while stronger seizure can cause spasms and uncontrollable muscle twitches. During this occurrence, some persons become confused or lose consciousness. This will obviously makes them not to know who got them pregnant. Later you may also have no memory of it happening.

Persons with this disease has some symptoms as stiffening of the body, shaking, lose of bladder or bowel control, biting of the tongue, lose of consciousness etc.

In some situation it can be caused by trauma, high fever, lack of sufficient oxygen into the brain, prenatal injury, AIDS which may transfer from mother to child.

It has been proven that this disease cannot be treated or cured but can be managed with medications and other strategies. Medications which can help in this situation are anti_epileptic ( anticouvulsan, antiseizure ), Vagus nerve simulator drugs. Without these medications to be taken in order to control this disease, it will always cause these girls and women to withdraw from social society which will lead to depression, anxiety or both.

The ideas which the community has is that when the crisis starts affecting a person, what the people do is that, the head of the person is turned up side down and is being put into a pit toilet or a new blade is used to cut a part of the body and when the blood is flowing out, it is collected and put into her mouth for her to swallow. When I asked, I was told that it was another way of treatment and that they saw some parents doing so for their own children (ignorant). Some say they don't have money to go to the hospital while others say their medicines are finished and they don't have money to buy them again.

Most of them are found in areas like Babanki, Kom, Nkambe etc. Some advise which I gave them was that, they should use the supine or lateral position to sleep in order to prevent frequent occurrence(SUDEP) risk. They should also avoid being new they fire, they shouldn't go fetch water all alone especially to the stream because when the crisis starts, she may fall in the fire or the stream and the next thing is dead or deformation of the body structure. 

It hurt when you think you are at the verge of achieving your objectives and you realized you've not gone anywhere. 

I will always say thanks to this sister hood for the courage, inspiration, advise and for making me to see what happening in my community as GBV is concern and to see what some of the victims are going through. My heart hurts when things like this occurs in the communities and these situations are neglected.