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The inspiring story of how grandmas in Kenya are changing rape culture.

These grandmas aren't letting criminals get the best of them.

In a tiny neighborhood in a small Kenyan city, 20 elderly women meet in a hot room every week.

Surrounded by punching bags and like-minded participants, these women are all there to accomplish one mission:

Instead of letting rape and hyper-masculinity run rampant in their neighborhood, elderly women in Kenya are learning the art of kung fu as a tool to fight back.  


Elderly Kenyan women learn the basics of martial arts to fight rapists in their neighborhood. Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images.

The plan is simple. Women ages 60-85 gather in a small room in Korogocho, a disadvantaged neighborhood outside Nairobi. With only a plastic cover to protect them from the sun, the woman take turns practicing self-defense on a punching bag, encouraging each other along the way.    

"You don't need to hit hard to be accurate," Sheila Kariuki, the 29-year-old teacher leader of the group, told The Telegraph. "Accuracy is the key to the technique."  

Kariuki spends the class demonstrating the vulnerable points on a male body, such as the collarbone, nose, and genitalia. The women are taught techniques such as yelling instead of screaming to maintain a sense of control and not worrying about how much force a blow to the rapist’s body has, but rather making sure they get a proper punch to the body.      

Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images.

“Our program does make a difference. We have testimonies of old women now able to defend themselves using verbal or physical techniques," Kariuki told The Telegraph.

Kariuki holds the class on a volunteer basis about once a week. It began in 2007, when young criminals began raping women up to four times their age. Kariuki, trained in self-defense techniques developed by feminists during the 1970s, took it upon herself to teach the seniors that fighting back is an option.        

Roughly 155,000 residents live in Korogocho, which is about 11 kilometers outside Nairobi's city center.

​Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images​.

As in many other struggling neighborhoods, the women in the area are at higher risk of rape, adding another layer to the ongoing fight against devastating HIV/AIDS statistics in Kenya. HIV/AIDS is the #1 cause of death in the nation. An estimated 1.4 million people are living with HIV, and new infections continue to make the movement against eradicating the spread of the virus from society difficult.

Rape culture only enhances the epidemic in disadvantaged areas such as Korogocho.  

Because so many rapes go unreported, the statistics of rape in Kenya vary widely.    

According to a 2006 report from Kenya’s national commission on human rights, a girl or woman is raped every 30 minutes. Many young orphans are especially vulnerable because of a commonly held belief that sex with a virgin — in a typical rapist's mind, a young child — is a cure for AIDS. This disturbing train of thought also influences these men to target grandmothers, as they assume they aren’t as sexually active as middle-aged women.    

This incorrect and dismal ideology continues to be the thought process for many male criminals in more underdeveloped areas.  

This ideology doesn’t only affect countries like Kenya, though.

We experience its effects in the United States, too, because rape culture isn't a problem that's exclusive to one part of the world.

But the ways we fight back against this culture matter.

In the U.S., we have to put signs up in bars to offer protection for women, rethink how we talk about consent in classrooms, and reprimand a major-party presidential nominee’s views on women to fight sexual assault and rape statistics that plague developed countries, as well. In Kenya, women learn kung fu.

By teaching consent to men and women at an early age, making laws that make it easier for people to feel safe reporting rape and sexual assault and empowering men and women around the globe to protect their bodies, we can help end rape culture.

Women like Kariuki and the women she teaches are empowering themselves in their classes every week.

They want to make sure rape culture isn’t the standard for Kenyan women’s lives, and that's inspiring.

Through discipline and mutual female support, these grandmas are taking back their identity and right to live peacefully, one punch at a time.    

Health

4 simple hacks to help you meet your healthy eating goals

Trying to eat healthier? Try these 4 totally doable tricks.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Most of us want to eat healthier but need some help to make it happen.

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When it comes to choosing what to eat, we live in a uniquely challenging era. Never before have humans known more about nutrition and how to eat for optimal health, and yet we’ve never been more surrounded by distractions and temptations that derail us from making healthy choices.

Some people might be able to decide “I’m going to eat healthier!” and do so without any problem, but those folks are unicorns. Most of us know what we should do, but need a little help making it happen—like some simple hacks, tips and tricks for avoiding pitfalls on the road to healthier eating.

While recognizing that what works for one person may not work for another, here are some helpful habits and approaches that might help you move closer to your healthy eating goals.

man pulling chip out of a chip bagOur mouths loves chips. Our bodies not so much.Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Goal: Snack on less junk food

Tip: Focus your willpower on the grocery store, not your home

Willpower is a limited commodity for most of us, and it is no match for a bag of potato chips sitting on top of the fridge. It’s just a fact. Channeling your willpower at the grocery store can save you from having to fight that battle at home. If you don’t bring chips into your house in the first place, you’ll find it a lot easier to reach for something healthier.

The key to successful shopping trips is to always go to the store with a specific list and a full stomach—you’ll feel much less tempted to buy the junky snack foods if you’re already satiated. Also, finding healthier alternatives that will still satisfy your cravings for salty or crunchy, or fatty foods helps. Sugar snap peas have a surprisingly satisfying crunch, apples and nut butter hit that sweet-and-salty craving, etc.

slice of cakeYou can eat well without giving up sweets completely.Photo by Caitlyn de Wild on Unsplash

Goal: Eat less sugar

Tip: Instead of “deprive,” think “delay” or “decrease and delight”

Sugar is a tricky one. Some people find it easier to cut out added sugars altogether, but that can create an all-or-nothing mindset that all too often results in “all.” Eating more whole foods and less processed foods can help us cut out a lot of ancillary sugar, but we still live in a world with birthday cakes and dessert courses.

One approach to dessert temptation is to delay instead of deprive. Tell yourself you can have any sweet you want…tomorrow. This mental trick flips the “I’ll just indulge today and start eating healthier tomorrow” idea on its head. It’s a lot easier to resist something you know you can have tomorrow than to say no to something you think you’ll never get to have again.

Another approach when you really want to enjoy a dessert at that moment is to decrease the amount and really truly savor it. Eat each bite slowly, delighting in the full taste and satisfaction of it. As soon as that delight starts to diminish, even a little, stop eating. You’ve gotten what you wanted out of it. You don’t have to finish it. (After all, you can always have more tomorrow!)

colorful fresh food on a plateA naturally colorful meal is a healthy meal.Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash

Goal: Eat healthier meals

Tip: Focus on fresh foods and plan meals ahead of time

Meal planning is easier than ever before. The internet is filled with countless tools—everything from recipes to shopping lists to meal planning apps—and it’s as awesome as it is overwhelming.

Planning ahead takes the guesswork and decision fatigue out of cooking, preventing the inevitable “Let’s just order a pizza.” You can have a repeating 3-week or 4-week menu of your favorite meals so you never have to think about what you’re going to eat, or you can meal plan once a week to try new recipes and keep things fresh.

It might help to designate one day a week to “shop and chop”—getting and prepping the ingredients for the week’s meals so they’re ready to go in your fridge or freezer.

woman holding blueberries in her handsOrganic foods are better for the Earth and for us.Photo by andrew welch on Unsplash

Goal: Eat more organic/humanely raised food

Tip: Utilize the “dirty dozen” and “clean 15” lists to prioritize

Many people choose organic because they want to avoid pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals. Organic food is also better for the planet, and according to the Mayo Clinic, studies have shown that organic produce is higher in certain nutrients.

Most people don’t buy everything organic, but there are some foods that should take priority over others. Each year, researchers from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyze thousands of samples of dozens of fruits and vegetables. From this data, they create a list of the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” fruits and vegetables, indicating what produce has the most and least pesticide residue. These lists give people a good place to start focusing their transition to more organic foods.

To make organic eating even simpler, you can shop O Organics® at your local Albertsons or Safeway stores. The O Organics brand offers a wide range of affordable USDA-certified organic products in every aisle. If you’re focusing on fresh foods, O Organics produce is always grown without synthetic pesticides, is farmed to conserve biodiversity, and is always non-GMO. All animal-based O Organics products are certified humane as well. Even switching part of your grocery list to organic can make a positive impact on the planet and the people you feed.

Healthy eating habits don’t have to be all or nothing, and they don’t have to be complicated. A few simple mindset changes at home and habit changes at the grocery store can make a big difference.

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