High above the routine, commonplace slog of Waa village in Kwale, a dense formation of coastal clouds drifts lazily across the sky.

Below it, a gentle gust of wind swishes a woman’s long turquoise blue skirt up her bent back.

Embarrassed by the ignominy, she straightens up, pulls the skirt down to position, then bents again to wring water out of a tiny pink dress and a number of cloth napkins she has been washing, before putting them to dry on a line fastened on two palm trees. Her maternal care is natural, and these chores mean the world to her.

But that beautiful scene is ended by a call for help from one of the mud houses in the homestead.

“She cannot latch properly, mama!” a tiny voice wails, in Kiswahili. “And my breasts are sore!” Ms Saumu Baushi, 34, sighs, abandons her washing, and walks into the house.

Inside, a small girl sits on a bed, holding a two-week-old baby, one of her breasts exposed. She looks eleven. Or twelve.

“This is my 14-year-old first-born daughter,” Ms Baushi explains.

“She gave birth two weeks ago but she does not even know how to position the baby on her breast. So I have to hold the baby and help it suckle.”

Ms Baushi is one among many mothers in this little village in Kwale County whose daughters have become mothers at a very young age.

And, as Kenya marks the World Contraception Day, the policies and guidelines under debate will strike a sensitive cord in her heart.

“I am taking her to the dispensary today to put her on family planning,” she announces to us, matter-of-factly, referring to the daughter who is struggling to breastfeed her progeny.

“If she has brought me a grandchild at this age, how sure am I she won’t get another child? She will get the Depo-Provera shot and will be on it until she finishes her studies.”

Contraceptive use

Depo-Provera is a contraceptive injection for women that contains the hormone progestin, and while in Kenya it has traditionally been associated with married women who want to space their children or prevent conception altogether, here in sleepy Waa a girl who is barely in her teens is about to get the shot.

“I know it is a decision some people would frown over,” explains the girl’s mother, “but look at me; I am a grandmother at 34 years!”

The 2014 Kenya Demographic Health Survey shows that half of women in Kenya aged between 20 and 49 had their first sexual intercourse by the time they turned 18, and that one in 10 women of the same group had their sexual debut by 15.