January 25, 2025
“Isn’t anybody doing something about this?”
That was the frustrated cry of one of our Facebook readers this month.
Baby Joshua Trinity was brought in after his mom died in the car during labor trying to get to town from a remote Maasai Village. One more baby who will never know his mom.
Baby Mohammed’s mom was also young when she died this month. The young father worked day labor when he could find it and said he could not take care of a new baby so he brought the baby to Neema Village.
We had just posted the second baby whose mom had died when we read that heartfelt cry of one of our readers, “Isn’t Somebody doing something about this!”
Yes! Somebody is doing something about this! Neema Village is! Our GIFT program “Girls Informed For Tomorrow” was designed to help stem the heartbreaking numbers of young women dying in childbirth out in Maasai villages. Many of these young girls marry as early as 12 or 13 and try to have their first baby at 14 or 15 years old. We teach them their hips are not big enough to have a baby until age 18.
Four times a year we take volunteers and directors out to Maasai villages for our Gift program speaking to young girls about not getting married too young and not having babies too young (which kills many of these moms) and about their bodies, about AIDs and FGM and about how to stay in school.
One woman every 2 minutes dies of complication of pregnancy and 99% of those are in developing countries. Tanzania is one of the ten countries with the highest maternal death rates.
This month we took the Trinity Christian School group of volunteers to help our staff with the GIFT program in one of the Maasai secondary schools. There were about 150 girls who took part in the fun day.
Three of our Neema Directors, Angel, Anna and Priscilla teach our Gift program and we also took Dr. Teddy a pediatrician, Heavenlight our volunteer coordinator and Grace our Bible Class teacher and counselor. We had to rent Safari cars to get them all out to the village.
At the end of the day the girls each received a colorful bag to keep their feminine products in which they can take to school. It is a great way to keep these girls in school.
The GIFT program cost Neema Village 2,138,600 TSH or about $807. USD for each program.
About half of our 450 babies came to Neema Village because their moms died in childbirth out in the villages. Traditional birthers (Bibis or Grandmothers) deliver those babies and we know they need help. Every month we bring twelve different grandmothers to Neema Village for a week of training, called “Save The Mothers.” The first thing we teach them is try to bring the mother in to the hospital. But many women do not want to come in, they say more women die in the hospitals. Probably because they wait until they are in trouble to bring them in.
The January 2025 session brought the total to over 600 traditional birthers who have come for a week of training at Neema Village. The birthers are taught how to handle the four main problems that kill women and babies; FGM (scar tissue does not stretch), retained placenta, stuck babies, and First AID procedures. Along with lessons on AIDs, healthy nutrition and bible classes each morning, it makes for a pretty full week for these grandmothers, most of whom have never gone to school or stayed in a house with electric lights and bathrooms. We cover the floor with mattresses, it’s a week long grandmother sleep over!
This session was one of our best when many of the birthers stated they had not known they were killing their young women with FGM and would never do that again. Thank God!
After the program was over three of the grandmothers wanted to be baptized. That is always a great day!
So, with our GIFT program teaching young girls to wait and our safe birthing program with older women we are trying to slow down the high maternal death rate in Tanzania. But we cannot do it alone.
Our Save The Mothers week each month cost around $4,000 USD. Shocking isn’t it!
If you can’t help, please pray, You know we are all volunteers at Neema Village and it is hard. The long trips back and forth are hard, being away from our families is hard and trying to change a culture is hard. Just please pray. Pray for Kim and Kelle as they try to direct Neema into the next year. Pray with sweet little boy Nasiri whose mom is a young school girl and the third wife of a man who doesn’t care for her. From birth complications Nasiri cannot walk but he is so very smart. He needs our prayers too.
Love you guys,
dorris and michael