September 2024

Michael and I are in Texas for the October 15th banquet at the Hilton in Temple. Have you got your ticket? We’ve got ours!

Neema Banquet

Sharing happy smiles in Jackie Swift’s quilting class this month at Neema Village in Arusha, Tanzania. There is so much joy and promise in quilt making isn’t there. These sweet MAP moms (Mothers Against Poverty) many of whom were living on the street now have their very own quilts to keep them warm.

Neema’s newest baby Amaiyra came to us September 2024. She was born May 19, 2024 at 24 weeks and weighed 600 grams. We are not sure why Amaiyra was born so early but the mother is only sixteen and clearly does not want the responsibility of her baby. Amaiyra was in the NICU for three months when the hospital notified Neema Village and asked if we could care for the baby. They said the mother is not cooperating and the doctor knew if they sent the baby home she would not survive. Little Amaiyra is now 4 months old and weighs 1.8 kg (3.9 lbs). She is on oxygen and medication but is doing well in Neema’s isolation room getting 24 hour care. Please pray for this little one, her family and future. We are happy to love and care for her until her family is able.

Above, this 4 or 5 month old baby was found abandoned in the bush but is such a chubby, happy baby, it is hard to understand what could have happened to her poor mom who obviously loved and took good care of her. Janiece Watts from Abilene, Texas named her Elise and unless we can find her family and help them somehow God is surely preparing her forever family, too.

It is so sad in any country what alcohol and drug abuse does to families, but especially in a country already as poor as Tanzania. Beautiful baby Carine’s mom kept leaving her with the neighbors and the last time she just never came back. We have found a drug rehab non profit here in Arusha and have four women there now. If we could just find this mom.

Checking in an abandoned baby is both sad and sweet at Neema Village. We named this new baby Jordan. Little Miss Jordan is two days old, her blue clamp is still on the cord. She was left at a small local hospital. Dr Teddy and Kim have declared her perfect and beautiful

He kept us laughing, this spunky little guy who had lost his mother at birth. He has a new mom now and at age two, Salepu is ready to return home to his Maasai village. May God go with you sweet boy. We have told dad when he is ready Neema will send him to school.

If photos could just talk! Such excitement in the new intensive training computer center at Neema Village. Ed and Tammy Burns from Bastrop have written a computer program translated into Swahili. One more step toward a successful business for these MAP moms!

With thirteen MAP moms currently in training at Neema, the eight apartments are always full so we are building two more apartments. We had ten apartments but Regina, the supervisor, lives in one and we use one for a day care for the babies while moms are in class.

Each apartment to build and furnish will cost approx $6,000.

Ever onward and Upward!

See you at the Hilton!

Dorris and Michael

www.neemavillage.org

Get your tickets now at this link:

Click here to Purchase Tickets now

It is going to be a great night, with entertainment, speeches, videos, live auction and a delicious meal. If you love Neema Village, the babies, and moms, etc. do your best to be present. You will not be disappointed.

August 24, 2024

With all our other programs, babies are still the heart of Neema Village. Angel tells me since May, seventeen new babies have come to Neema and ten babies have been adopted or returned home. We had a couple of months with no new babies and then, Wham! Here are five of the newest ones.

Everest

They named him Everest and then threw him in a pit. We pray he is where he can grow to meet that majestic name now. He is about 3 months old, has cuts in a line on both sides of his stomach from a witch doctor but Dr. Teddy has checked him out and he seems to have no stomach problems. Amazing how resilient these little ones are. Such a sweet smile on one of Neema’s newest babies.

Gideon

His address was a tree. Little Gideon lived under the tree with his mom and we could not convince her to come with us to Neema Village. Social Welfare picked her up and she is now in Sober House and baby Gideon is with us at Neema Village. We tried to keep mom and baby together. The village leaders told us she had moved from a cave where Gideon was born and where they had been living u ntil she moved to the tree on one of Arusha’s busy Highways. It was painful to try to help her, she just would not agree to anything.

Poor little guy was terrified of everything but Nanny Orupa got him cleaned up and fed.  He is about a year and half old, was caked with mud and dirt and extremely malnourished. We will be supporting his mom while she goes through the alcohol addiction center for a year. Hopefully he will be able to return to her someday.

Jeana

July 2024- This sleepy little girl was born July 21, 2024. She came to Neema weighing a healthy 3.45kg (7.6lbs). Sadly, her mother died in the hospital after battling high blood pressure before and after Jeana’s birth. Jeana’s family is Maasai. We will keep Jeana for two years at Neema unless her family is able to care for her sooner. Her aunties can come visit her anytime.

Diane

Little Miss Diane was left abandoned at the hospital in Arusha. She weighed 2.4 kg when she was born August 2nd, 2024. She is beautiful and precious and will be loved at Neema Village until her forever family comes. You can help us keep these little ones at Neema by sponsoring a baby. Sponsorships start at $30. per month but it takes $300. a month to keep a baby at Neema. Babies are expensive! Go to www.neemavillage.org to set up a monthly sponsorship. Bless you!

Tumaini

Our littlest Tumaini, number 5 we think, came to Neema late afternoon on August 21, 2024. Her mom died out in a Maasai village after childbirth with complications from retained placenta. Tumaini is the little half sister of Saruni who lived at Neema for 2 years. Saruni’s mom died in childbirth and after a few years Saruni’s dad remarried. Now his second wife has died in childbirth of retained placenta. It is beyond sad at how many Maasai women die in childbirth here.

They had not fed baby Tumaini anything but water so she had an unrecordable blood sugar level when Dr. Teddy checked her into Neema Village. She also had a dirty rag tied around the umbilical cord and has a sepsis blood infection. Dr. Teddy has put baby Tumaini into the hospital in ICU to save her life. Please be praying for this little one as well as our Save The Mothers program which helps traditional birthers understand about retained placenta. We will need some help with the ICU medical bills.  Thanks everyone.

The barn is full of babies too! Daisy had a little bull last week, we named him Sir Loin. The Mama Cow Judy, had a little heifer a few days ago, we named her Lily and Sparkle had another bull Marq named Prince George about a month ago. They are so cute and will suck on your finger, or your skirt or anything you put in the pen. You know cows don’t have top teeth, right?

This is one of our saddest, yet sweetest adoption stories. This little guy’s mom is a prostitute and she came for a few weeks to see the baby after Social Welfare brought him to Neema. We tried to get mom to move to our MAP houses and told her after training we would set her up in a safe business. She said she could make 50,000 TSH a night on the street and would not move to Neema. We tried to tell her with the high rate of AIDs in this country she would most likely get HIV or worse but she would not come and later she gave the baby up for adoption.

We have loved this little man for almost two years and Kim shed a few tears as he walked down the steps of Neema and into his new life.

Bless you for helping us keep these precious little ones at Neema Village. We could not do this work without you!

Michael and Dorris Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

July 25, 2024

We are a baby home and we help moms with MAP businesses so they can support their families after the men abandon them. Guys, this one is going to be different but you are going to love it, it’s a great story!

About a year ago an orphan baby was brought to Neema Village after her mom died in childbirth in the hospital. The mother had not written down a father’s name so no one knew who the dad was. We got to name her Kalissa after a sweet friend from Temple, Texas named Calissa Kneipp. Calissa is a warrior battling ocular cancer and dreamed one night that we got a baby in at Neema and named her Calissa! She said she woke up to a dream come true.

Social Welfare is pretty persistent so they eventually found the father and he began to come every weekend to see his baby girl. You can see the bond is strong between dad and baby.

Isaac, Kalissa’s dad, comes every Saturday to feed Kalissa and put her down for a nap before heading back out to his job.. He is a boda boda driver which strikes chills in our hearts. That is a motorcycle taxi and is the most dangerous job in the city. Many young men are killed on these motorcycles trying to get their passengers to their jobs or shopping on time. They whip in and out of traffic and are allowed to pass on either side of a car,

Isaac has already had one accident when two daladalas were racing and hit him. He spent two weeks in the hospital with a smashed in face and busted teeth. He has lots of scars.

But it is how Isaac makes his living so he is back out on the street now driving his motorcycle taxi. We found out this weekend he is the sole support in his family. Isaac is a triplet and he supports his two sisters and their kids. We are concerned for him and baby Kalissa, who will be going home one day soon. So we began to talk to him about what else he could do to make a living. He thought maybe a motorcycle parts business would be good but after putting the pencil to the bottom line it went way out of sight.

So a small shop with staples much like the one we set Halimah above in is the new plan.

Since he is supporting so many people we plan to put an MPesa business in the shop as well. MPesa is a mobil phone based money transfer service, sending money from cell phone to cell phone, paying for purchases, school fees or just sending money to aging parents. Most Tanzanians do not have bank accounts but use their cell phones with MPesa instead.

It will be named “Kalissa’s Shop” and will have cold, soft drinks as well as sugar, soap and other household staples. The business set up will cost $717.38, the rent for six months is $117.18, The MPesa business is $1,200. and New Teeth so he can smile at his customers is estimated at $1,000.

To get Baba Kalissa off the dangerous motorcycle taxi will cost a total $3,134.56.

We can do this guys. We don’t normally work with men even though we fully understand that the root of the problem here is men! It is refreshing to see a dad loving his baby girl and wanting the best for her.

Let’s send Kalissa home with a dad who will be there to care for her!

I had started this blog yesterday and woke up today to learn that our friend Calissa Kneipp lost her battle to cancer today. Please be praying for this family, they are heart broken. Dr. David Kneipp is an ACU professor and he and his sweet wife Cynthia have been Neema baby sponsors for years as well as Calissa’s mom and dad Bill and Cathy Kneipp.

Calissa woke up this morning to a final dream come true!

Blessings all and much love.

dorris and michael

www.neemavillage.org

July 21, 2024

Between an auction and entertainment by Michael Hix, it is shaping up to be a fun night for everyone. Tickets will go on sale in the next few weeks but we just wanted you to get the date on your calendar. We will be there along with our speaker, Judge Paul Pape and many of our board members. Unfortunately the babies, whom this will benefit, will have to stay at Neema Village.

More new babies this month:

On a busy street in Arusha, a mother and baby were living under a tree. We tried to bring her to Neema to enter our MAP program, but she refused, stating that the tree was her home. We had to be careful since she had a rather large knife which she was using to chop sugar cane. Regina finally got the knife away from her.

We were hoping to keep mom and baby together but Social Welfare has admitted mom to Sober House, a year long alcohol and drug abuse program, and baby Gideon will stay with us until she is released. Poor little guy was scared and pretty dirty so Orupa got him bathed and dressed in clean clothes. He has been living in caves and under trees since he was born but he is warm and safe now in the crawler room at Neema Village.

And another beautiful baby, Loveness, has entered Neema this month. Her mother is in secondary school and got pregnant at 15. Social Welfare asked if we could keep the baby until mom finishes school in a couple of years.

It was a day of Blessing at Neema for twenty four moms of our special needs babies this month. These moms have been abandoned simply because they had a special needs baby. They were struggling, some of them living on the street, some were begging, some working the street but all were referred to Neema for help. They have gone through our MAP program and their babies have/are attending our Daycare Rehab Center. For their day we had speakers, games, lots of food, pedicures by the Aggie girls and special gifts including 20,000 shillings to get their hair and nails done. Leslie Miller, director of Aggies For Christ was one of the speakers. It was a pretty special day.

It broke us up to see Bibi Janet come in for the Blessing Day from her far village. She is the grandmother who has devoted 19 years of her life to caring for this little special needs girl the size of a 2 year old. We have set her up in a goat business and a used clothing business. She now has enough food to feed both of them.

“Enough” is a big word here in Tanzania. People need enough food to be healthy, enough water to stay alive, and enough Hope to make it all worth it.

“May the God of Hope fill you with all Joy and Peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with Hope by the power of the Holy Spirit!” And we Hope we see you on Oct 15, watch for the tickets to go on sale!!

Dorris and Michael

July 7, 2024

Miracle

This little Miracle weighed 1.7 kg and is 2 weeks old.

Her mom died during the delivery and they had to take the baby by Caesarean after the mom had already died. Her name is Grace Miracle and she certainly is one. Her Maasai father has seven other children and cannot care for such a tiny baby. The hospital called Neema for help. We have so many babies now, we could really use your help with sponsorships. Bless You for helping these tiny little bundles from God!

Ellery and Eliana

Ellery and Eliana, below, came to Neema weighing 2.3kg (5lbs) and 2.2kg (4.8lbs). Their 20 year old mother had these beautiful little girls through cesarean section. The mother was told she needed to exercise six hours after having them and when she stood up she started to bleed profusely. She was taken back into surgery and afterwards she seemed to be paralyzed from the waist down. She was not doing well so they put her in ICU and she started having seizures. The grandmother did come to see the babies and cried because she is so scared her daughter may die. We told her we would help her in anyway we could. The babies are doing well but please pray for their young mama.

Katie Jane

Katie Jane, below, was abandoned in a latrine and weighed 3.3 kg when she arrived at Neema. It happens, not only here in Africa but in America and in your hometown too, I imagine. The baby was in pretty bad shape with some bugs that had to be removed but she was crying pretty loudly for help. She is a strong little girl so we wanted to name her after a strong woman. We named her Katie Jane for a young woman at Harding University who plans to spend her life helping other people. She is beautiful just like her namesake and we will love her until her forever family gets here.

Damian

Sweet boy Damian, below, was left in a front yard. He looks about 2 months old and the people who found him named him before he was brought to Neema Village. He is a healthy boy and we pray God sends his forever family soon, too.

Lengai

He is a healthy little boy but his mom is mentally ill and cannot care for him. The grandmother brought the baby in to Neema. He is a little sweetheart and will need a sponsor for a couple of years until we can find a good home for him.

Zulaflii

His mom told the police she left him somewhere, on a bus, in a bush, with an old woman. An alcoholic, she wasn’t sure where she left him. He has been found and mom has gone into a treatment center. We will keep baby Zulaflii until she can get sober and Social Welfare says she is capable of taking him back. We think he is about 3 to 4 months old. We love his sad, little face.

Kenni

Abandoned at the hospital, his mom just walked out and never came back. Maybe someday you will get to meet your mother, sweet boy. We know she must have suffered greatly when she walked out and left you. For now we love you and are sure that God has good plans for you. Like your namesake, we hope you will grow up to be a good man, one who cares for the poor and hurting and one who loves well.

One of our Maasai traditional birthing attendants brought a new mom in for help. The mom had no milk, her twin babies were starving and mom was starving herself. Our staff, Dr. Teddy, Juliette and Esther got her cleaned up and dressed in some of Kelle’s clothes. We have put her and her two tiny babies, Zakayo and Matayo, into our MAP houses together. We are feeding her good rich food like bananas beef and chicken soup. She will soon have enough milk and be able to take the babies home.

Keeping families together is what Neema Village does best!

It is not a happy time for us to receive this many babies. The moms we have lost this month break our hearts. The moms who saw no way out of the deep problems of their lives other than to lay their baby down and walk away also break our hearts. I cannot imagine dealing with this kind of sorrow day after day except through the power of Jesus Christ.

Neema Village has been from the beginning, “A Place of Forgiveness and Hope,” forgiveness for the moms and hope for the babies.

Romans 15:13

Michael and Dorris Fortson

www.neema village.org

June 14, 2024

The soccer field mural is finished! Local Artists submitted their art contest entries and Boniface from the Maasai Market won. We think he has done a tremendous job. What do you think?

This very tall wall is to keep the soccer balls from going out into the road. Next comes the grass and water, bleachers, goal posts, bathrooms, and solar lights. This is going to be so wonderful for the boys, girls and women in our local area. There is even going to be a nanny’s soccer team! It will be available for community meetings as well.

Madeleine Bloom and her dad Michael Hart are holding Neema Village babies above while they watch the Saturday morning soccer game. Bless you Paul Pape for the dream of this soccer field and Madeleine Bloom, Shanna Kurtz and True North for making it happen.

My Michael had prepared scripture stakes that we hammered into each corner of the soccer field and prayed as we walked around the field for God’s protection over those who would play and watch the games.

Last Saturday we invited a hundred of our neighbors in for lunch. They took tours of the campus and held the babies and listened to the Neema Story. Our local village committee had advised us that the people around Neema did not know what we do, so we invited them in to see! Our new director, Angel is giving this tour, and with ten tours going all over campus it took most of the day! We fed lunch to about 150 people. What a day!

“Welcome Neighbors“

Our MAP houses are full and Heavenlight writes a new MAP Mom’s story:

Martha was forced by her uncle to get married to an 80yr old man after she had become pregnant and was abandoned by the father of her baby. The baby was born handicap so her uncle wanted to marry her off to an old Man. With no father a man will never marry a single mother with a handicapped child (it is a shame but they see these children as a curse to their family) so the family wanted to get rid of her by marrying her to that old man! Martha is 22yrs old, a mother of one little precious girl named Neema.

Martha’s mother didn’t want that to happen to her daughter but there was nothing she could do (women don’t have much say here) so instead she helped her daughter to escape to a friend’s home. The “friend” found a job for her in Arusha. Martha had to travel to Arusha but unfortunately she lost the contact of the person that offered her a job when she arrived. So she started walking around with her baby on her back in the middle of the night with no destination because she knew no one in Arusha. Fortunately she met Good Samaritans who took her to their village leader, the leader decided to come to Neema Village for help and she is now a MAP MOM staying in the MAP apartments.

She is attending classes here at Neema Village including reading and writing classes (she has never been to school) and also sewing classes, Bible classes and group therapy. Her daughter Neema is also going to our special needs Daycare. Both she and her daughter are doing very well, they both have the CUTEST SMILES ever (thanks to GOD they are able to smile now.)

A Big Thank You to people who sent new pajamas for the babies. We always bring baby clothes in our suitcases when we return and it is hard to send personal Thank You notes from Africa but please know that we do appreciate every thing you send for these precious babies and moms.

We have always said Neema Village is a place of Forgiveness and Hope but it is also a place of great beauty as Maria shows off our golden arch of Pyrostegia. Maria is pretty much a beauty too!

Just in case you like many of our neighbors do not know what we do here at Neema Village, this is Liam today (on the left) and when he arrived here in December 2023 (on the right).

Keeping Up with your Baby

And did you know that Neema Village has had over 450 babies who have come through our program and average between 50 to 60 babies each month living at Neema. Since we are not a large corporation and try to keep our administrative costs down our sponsors are notified of their baby’s progress by an overworked volunteer. But each baby has an album on Neema Village Facebook and Ashley Berlin does post an update 3 times a year on their album. It always has cute updated pictures which you can “save as” and put up on your fridge and a short paragraph of what is happening in your baby’s life. Many people do not have Facebook but Neema Village is a public site so you don’t have to join Facebook, you can just follow us and watch for your baby update. That would be a great help to us and I think you would enjoy following the many ways God is working at Neema Village. Bless you dear Sponsors!

May 20, 2024

We’re Home! It is always exciting to get back and see the new babies and moms who have come to Neema Village while we were gone.

Angel tells me we have 57 babies at Neema Village right now, with four tiny ones in isolation and all are orphaned, abandoned or at risk babies.

There are 16 moms in MAP Housing today, a bit over crowded but they are a great support for each other. We have 10 rooms and two moms can live in each room. These moms have been abandoned and abused with no hope and at Neema with the love of Christ they are finding Hope again.

Aren’t they beautiful in their new jean jackets? A Big Thank You to all the women in Texas and Oklahoma who donated their jean jackets to our MAP moms.

Do you remember Joari, the 15 year old girl that was supporting 5 people by working the streets and living in a lean-to shack a couple of years ago? The Christian Chronicle wrote a story about her. Yes that is Joari in the middle in the photo above. She is still too young to start a business but after a rough start she has become a Christian and is singing with the other girls at church. It is amazing to see a life changed like this!

If you remember this was the house, above, where we went with Erik Tryggestad to pick up Joari and bring her little family to Neema.

While we were in the States the water well drilling was going great. Scott Lockett you are awesome!!

Scott writes: This is a photo taken by Francois Uzale of the villagers at Simanjiro Village outside of Arusha getting water from their new well. They have installed a pump and are testing the water flow. It has to pump thousands of gallons before it completely clears up! You can tell they are eager for good clean water. Trust me this water is much cleaner than they usually get!! This is going to provide a major boost to their lives — by reducing the hundreds of hours spent collecting water.

We have a new baby, a Jersey bull which the staff has named Mr. Scott, I thought Pot Roast would be a good name but they chose Mr. Scott.

And another new baby came to Neema last week. His name is Johana and his mom died from an infection from childbirth out in a dusty Maasai village where there is no medical care. The first thing we teach our traditional birthers in the Save The Mothers classes is bring the moms in to the hospital please but the moms always prefer to birth at home. It is so sad that this little one will never know his mommy

Thank you to Kim White for all the hard work directing Neema Village while we were gone. If you have been at Neema with Kim you will know how phenomenal she is. And thank you to Saint Bruce White who supports her to come and direct Neema! I will leave you with this happy video of Lightness directing singing at church last Sunday. This amazing little girl has Spina Bifada but that does not stop her!!

May God’s Face shine upon you and give you peace.

Love, Michael and Dorris Fortson

April 29, 2024

Kim says the monsoons have come in gully washers this year. It makes the grounds at Neema Village beautiful but causes some major problems since Neema is built on the side of a hill.

The banana trees look good though don’t they.

Two walls, the retaining wall and the side wall of the soccer field, came down with all the heavy rains. Neema Village is at the top of the cliff in the picture below. Our chicken and cow barns are close to the edge of that cliff. We are praying the cow barn does not get washed over!

Along with the walls falling, the hospital where Michael had drilled a well had no water because the pump for the water well stopped working. Then the stove at the volunteer house blew up when Ritha tried to light the oven to cook the morning biscuits! It blew the stove out to the middle of the room and broken glass was flying everywhere. Thank God Ritha was not hurt. At the end of the day Scott Lockett’s comment was, “How do you get anything done here!”

Lazaro is four months old today. He is still in the isolation room. He has had a couple surgeries due to hydrocephalus. He is doing well, praise God, and continues to heal and get stronger. His family visited him before he had his fist surgery. Please continue to pray for this sweet boy’s health journey and future.

Kim and the Neema group traveled out to the Simanjiro area this month to do a Days For Girls program and to check the water well which Neema had drilled for them. They thought 50 young girls would show up but took food for 100. Around three hundred showed up!! Thankfully the loaves and fishes multiplied.

If we can save some of these sweet faces from having babies at 12 or 13 and dying in childbirth it will all be worth it. Our GIFT (Girls Informed For Tomorrow) program uses the Days for Girls format and three of our directors are certified to teach that program.

Maria’s Village asked if Neema could help a young mother who was released from the government hospital after giving birth to a very tiny baby, pictured with Kim below.

He is all head, tiny baby Masia was born weighing 1.3 kgs which is about 2.8 pounds. We will keep mama and baby at our emergency housing at the MAP apartments. Mom will kangaroo (skin to skin) with little Masia in an overly heated room which will act as an incubator. The other MAP moms will look after her and will cook her the rich bone soup all new mothers in Tanzania must drink after giving birth. Mama and baby will stay with us until Masia is healthy enough to return to his village.

Volunteers got to help with the Save the Mothers program for April. It was a younger group of twelve traditional birthers who came for a week this month so most of them could read. Later the volunteers went out to a Maasai village with Ester to check on some of the older Bibis who deliver babies and had been through the Neema STM program in the past.

Ester gave them a refresher course in safe delivery and they talked about the problems they have had and how many births or deaths they have had. She also took more gloves and items to help them in their deliveries. I wish you could hear them sing, it is so lively and beautiful. After the last STM session nine of the women decided to follow Jesus and wanted to be baptized.

Please pray for these sweet women that when they return to their villages they will be able to lead the life to which they have been called.

Our six big school girls were home from boarding school for Easter break this month and Lucia, Yacinta, Memusi and Zawadi along with a neighborhood girl named Heavenlight also made the decision to be Christ followers and were baptized. Ya’ll these are our babies!! Michael and I were crying. And someone told me years ago that they didn’t think keeping these babies was really mission work! Malikia, Maria, Jojo and Nengai are next.

I will leave you with this sweet photo of Liam who was like a little skeleton a few months ago when he came to Neema after the death of his mother. He has gotten so big and handsome while we have been gone. Doesn’t this just warm your heart!

Michael and I will be heading back to Africa in a couple of weeks. We have missed so much that Kim and Scott and Sarah have accomplished while we were in America speaking everywhere we could. It has been amazing to hear about the water wells, the paving, the remodeling and bookkeeping changes and all they have been able to get done while we were gone.

Please pray that God will Bless these three Mighty Warriors who work as volunteers without pay to save the babies and moms in Tanzania.

Africa is calling and it is time for us to get packed up and go relieve them!

Nakupenda Sana,

Bibi and Babu (Grandmother and Grandfather)

www.neemavillage.org

April 2, 2024

I know you have been wondering about something, let’s just get it out there, Ok? Michael and Dorris are getting old, is Neema Village going to continue into the future? Will this baby rescue center, saving babies like cutie pie Loretta below, go on into the future?

A Sister for Dorothy

Years ago in Neema’s early days a newborn baby, umbilical cord still attached, was left in a gravel pit. We prayed that the baby we named Dorothy would find a good Christian home and she did. A family with 3 boys wanted a little girl and they took Dorothy home. Now our baby Loretta above has become Dorothy’s little sister! Isn’t that the sweetest thing!

You might be asking, will all this baby sweetness continue into the future?

Years from now will mothers like Marianna who have been abandoned by their husbands, still be able to come to Neema and learn about a man named Jesus who has never abandoned them and take classes and learn to read and write and learn to sew and set up businesses to support their families and send their kids to school? Will the Mothers Against Poverty program, helping these lion hearted women of Africa change their world one woman at a time go on long into the future?

And Yes Marianna, above, made those cute dresses, sweet huh!

Will grandmothers who help birth babies out in their Maasai villages still be able to come to Neema and learn ways to help their mothers survive childbirth? Older women like Botoyo and Anna who came to a recent Save The Mothers week are deciding to give up FGM during their classes at Neema. The circumcision ceremony for young girls like Maria above was how they made their living so Neema is setting these two women up in a Better Bean Business. Saving lives is what this program is all about, will it continue?

And how about the free rehab daycare for babies like Bryson who began walking this year when doctors told us to buy a wheelchair he would never walk? This program makes everybody happy, even little Nasiri clapping his heart out for Bryson as he walks flat footed after surgery down the bars.

And the Neema water wells bringing water to thirsty people, and the GIFT programs training young Maasai girls to wait for marriage and babies, and our Foster Care/Boarding School program educating our big kids, and the new men’s conferences training men to be good fathers and husbands and the Neema Soccer field keeping young boys and girls off the streets and the bible classes for babies like Lightness learning her colors below; will all that continue long after we are gone?

Yes! God has got this! It has always been His work, not ours.

But if you have been wondering about the future of Neema Village we have some exciting news for you.

Our Legacy Fund is now open!

The 14 member Neema Village board, including Neema Directors Kim White, Kelle Samsill and Scott and Sarah Lockett, have now set up a way for you to contribute to the future of Neema Village. As a 501c3 non-profit, Neema Village is able to receive QCD (Qualified Charitable Distributions) which allows IRS holders to donate to a charity directly from their IRA – Tax Free! Th

The Legacy account will also allow donors to make gifts of stock and securities without adding to your tax burden by direct transfer into Neema’s Legacy fund. (Volunteer Directors Kim White and Scott and Sarah Lockett, Kelle Samsill not pictured below)

And a new interesting way to fund the future of Neema, you can will a house, a boat, a motor home, an RV, so that when you pass it will go directly into a Neema fund without probate or taxes!! Pretty exciting

We know God wants you to take care of your family first but after that remember the less fortunate and leave a legacy that will actually make a difference in the world!

Michael and I are in the States for a few more weeks, if you would like to talk about this email us and we can provide account information to help you make this happen. [email protected]

*And for future reference please put on your calendar an exciting event coming up, “Dining Out With Neema” on October 15, 2024.

Neema means Grace and any good that has been done and will be done in the future at Neema Village is always by the Amazing Grace of God!

Michael and Dorris Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

March 8, 2024

(Hang with me, its going to have a happy ending!)

Her name was Mary, she was a widow, 28 years old, with a baby she could no longer nurse, her breasts had gone dry and obviously she was starving.

This was her home or what was left of it, chunks of the mud caulking had fallen out between the sticks and the dust and wind blew continuously through the house.

She lay on the ground covered by a thin cloth, not wanting to see or be seen by a world too harsh to stay in.

Ester made her look up. Can you see it? It is the face of complete despair, all hope exhausted; youth, dreams, joy, plans, pleasures vanished like the smoke of her cooking fire, now empty ashes.

Too much? Sorry.

It’s not something we want to see or hear, it’s not one of our happy stories. But we hear it quite often now. The men leave the village looking for work in the towns and they never return and the women and children starve.

Ester our “Save The Mothers” director brought me pictures of Mary and asked if we could help.

She had left at 6am with some of our volunteers for a long, dusty trip out to a Maasai Village to check on the Bibis (Grandmothers) from one of our previous Save The Mothers classes.

It’s important to follow up after a few months to check how the Bibis are doing, how many babies has each one delivered, how many moms or babies did they lose, what were their ages and what were the complications, were they able to use the simple skills they had learned in our classes, etc…

And we had sent gifts and supplies to help them in their work. The Bibis were excited, each one wanting to tell their successes and some their losses.

Each month twelve Maasai traditional birthers come to Neema Village in Arusha for Save The Mothers.  It is our attempt to stop the high numbers of moms dying in childbirth and I think it is working. We have now had over 384 women come in for training.

Our first lesson for them is bring the moms in to the hospital! But they want to birth at home, women die in the hospitals, they say.

With little or no medical care during pregnancy, girls as young as 12 marry and get pregnant. They eat grass to make themselves vomit during the last three months so they will have small babies. Maasai women are tall and thin, narrow hipped and they’ve learned big babies kill.

And complicated by the Maasai practice of FGM, female circumcision, the chances of not making it through childbirth are high. Scar tissue does not stretch like normal skin so they rip and tear and bleed to death having a baby.

Too much again? Sorry, someone needs to know, someone needs to care.

And Ester cares, a Maasai herself whose been through all of it, early arranged marriage to an abusive old man, running away, scared, alone, trying to get free. We helped and she made it, now she tries to help her people. She cries as she tries to teach these grandmothers.

But today after this session out in the village they asked Ester to go to a hut with them to see a widow named Mary.

Can we help her, she asked me? How could we not, I asked.

More and more as we live our lives in this beautiful, blighted land of Africa we ask ourselves how did Jesus do this every day, hear these stories, continue to care, not throw up his hands and say it’s just too much?

What would He do? We know. He would help.

So, we sent Ester back out the next day to bring Mary in to Neema. Another long exhausting day for her and Kilele the driver. Later sitting on the couch in the baby home at Neema Village Mary was so weak she couldn’t stand by herself. We took her to the hospital and in a few hours, she had medicine and a drip in her arm.  Thank God, Another life saved.

We had sent Ester back out to pick up one woman but she brought in two. A pregnant woman in the village was so big she could barely walk and, on the way home they dropped her off at Maternity Africa.  But Maternity Africa wanted to trade her for another mom who had delivered twins in their hospital earlier and had no home to return to. So we have a new mom in our MAP program with little twins. I went to visit and mom wanted me to name her babies.

Babies Madeline and Michael Bloom, above, like little buds waiting to open, are named for Madeline Bloom who lost her husband, Michael, last year.

Madeline is on the right with her sister Molly with two Neema babies. The Michael Bloom Foundation in collaboration with “True North” is building a soccer field on Neema property to help young boys and girls and women have a place to play off the streets.

If you’ve been to Neema, the “Furaha Soccer Field” is right below the cow shed. We will paint soccer balls all over that wall. And we will have a women’s team with lots of Neema Nannies to work off their frustrations after a hard day playing with our babies!

It’s not all sad and depressing, our granddaughter, Maria, is Maasai, the last child of an eighth wife who died in childbirth. She is proud of her culture and loves to visit the simple life of her family out in the village. Like Maria and Ester, Maasai are beautiful. God made each culture in His image.

What’s Mary’s future, now that she has one, you ask?

We brought her back to Neema Village after a few days in the hospital to the MAP houses where she is being fed nutritious meals and where she has other women with similar stories to lean on. She is still skinny but she will attend classes where she will learn that God never lost sight of her. His love heals and one day we will set her up in a corn or rice business and she will return to her village. Hope restored.

Why do we do this you ask? Because Jesus would. He loves these beautiful Maasai women more than we do. Did you know that His longest discussion with a single person recorded for us was with a woman?

I wonder if her name was Mary.

February 14, 2024

Sweet little baby number five so far this year came to Neema just in time for Valentine day. His mom has severe mental issues and did not care to name him. Kiersten from Illinois was here and since the baby was born on her birthday she got to name him. She named him Christian. We love it.

Don’t worry sweet boy you are going to be so loved here and after a few months a new mommy and daddy will be found for you. Once again what evil meant for death, God meant for Life!

Summertime on the front porch at Neema. Somedays it is just too hot to be inside for a nap. It’s a full house with fifty-eight babies at Neema Village today.

Ester, the one in the green shuka, is the director/teacher of the Save The Mothers program. She is loved and respected by these Maasai women who come in for training. Esther is Maasai and has suffered through much of what she is now teaching these traditional birthers to avoid. I wish you could feel the excitement of these women as they go through their graduation ceremony.

It is loud and fun and wonderful!

When the twelve Bibis (grandmothers) spend a week at Neema they learn so much that will help their moms in their villages; from healthy eating so the moms can have healthy babies to how to extract a retained placenta. The Bibis say they go home with their heads too full. They are very proud of their certificates. Our latest Graduation was the 9th of February, 2024.

At the daycare for special needs babies, this is one happy little boy who got his very own wheelchair this month. The surgeon now says that it will not help Bryson to do surgery on his legs to make his feet go down and could make it worse. So Bryson is going to be the champion wheelchair driver of Arusha! Bryson’s dad has now finished his welding apprenticeship and is ready to start a business.

Juliana has been sad for a long time. She says alcohol has ruined her life and it is too late for her to have a good life now. She does not yet know the power of our God to repair broken lives!

Juliana is only 36 years old. She is our newest MAP mom and has just spent a year in an alcohol rehab center. She was HIV positive when her family abandoned her. She met a man at the meds clinic who was also positive and they bonded, fell in love and married. She tried to take her meds faithfully but their first baby died at birth and then a few weeks after having her second baby her husband died. She began drinking heavily, moved to the streets, lost everything including her son and finally some neighbors dragged her to Sober House where she has been in treatment for the last year. She has worked hard but was worried about where she could go when she was released.

Our Map Director Anna was at Sober house checking in another mom when she met Juliana and told her to call when she was released. Thank God she called. Juliana is learning to pray and learning that there is a God who has never forgotten her. She has never owned a bible but is now attending nightly bible classes in our MAP apartments and attends Christian based group therapy twice a week. Hope has come alive!

Now Juliana can’t stop smiling and saying, “Asante Sana,” Thank You!

For now she is staying busy helping at Neema with the day care babies. Hopefully in the near future she will begin business training and be able to start a business that will support her and her cutie pie little boy.

The Power of Hope is amazing isn’t it. “Without Hope life is a broken winged bird.”

We hope your day is filled with the great Giver of Hope, Jesus the Christ.

dorris and michael

www.neemavillage.org