Flora’s Story

December 10, 2020

It was a bad area of town and we worry about Anna going into these areas to find a woman in need. God please protect her.

A man let her sleep in a house being constructed and she left all her belongings there and went to the market to buy or beg for food. When she returned all her possessions had been stolen.  When we arrived what we found were a few pieces of rags, torn and dirty, on a small piece of foam on the mud floor.  The women selling vegetables in the market had given her something to eat and then called Neema Village to ask for help for this poor woman. 

As we listened to Flora’s story Anna began to cry first. She was interpreting for us through her tears. It is hard to hear how cruel, abusive and unfeeling we humans can be to one another. 

Flora is 26 years old, Joseph her son is seven and Faith is five. No matter how bad life got she said she would never leave her children. 

Today we went to visit a new woman. (above) Flora, safe and secure in a new home rented for her by Neema Village’s MAP program, has a big smile now; her kids are laughing as they welcome us.

Kassie Stanfield and Kelle O’Pry Samsill gave Flora lots of hugs and a welcome bag of fresh veggies from our garden.

I just could not help but think of the passage in Psalms 30:11 as I saw the stark difference in these pictures.

Flora has a new big bed now with a soft mattress and blankets and sheets where all five of the little family will sleep together, and a gas cook stove, dishes and good food. Her children have not been in school because they did not have money for lunch or uniforms.  Their faces are expectant and bright now with hope that we will help them. God willing, we will. 

Back at Neema our baby love couch was full for a couple of weeks as we welcomed our first after-Covid volunteers. Ali Maddox, Kelle Samsill, Kassie Stanfield and Ashley Berlin with four of the sweet Neema babies pictured above.

With 49 babies at Neema Village, Kelle was doing double duty. Below she was welcoming our newest little one. Michelle at 2.05 kg was brought in from Social Welfare by her Maasai great grandmother after the death of her mother.

You may think you have heard Flora’s story before. Yes, you have, this story is being repeated almost daily in the lives of abused and abandoned women in Africa.

The MAP women’s craft store opened this month, five of our babies were adopted in the last few weeks and one little triplet girl returned home. By God’s Grace it’s been a good month.

Saving Moms

November 23, 2020

One of our volunteers last year, Karly Hargood, from the UK wanted to do something with lasting results out in a village. We told her the safe birthing seminars save lives!

Thursday we sent our big car and rented another car and 2 groups traveled about 4 hours out to a remote village. Karly and Anna greeted them with fun, games and lollypop quizzes like which mom has had the most babies, etc.

This is the village where our baby Neema Grace is from. She lost her mother in childbirth almost three years ago and her father was unknown. Many of our babies come from these Maasai villages. You may ask why? There are probably many reasons; lack of good medical care, lack of good nutrition, their tall, thin bones and narrow pelvic structure typical of Maasai and any number of other reasons. But one thing that certainly does not help is FGM or female circumcision.

If you follow Neema Village you have seen this picture below of baby Neema Grace with Bekah when we picked her up as an abandoned baby from the hospital. She is a big girl now walking into her village, above, with Nanny Juliette.

As the cars drove up to the village, they were greeted by the excited women singing and trilling.

It is such dry and desolate land out there it makes the vibrant colors these women wear almost pop your eyes.

They separated the group, young girls in one, women in another and then they pulled the men out into a separate group and Ben talked with them. The men don’t usually stay long at the women’s seminars anyway once the teacher starts talking about birthin’ the babies. (If you are squeamish you may want to skip this next part.)

Two Tanzanian midwives did the women’s seminar and they actually had a life-size partial mannequin of a woman’s reproductive parts to help demonstrate. It raised some eyebrows! Two lifesaving things they told the girls, first you must wait until age 18 to have a baby, your hips are not wide enough to birth until age eighteen or more. Some of these girls marry at 11 or 12.  Then they tell them the circumcision you do of scrapping off a woman’s private parts leaves her with scar tissue which does not stretch like normal skin so she tears and bleeds to death during delivery.  

At the seminar Karly gave out the safe birthing kits with nine things that save lives to the older women who deliver babies in that village.

The interesting information that came out of this seminar was that not only do they suture up the young girls after circumcision but if a woman’s husband goes off for a year or so to work, they cut and re-suture her closed again! UGH! These poor women don’t have a chance! When Ben talked to the men, he told them, “You are killing your women by doing this.”

The loss of Maasai women in childbirth is much higher than the average maternal death rate for Africa which the last time we checked was about one in twenty nine. This is not a statistic but we have been told by a group from church that works with Maasai that one in seven moms out in the Maasai villages will die in childbirth which makes having a baby the most dangerous thing a Maasai woman can do. It makes you cringe doesn’t it!

Since Neema Grace does not have a mother or father, the village leaders have given us permission to put her in school in Arusha. She will attend the same boarding school, Hope for Maasai Girls, where Memusi and Nengai go. The three girls will all come home to Neema village for school breaks and we will take them out for visits to their villages.  We have also told them if you cut them, we will bring the police and put you in jail!

Bless those of you who sponsor our boarding school children. We just need about 16 more sponsors to have at least one sponsor per baby at Neema Village!! Contact us if you would like to know which babies have no sponsors. [email protected]

Trading Places

November 17, 2020

Our plan was to eventually set her up in a MAP business but first she had to go through a program to get rid of the label in her head of who she had been. While she stayed in the Mothering Center at Neema this month, Ashley and I were studying the bible with her and telling her that God loves her no matter what she has done.  

She was sleeping a lot and didn’t want to come out and be with the other moms. She has Aids and is very skinny but didn’t like any of the food we cooked. She spent a lot of time in her room crying. Our nannies tried to make her feel welcome and the other MAP moms tried to include her in the weekly programs.  Anna, our MAP director was doing a lot of counseling. But she was having a hard time believing she was not at the bottom of the heap of humanity.  

Moms fun class below

Yesterday she was to go to a program designed specifically to get women off the street. With 91 young women, Pippi House was a bee hive of activities, children laughing, moms visiting together and a sweet red heart welcoming sign. 

We had been able to secure a place for her in the program but only if we would take one of their moms who had just finished a two-year program.   The new mom had just finished the program and others were there to see her off on her new life.

So, yesterday we made the trade. It did not go well.  

On the other hand, the woman we traded for is excited about her new business of opening a small food shop through our MAP program and is grateful for the help. She has cute little twin boys age two. We have found a home for her and gotten permission from the owners for her to open her food business in the courtyard by her house. 

 We bought her a bed, pots and pans, sheets and towels, mosquito net and everything she will need to start her business and begin her life over.  She had come to us with nothing and now could hardly find enough words to say thank you. We prayed over her new home and asked God to protect her from evil and bless her new business. 

Oh, the Ups and Downs of this work in Africa! Some of the things we do are almost unbelievable but as I have said before we can’t make this stuff up!

II Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come.”

We Needed A Bodyguard

October 19, 2020

With the purple Jacaranda trees it was a beautiful drive out to the village. But after we arrived we knew it was one of the worst living conditions we had seen in our fourteen years living in Africa.

The young woman we came to see had been abandoned by her husband after she had their second Albino baby. An older woman in a small village by the river let the little family live with her. The house was small for the five people living there and children and chickens running in and out. 

There were big holes in the walls where the mud had fallen out from between the sticks, letting the cold wind blow through the house. She kept a cook fire going on the floor in one end of the house to keep it warm and there was a bed at the other end where they all slept together.

The old woman was cleaning small fish for their dinner during our visit.  

There were cute little kids everywhere playing in the dirt. They made up their own toys like this little boy with his push toy that clicked as he ran around the yard.

The little guy below kept running back to his “box” so I guess that was where he stayed.

Tausi’s oldest boy had built a motorcycle out of logs for himself.

Tall banana trees and a clear, rocky stream tripped along beside the village. It looked lovely on the outside but there was something sinister about this village. I asked why the men of the village did not fix the old widow’s house. She said it was a pombe village where they made native corn brew and the men got drunk and laid around all day.

Tausi, the young mother, had been chopping wood and selling it to have money for food. You would not want to arm wrestle with this woman!  

Next week we will move Tausi and her children out of this scary village. She will move to the houses we rent for other MAP moms until we can get the Jeff May MAP houses built. Then we can start talking to her about a business.

 At Neema Village she will be able to attend the Women’s Rights seminars, sewing classes, computer classes, business classes or English classes. She will meet other women who have had the same experience of despair and poverty. She will learn that it is going to be okay and that there can be happiness again for her and she will hear that God dearly loves her.

When we go out like this to interview a woman who has been beaten down and thrown out like garbage, I always feel like we go with an incredible secret. She doesn’t know the secret yet but her life will never be the same because Hope by the name of Jesus Christ has just entered her life. It is one of the greatest joys we have as we get to be administrators of God’s Amazing Grace in Tanzania, East Africa. 

September 2020

October 1, 2020

These four little babies are currently in the isolation room at Neema with Loitapuaki.

Abandoned baby Dallas was left on the street and picked up by the police. His adoptive parents are out there somewhere. We are praying for you wherever you are!

Below, baby Ivan’s mom is a 16-year-old mentally handicapped girl who was raped by a 15-year-old mentally handicapped boy. All our babies have a tragic story or we would not have them. It breaks your heart.

Paul Jonson was born July 4 but weighed only 5.2 lbs. when he came to Neema. His mom died of fistula when he was a month old. PJ looked like a wrinkled little old man but is gaining weight now and looks good.

A friend brought two Maasai moms with handicapped babies to Neema Village this month to have treatment at the Daycare.  

.  One of the babies, two-year-old Lembursi, was not walking but should have been.

He spent the month at the Neema Village Daycare for Handicapped Babies and is now walking a few steps by himself.  If his mom will stop carrying him on her back, he will pick it up back at the village quickly now.

The other Maasai mom has three children but the last baby, Namayani is a year and a half and still cannot hold her head up. She is also blind and deaf.  Her little tummy and chest had rows of knife marks where the evil spirits were let out. Yes, we talked long and hard about that.

We were trying to fatten Namayani up before she begins treatment. Mom learned a new way to sit with the baby to strengthen her neck.

Three new MAP businesses were also set up this month. Mama Purity had gone out one day and returned to find her husband had abandoned her and her little CP baby. He had taken everything. She was begging in the little village below Neema. The village elders asked Neema to help so we have set her up in a new vegetable stand and here it is! We love this!

Mama Angel was very sick for two years after the birth of her baby so the baby Angel lived at Neema Village.  Now mom takes her medicine every day and comes to all the classes at the Mothering Center. 

She is doing great in the sewing class at Neema Village and has a contract to make 100 “Days For Girls” washable feminine pads for a medical mission next year out in the Maasai village. Those young girls do not go to school when they have their periods so they miss a lot of school. Educating girls in Africa is the single biggest thing you can do to lift women out of poverty, so let’s keep these girls in school!

Mama Angel received a sewing machine this month for her sewing business. Don’t you love her purple hair! Because of the sickness her husband gave her, this young woman will most likely never remarry so if purple hair gives her some joy I love it!

Another chicken business was begun this month to help Bibi (grandmother) Ebeneza. One of our happiest Neema babies, two-year-old Ebeneza, was scheduled to return home in October. His mom is mentally handicapped and had tried to kill him when he was a baby so he was brought to Neema Village. 

The grandmother has been asking that Ebeneza be returned to her but she did not have an income so we set her up in a chicken business this month.

We have had one adoption this month, baby Faith was adopted and flew off to her new home in Dar es Salaam. Most of the new moms do not want their picture posted.

Our big boy Johanna returned home this month. Two years ago, Sylvia Pape went out to a remote Maasai village to pick up a baby whose mom had just died.  Now little Johanna has traveled that road back home.  We cannot regulate the homes our babies return to but we do know they go home with a song in their heart that Jesus loves me, this I know. It’s still hard.

The women’s sewing classes have started again after Covid with nine women in this class. They are all doing so good that Anna has asked that we get them all treadle sewing machines. We have raised money for five machines so far.  

When you lift a woman, you change her world. If we can lift enough of them, we can change our world. 

The Life of a Missionary Teacher in Africa

September 15, 2020

Our kids are always eager to get to school with Ashley and Caroline who make learning fun for the five to three-year old children at our baby home in Africa. 

Ashley Berlin, from Casper, Wyoming has been directing our school program for four years. May I just say she is an incredibly dedicated, resourceful and talented teacher. 

Her classroom is filled with learning and life and happy students going from one project to the next, like the cute drawings below. 

Her students who go on to regular schools in Arusha are always top students in their classrooms. Ashley’s class day starts with bible stories, songs and prayer. Our “Littles” are praying in school below, well some of them are!

Last year we completed the Neema school building on campus with two classrooms, library/music room, office and bathrooms. The building is located behind the baby home on the front corner as you pull into our drive at Neema Village.

The windows in the classrooms open to view beautiful Mt. Meru, the fifth tallest mountain in all of Africa. I would be tempted to just sit and stare out the window! 

And the students are off to a good start this school year. 

The big kids have music and drum classes with Caroline. The two-year olds come later at ten in the mornings for music and they love singing with Caroline, too.

When Ashley has time she loves to hold the little babies at Neema

She also does toy time in the evening for the big kids.

We know this is a ministry of love and sacrifice for Ashley. She misses her family and church in Casper. At Neema she loves to take the big kids like Nengai to church.

For a young woman there are few prospects for marriage and family here and right now with Covid scaring off all our volunteers there are no young people here for her to pal around with, just us old folks. 

Sacrifice comes in many different forms today but I am confident that if you asked Ashley if her work was a sacrifice you would hear a resounding, “No Way!” . 

A Sad Time for Neema Village

September 8, 2020

Our First Graduate From the Day Care

August 30, 2020

After the triplets birth the mother stayed a month in the hospital with Esther while the triplet boys, Edward and Elesha, came to Neema Village.  When the tiny baby girl was finally able to come to Neema she was put in the incubator in the isolation room and on the warming table to keep her temp up. She was about half the size of her brothers.

Her brothers grew big, were rambunctious and into everything. But Esther continued to struggle to put on weight and keep food down. She was slow to sit up and could barely stand on her on at two while the boys were running all over the place.

When we opened the Day Care for Handicapped babies last year, we began taking Esther to the center every day. With the help of some great donors we bought equipment to help the babies sit up, reach for things, crawl and hopefully someday walk. Napendaella and teacher Penuweli and the daycare staff worked long hours with Esther and the other babies enrolled at the daycare. 

The babies get coconut oil massages every day to loosen up restricted muscles. Below, Esther on the parallel bars at the Daycare in her new blue graduation dress made by the daycare staff.

At the Daycare the babies eat nutritious food and are applauded for each accomplishment. In June while we were still in the States we got our first video from Kim that Esther was walking. I’ve watched that video many times and still cry every time. Below Esther at the graduation party at Neema Village.

The boys went home almost a year ago. Their mother had been working on the street, is HIV positive and needed help. Through the MAP program at Neema Village we moved her to a new location and set her up in a small shop selling staples like sugar, flour, salt, veggies, etc. She has a good business going now, is taking her medicine and the little family has a great future together. Esther is the tiny one in the middle below.

At the Neema graduation party, the Triplets’ mom talked about how grateful she was to have found the help she needed from Christians at Neema Village. 

At the Daycare party we shared with the moms and staff that the world may have thought that Esther’s future was to be an invalid, to be put off and hidden in a dark room somewhere but that God’s plan was for her to walk and have a life full of joy and accomplishments. 

Hopefully our talk was an encouragement for the other moms of the handicapped babies to not give up, that it might not be all they had planned and dreamed of when they were expecting their babies but that their lives could still be full of love and happiness if they will go with God’s plans for hope and a future. It is Amazing Love that brings these little handicapped babies into a life of hope.   

A Double Whammy

August 27, 2020

This little 1.8 kg baby (below) was born three weeks ago at the hospital. The mom and baby had been staying in the hospital because they had nowhere to go. The hospital does not have food service so family members must come to the hospital to cook for the patients.  Since the mother, Mariam, had no one to cook for her the nurses had been trying to bring her some food and snacks. 

Her husband had given her AIDS, then abandoned her. She was alone in the hospital. The hospital staff called to see if we could help.  We brought her home to Neema today and put her in the women’s shelter bedroom at the Mothering Center.  

 She is depressed and afraid to nurse the baby so we are supplying formula, bottles and clean water for the baby and good nutritious food for Mariam along with some counseling and encouragement.  She also got to go into the “Dress For Success” room in the Mothering Center and pick out some clothes. We will have to make a business plan for her later when she is stable.  The baby is so tiny he gets lost in the blankets .

Another mom, Happyness, came with her little eleven-month-old handicapped baby named Purity today. It’s another one of those sad stories where the husband cannot take the stigma of having a handicapped child and abandons the family. This one left with all the furniture and possessions of the family and Happyness came home to find her sole possession was one foam mattress on the floor. 

She has been walking around the neighborhood with Purity on her back begging in the little village below Neema. She stopped at a poor widow woman’s house and the old woman decided she could stay in an empty room in her house for 5,000 shillings a month (about $2.50).  There was no water or electricity.

The very poor mud and stick house was on a small hill just off the road down to the Moivaro Coffee lodge.  The village leaders heard about Happyness begging around the village and called Neema to help. 

The old lady’s two daughters in law came into the room when Anna and I came to visit and the six of us could barely fit in the room. But she said her son is coming home now and she will need the room back so Happyness and Purity were homeless again.

Below, our MAP Director Anna in the middle, met Happyness on the road looking for a room where Happyness and Purity could live. Anna also took them to the Neema Village Day Care for Handicapped Babies and got Purity enrolled.

After finding a room, Anna took Happyness to the African market for a bed, chair, table and gas cooker. I can never go with Anna on these buying trips. When an Mzungu shows up the price goes up! Anna also bought her some dishes, pots and pans and some food. Now Happyness and Purity have a home!

We prayed with both these girls today and told them they were not alone, that Hope and Help were available and they would be happy again. We told them that God is a Blessing God and loves to bless His people who then bless others. We will start Happyness in a small business selling staples like sugar, flour, salt, soap, veggies, etc. We pray Walmart never comes to Tanzania!  It would ruin all these little businesses we are setting these women up in,  all 74 of them now!

When we arrived back at Neema this afternoon, we got the call that the truck was on the way to Neema with the crate we had shipped back in March (pictured at the top).  Then we got the call that the box with the pasteurization machine sent through DHL quick delivery, had also finally arrived. It took a month!  The crate had been opened and we are pretty sure it had been pilfered.  I guess someone needed those diapers more than we did!

The Widow Wins It All!

August 9, 2020

Yes, it’s Phillip!

Neema Village is getting close to 300 babies saved in eight years. There have been a few we got in too late to save, this little one at three months old and just over 3.3 lbs, was close.

But on with the story of the widow. Mwajuma showed up at Neema a few years ago. She was sitting in the driveway one morning when we woke up. She had had polio when she was 12 and has walked on her knees since then. She married and had a son and then her husband left her. On this morning, Michael helped her into Neema where we could visit with her about what help she needed.

She knew how to make the beautiful shoes that are so popular in Tanzania so after visiting with her we set her up in the shoe business.

But last year she had a wreck, broke her leg and has had 2 surgeries, now sadly it looks like she will not be able to work again.

A friend called her a few months ago and told her that her husband had died. Mwajuma decided to go to the village. While there she began to talk to the elders about her right to inherit the land and home. She had learned some very important things through the Women’s Rights program and she was able to inherit all he had owned. The widow got it all!

Now one last happy story. A baby ( above) was left abandoned at the hospital in January. The mother just walked out after the birth. The nurses gave her a few days to hopefully return but she never did so Neema Village was called and we named the baby Patric.

Yesterday Patric was adopted! His new mom is from Dar and she flew to Arusha and spent a couple of days with Patric so he would not be afraid. She spent the night in the small baby room with the nannies and in the morning they flew off to Dar and a whole new life for this sweet baby. It’s what Neema does best!

Another reminder: As you continue to buy things through Amazon, please remember to buy through Amazon Smile.  It is Amazon’s way to give back. Set up Neema Village as your “Charity of Choice” and they will give Neema Village 5% of your purchase.  We are registered with Amazon as a nonprofit so you just have to scroll down the list of nonprofits until you get to Neema Village, click there and everything you buy will make money for Neema. But be sure you choose Amazon Smile when you go to Amazon to purchase something. Asante Sana!