“Phillip Flies Home”
Last Monday we traveled up in the mountains past the banana grooves to find the new home of one of our adopted babies. In some places it was not much more than a cow path. These roads give you what we like to call the Tanzanian massage!
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Road up to Phillip Wood’s house.
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One of Neema’s cutest babies, Phillip had been at Neema since he was abandoned at the hospital. He has been adopted and we were traveling out to check on him.
If you follow our blog
you will remember Phillip’s special story. He was very tiny when abandoned so he spent a couple of months in the hospital until he was big enough to bring home to Neema. We named him Phillip after Phillip Wood, the only American on the Malaysian flight that went down a couple of years ago. My sister, Lottie McCormack in Edmond Ok, and Phillip Wood’s mother were friends, pregnant at the same time and their two boys grew up together in Oklahoma and later were roommates at Oklahoma Christian. When Phillip’s plane went down Lottie called and asked if we would name a baby after Phillip.
So little Tanzanian Phillip Wood came to live at Neema. A smiley, happy baby, he quickly became a favorite baby of everyone who came to visit Neema.
So now the rest of the story. We blogged a few months or so ago about Phillip being adopted and this was our first trip out to check his new home. Simone, a volunteer and her mom, and Angel, our social worker and Mama Musa, the Neema Manager and I traveled the endless or so it felt, rocky path up the mountains for a visit to see how Phillip was doing. His new mom and dad met us as we drove up to the house.
The cement home was surrounded outside by bananas trees, flowers and chickens scratching in the yard, There was a car and a motorcycle at the house so his family seems more affluent than the average Tanzanian family. They graciously fed us snacks of boiled eggs and bananas.
Inside the home there was furniture and sweet pictures of Jesus on the walls. Phillip was afraid of us at first and kept his head buried in his momma’s chest. But we had brought toys (the secret weapon for all children) so Phillip was soon playing and smiling like the happy little boy we knew at Neema. Simone, a three time volunteer from Germany at Neema, had brought a wooden duck so she and Phillip were soon quacking all over the floor. After eating with the family and then playing for a while with Phillip, we said our goodbys and headed home.
Be watching for our new book titled “Phillip Flies Home” from Guardian Angel Publishing. It is Phillips story told in the form of a little African Honey Guide Bird and the fierce Honey Badger. It is quite a poignant story, you will love it.
On the way back from Phillip’s house we stopped to check in on another abandoned baby, Michael, all grown up now, and his adoptive family. Michael had been abandoned on a front porch and the people who found him adopted him, which happens fairly often. He now has grandparents, a dad, uncles, aunts and cousins who love him and he is in school.
That is little Michael with Big Michael to the left. We estimated he was about three months old when he was found on the porch. Below Angel, Michael and Dorris on the front porch.
The builders are cutting the stones for the retaining walls on the property. They are also making the paving stones right here on the Neema property for the walk ways and for some sections of the road.
Mr. Chandu, our contractor, and Matt Erdman, are the two men out there at the land every day making this happen. On any given day there are aroiund 50 men working on this project. Thanks guys!
The rooms for the babies are painted in soft yellows and blues and the big hall down the middle of the home is also yellow. Hopefully one day there will be pictures of animals, giraffe, zebra, elephant, etc. painted on the walls down low enough for the children to see as they run and play in this big hallway.
The kitchen has an island in the middle of the room and big burners on the counter for boiling the 30 litres of milk a day we need to feed these hungry babies. We estimate around a hundred bottles of milk are made at Neema a day! We will also be feeding our staff and volunteers out of this kitchen every day.
Mr. Chandu created the blue prints for the front steps leading up to the porch after Michael had emailed his hand drawn ideas for the steps before we got here last week. It will be beautiful with flower gardens to the sides of the rounded steps. I think the bottom step down is going to be a doosy though!
You might be interested to know that the workers eat at Neema village every day. Two women cook for them, usually rice and beans or like today, Ugali and a dipping sauce of meat and potatoes. They pour the Ugali (pictured to the right) out on big platters and all eat from the same plate with their fingers, just like we used to in the old days of Africa. It was quite delicious and the smoky kitchen just added to the flavor.
A few months ago a young couple began coming to visit Neema House Arusha and noticed this beautiful baby. Sifa was calm, pleasant, quick to smile, sweet tempered and with a gentle disposition. The volunteers and staff all fell in love with her. 
That is Lindsey on the left, a volunteer from Nacogdoches, with Sifa at the mountain church. We love taking the babies to church, dressing them up and putting bows in their hair, if they have hair! and on their cute little bald heads if they don’t!
day playing with her, changing diapers, dressing and feeding her. So last week when Sifa went home to live with them she was not afraid. We are so happy about that. Sometimes it works out this way, a few times babies are adopted by couples who don’t spend time with them. That is pretty rough on the baby. But Sifa’s new mom and dad did it right. We could not be happier for this precious baby and her new family. Once again what evil meant for bad, God meant for good. 
We try very hard to not judge these women who abandon their babies. It is difficult to understand what would make a mother do something like this. We know mothers everywhere love their babies. It must be something so drastic and traumatic that she feels she has no choice but to her lay her baby down and walk away. I cannot imagine the anguish in her heart as she does this.
Monthly sponsorships of the babies pay the monthly bills to care for the babies. You might be interested to know that Sarah Lockett, our incredible bookkeeper, who works free of charge I might add, has separate accounts so that sponsorship money does not go into building funds or tractor funds, or other funds but goes into the monthly operating expenses to care for the babies. That pays for formula, rent, nanny salaries, petrol, food, medical, utilities, lights, and water. That is Sarah, a nurse from Waco, Tx in the picture kissing the baby. The baby Sarah, who was named for her, has been adopted by a wonderful family who moved to Italy after her adoption. 
We also want you to know that we are always looking for ways to save money. In an effort to cut down on buying so much expensive canned formula, our cooks buy, boil and process 30 liters of fresh cow’s milk every day! It takes a huge pan on the stove to process that much milk! Kelly found a recipe for baby formula using fresh cow’s milk.
So once the babies are 6 months old they are switched to the new recipe which we make in our kitchen at Neema. It takes a lot of milk plus lots of fresh fruits and vegetables to get our babies to look like the healthy little Neemaities you see when you visit Neema. With our nannies and volunteers giving lots of TLC, these babies go from the tiny little one Bec Azzopardie from Australia is feeding to healthy little girls like Sharon and Maria pictured below.
We spoke at a business class at ACU this week and we asked the students after the video what they noticed that was different from other pictures of orphanages in Africa they had seen in the past. They were quick to respond that our babies look healthy, clean, chubby and happy, like Sharon and Maria.
When we move to Neema Village we will have our own cows and chickens and grow our own vegetables. Our landscape and gardens manager, Julius, ( pictured to the left) has already planted banana trees, corn, squash and beans at Neema.
We arrive at the sponsorship cost by taking the month’s operating costs divided by how many babies we have that month. Last year it averaged between $300 and $388 per month depending on medical costs for the babies that month. In January we had three preemies, like Loitapuaki, in Intensive Care. Four million shillings in hospital bills for one month can blow a hole in our budget! We have learned that sponsorships is an ever changing thing! Credit cards expire, sponsors drop out, new sponsors come in, new babies arrive and other babies get adopted each month. It changes every month! 
We debated long and hard over whether we should let one baby be over sponsored. Should we tell a new potential sponsor, No, that baby is already taken, chose another baby? Some potential sponsors have a connection such as “My son’s name is John so I want to sponsor John.” So we decided the babies who have more sponsorship money could help cover the cost of the babies who have no sponsors. Thank God we have three babies who are “over sponsored” today. They help us take care of the ones who have no sponsors. Beautiful Saruni, pictured above, is one of our new babies this year. 
To sponsor a baby, go to the web site 
ing Hi! He was about two and half pounds when brought to Neema. His mom had died and he was not expected to live. But the latest news from Neema is that Imran now has a double chin. Praise God!
Newborn Carol Ann was abandoned in February. She is such a little sweetheart. We pray there will be a good family to step forward to adopt her. We work with Social Welfare on the adoptions and they generally give about six months for a member of the family to claim the baby. If no one comes forward then the baby is put up for adoption. Neema has now had 21 adoptions! Neither Social Welfare nor Neema accept money for adoptions. 
Saruni is a Masaai baby whose mom died at his birth. His father brought him into town to Neema. Many of these dads have no income and cannot afford expensive formula. There is also no electricity for refrigeration out in the villages and no clean water. We can help supply those things for the dad in his home and do quite often but if there is no one to care for the baby at home then we take them in at Neema. Saruni will go back home when he is stable, off the bottle and his dad has remarried. He is such a beautiful baby. 
was left abandoned. He was healthy and looked like he had been well cared for. We have no idea why someone who obviously loved him would then abandon him. If we can locate moms like baby Rusty’s mom and get them into the MAP program at Neema maybe we can offer them a better way. Stay tuned for more news about the MAP program (Mothers Against Poverty).
Osiligi also lost his mother in childbirth. That is such a common occurrence out in the Masai villages where there is little medical care. Osi is normally a very smiley baby but looks a bit worried here. We would love to tell him not to worry, that we are working constantly to be able to take care of him. 
Meet baby Ronald. This little guy was found abandoned by a river on the outskirts of Arusha. Someone walking by heard him and called the police, who then referred him to Neema. He was born around the 28th of March, and is currently just over 2.5 kg and in good health. He was named for a truly great man, Ronald Huddleston, a missionary doctor to Africa in the 1960s. I would love to sit down and tell you some fun stories about the good ‘ole days with Dr. Ron and his wife Maxine in Africa when the lions still walked the corridors of the hospital where he worked in Chimala. Maybe some day! But we were honored to be able to name this little guy for Dr. Ron. 
Emmanuel means “God With Us.” I love this little guy’s name and I love telling people that if God were not with us in this we would be lost. To not only provide for the 106 babies who have now been cared for by Neema but to also have 40 full time Tanzanian employees and their families who rely on us for their income is way far above our heads. Thank God it is not above His! 
Our landscape plans call for these beautiful bushes around the fence at Neema Village, our home for abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies in Africa. With almost 2,926 linear feet of fence around our ten acres that is a lot of Bougainvillea! You can honor your mother/second mom or remember her with a gift of flowers to Neema House Arusha. “Buy a $20 Bougie Bush” and help us cover the barbwire fence around the property with these beautiful flowers.
On a visit to Neema House Arusha, a surgeon and his wife from Dar es Salaam fell in love with this quiet, shy, little boy and Danny has now gone home to his forever family. 
So much of what our little Neemaites at Neema Baby Home do and say reminds me of our children when they were little.
One of the most exciting things to happen this trip was the water well and finally getting the pipes laid from the well down in the banana grove up to the top of the property and into the holding tanks so it can flow down into the new buildings.
“Really,” I said. Joycie with head down looking up through her eyelashes said “Nyoka kitanda.” 
So Babu Michael takes her hand and they walk down the hall to the back bedroom where she points under the bed in the corner. Michael gets on his knees and searches all around saying, “Ona, hakuna Nyoka, Joycie.”
in Southern Tanzania, came to tell Michael there was a snake under the bed, but this time there really was! Michael, then 20 years old, (Yes, that’s him at 20 to the right) flipped out the knife he carried strapped to his ankle, stepped on the cobra and sliced its head off. At which the Africans ran out of the room howling!
But alas for those of you worried about encountering wild animals when you come to visit Neema, the goats who walk each morning down the dirt road in front of our house is about all the animals you will see when you come to big city of Arusha.
One of the little ones is in the hospital in NICU and could use your prayers right now. His name is Imran, pictured below with Bekah. His mom died of AIDs and the doctor put him on the medicine for that which may have been too toxic for him.
