March 3rd, 2023

With lots of volunteers this month and the grand opening of the new Mothering Center we have neglected to tell you about new babies at Neema Village. We usually average two new babies a month. December was our largest month ever with nine new babies. This month we had four new babies all precious and beautiful. Currently there are 65 babies at Neema with one pending adoption. (Remember Neema Village does not do adoptions, Social Welfare handles all legal adoptions in Tanzania.)

Baby Jackson’s very young father realized after one month that he was not able to care for his baby after the death of his wife due to malaria.

The father works in Dar and lives very far away, so they traveled a long way to bring the baby to Neema Village. We will be looking for a family member who can care for little Jackson in a family home. It has always been our belief that no baby belongs in an orphanage.

Jackson weighed 3.5 kg at one month old. He is sweet and precious and we love him already. It is so sad that people still die of a disease that is so treatable like malaria.

We have been waiting a few months to post about this baby. Sometimes their stories are so convoluted it is hard to tell you what actually happened. to them. Neighbors had reported to Social Welfare that an old woman had been caring for a newborn and was not taking good care of the baby.

The woman said a couple had paid her to keep their newborn baby. But when the couple was contacted in a town about 12 hours away, the mother said it was not her baby but that she had used a surrogate. Hmmm… Not sure how that works here in Africa. I think it is called a mistress. A police investigation is going on and DNA testing has been done. Didn’t know they could do that here either?

Triplets are very common here in Africa. We have had 17 sets and one set of quads! The latest are three sweet little Maasai girls. Their Maasai mom did not have enough milk for all three babies. Due to lack of rain this year there has been very little food out in the villages. The mom brought her three little bundles in and we have kept her for two months trying to build her up with good food so she would have enough milk. But Mom needs to return home now so she has taken the biggest baby and has promised to come in every month to see the other two babies.

The girls are cuddly, round faced Maasai babies and we love them to pieces. They look like our first set of triplets, Frankie and his sisters from eleven years ago.

Naleku and Nembris, the triplet girls, are growing fat and happy and will be big, healthy Maasai girls someday. Hopefully they can return home to their triplet sister at around nine months.

New MAP Mom Neema, (yes just like our name Neema Village) is heading home after two months learning to care for her special needs baby at our Rehabilitative Daycare. We will set her up in a small duka (shop) selling rice, beans, oil and ugali flour. Her husband is mentally challenged and is not able to work. Neema is the sole support for the family. She will do very well in her new business. If you want to help her with her business check out her page on our website under See MAP Moms.

We love the joy on these MAP mom’s faces as they head out to start a new life of hope and promise and in this case new shiny shoes!

God bless each of you who share with these babies and moms at Neema Village. You are what keeps it all going.

Love, Love,

Dorris and Michael Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

February 23rd, 2023

We had all been working hard to get it finished in time, painting, buying the furnishings, planning the meal, planting flowers, inviting guests and yesterday the Siku Kuu (Big Day) opening of the new Preslar Mothering Center on the campus of Neema Village in Tanzania, East Africa took place.

We love it! The building is beautiful but we are praying that what will happen in that wonderful place will be even more beautiful. Women who have been abandoned and abused will come to know that there is a man named Jesus and he has never once taken his eyes off them or abandoned them.

Ken and Joan Preslar came to help us open the building. We prayed that God would bless everything that will happen in this building and that it will all be to His Glory.

Marquisette and Kim led Ken and Joan over, eyes closed, until they came through the gate. Joan was crying, Kim and I were crying and Ken was standing in disbelief.

The building will house the MAP (Mothers Against Poverty) program, and The Save The Mothers programs at Neema Village. A sewing room, literacy room, computer room, kitchen, bathrooms with showers, offices for Anna and Mercy along with a large conference room all furnished with tables, chairs, kitchen and office equipment, screen and video projector, mics, sound equipment and so much more. Thank You Butterfield Foundation!

They had so much fun practicing the walk for the style show wearing the new dresses they had all made. A lot of hooting and hollering was going on!

We had invited the Regional Commissioner, who is directly under the President, to come help us open the center. Thank you to our good friend, Pastor Israel, from the little church down the street that rescues young girls from early marriage and FGM, this busy man actually came!

Of course we took him through the baby home first so he could see our precious babies.

Michael led the Commissioner over from the baby home to the new women’s center. He was very kind and gracious. We have found the higher up in government they are the nicer they are!

Some of our past birthers from the Save the Mothers programs came in for the day. There was a large crowd to welcome the commissioner with drums and singing.

Some of our co-op sewing groups from the Maasai village came in for the day. Queenie came as well with her young girls who sew school uniforms and raise bees for honey as their MAP businesses.

The best MAP businesses of the year received a certificate and bonus. There have been 109 women finish the MAP courses and set up businesses through Neema Village. Eight women who have finished the sewing course received sewing machines. Dora the teacher also received her own machine.

It was a fun day with lots of food and laughter. Michael spoke and our two directors Anna and Mercy had time to say a few words.

One of our hair dressers from Dar es Salaam came in for the big day. In her former life she had worked the street but knew she could not survive out there. We sent her to beauty school and now she works in a large salon in Dar.

God is still in the business of changing lives!

We cannot possibly say thank you enough to Ken and Joan Preslar for building this new Mothering Center. We pray that all the good that will take place in this buiilding will go on for generations to come as young African women come in and find hope and courage in their lives.

“When you lift a woman in Africa you not only change her world you change ours!”

Joan you can stop crying now sweetheart!

February 18th, 2023

Don’t you just love Good News! We do and we love sending you good news. There are Good things happening at Neema Village right now.

We are excited and happy… I think. Our little abandoned baby James’s mom came back and Social Welfare said he could return home with her. Gulp!

We had fallen in love with this sad little guy who had been found in a ditch a few weeks ago and we had been calling him James.

As I held him in my arms, he was hesitant at first, then I felt him lean toward her and I knew she was his mom. She said his name was Joseph and told us she had learned she has the sickness and was scared she would not be able to take care of him. We told her this baby is your gift from God please call us first if you think you cannot take care of him again.

We took her to the Preslar Mothering Center to meet Anna and get her enrolled in MAP. She will learn to read and write and hopefully she will learn how much God loves her and wants a better life for her.

She will be with other women just like herself and later she will be able to start a MAP business that will support her family.

Today we had earring making in the center and there was lots of singing and laughing.

It is good for us to see how these two Neema programs work together; an abandoned baby, mom returns, mom gets help, mom gets baby back and family is reunited!

We do pray for that. We know these babies need their moms.

Sweet baby Gillian got a new mom yesterday. She came to Neema Village only a few hours old after her mom just walked out of the hospital and abandoned her.

You have to live in Tanzania 3 years before you can adopt. Tanzania’s Social Welfare handles all adoptions. Neema Village does not do adoptions.

But we do love them!

Last week we had our first Save The Mothers program of the year. Sixteen Maasai traditional birthers spent a week with us at Neema Village. They had morning devotionals, classes all day and singing at night. It is always fun when we take volunteers to sing and dance with them. These old ladies can dance!! They each went home with a lot of gifts to help them in their work and they went home with a bible in Maasai. Most of them cannot read but maybe their grandkids can.

Maasai land missed the short rains this year and we were getting reports of children dying out in the villages. A mom with twins in Maria’s village was starving, she didn’t have enough milk for two babies and one of the twins died. They brought the poor mom and her little twin in to the hospital but then the mom died. One little twin is still in the hospital and hopefully will make it.

We knew we had to help so Michael left early this morning to make another food delivery. He said he was driving in dust powder a foot thick and the wind was so high he thought he was in a dust bowl.

There were easy 500 people waiting for them and it became pandemonium when they saw the food. He had taken $400 dollars worth of food this trip (Thank you Kathy Sherrill Strong and your Facebook friends) and Michael knew Jesus was going to have to multiply that food because there was no way it was going around to everyone!

Please don’t feel guilty if you had a good breakfast this morning. I did too. Just share when you can.

We have had some awesome volunteers this month and I cannot possibly name them all or I would leave one out. You know who you are and you know we luv ya!

Psalms 27:13. “I am confident I will still see the Goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”

Michael and Dorris

www.neemavillage.org

January 18th, 2023

After our Christmas break in Texas we arrived back in Africa on Thursday night and the Aggies For Christ from Texas A & M University arrived Friday Morning. That began a grand, rather breathless two weeks.

With Amy Miller and her two girls here as well, we had a full breakfast table again at Neema Village.

The breakfast Quiche always has spinach from our garden, eggs from Neema chickens and milk from Neema cows. God is good!

There is never a dull moment with the Aggies! I thought you might like to see what volunteering at Neema Village looks like through the eyes of these young people.
Aggies are always ready to jump in whether its painting tables and playground equipment, walking babies, moving chairs or holding babies in church.

Although Texas A & M University is no longer just an Agricultural and Mechanical University, there were some Ag and Pre-vet majors in the group this time. We love showing off our beautiful gardens and farm.  We use a drip system to water the gardens to conserve water.

GodListen is our farmer and with an agriculture degree from a local university he has made a huge difference in our vegetable production. We should have a bumper crop of coffee this year after GodListen bought blight resistant coffee plants.

For our squash, pumpkins, egg plants and carrots, he created a cold storage room, with walls made of coal and chicken wire and a water drip system to keep vegetables fresh longer. It’s pretty cool!

We water our gardens with a huge aerobic water system which cleans our sewer water just like we have at our house in Belton, Texas. I would imagine it is the only aerobic sewer system in Tanzania!

A few years ago we had a wedding at Neema Village. Rhiannon and Austin met as volunteers at Neema, fell in love here and later decided to come back to Neema to get married. It was one of the most fun days we have ever had in Africa! And instead of wedding gifts their guests bought a bio gas system for Neema.

Two of our houses on campus now cook with methane gas from cow pooh! Our vet, Dr. Ben described how that bio-gas system worked to some of the A & M students.

Dr. Ben takes care of our big Holstein milk cows and Missy our little Jersey cow who gives us butter. Did you know that cows do not have top teeth? Only bottom teeth and if you grind their food they live longer! Interesting huh!

Ben also showed the students our Rhode Island Reds who feed us about 80 to 100 eggs a day. And with 150 baby chicks raised every six weeks for meat we can supply the campus with fresh chicken at a much-reduced price from buying chicken in the stores.

The seven Aggie guys taught a men’s bible class at lunch, the students met with the MAP moms to encourage them, they sang with the nannies at night after the babies were all asleep and they played soccer with the local village boys. They had some time for fun at the local Maasai markets and toured a Maasai village and danced with the Maasai.

You can’t come to Africa and not see the animals so they took a day and toured the closest game park, Tarangire. The elephants will occasionally come right up to your car in that game park.

The Aggies come to serve and sometimes it is just plain hard work, right girls?

It’s a village and we raise a lot more than just babies around here, but babies are at the top of the food chain for us. They are what Neema Village is about and every program we do centers around the babies.

It is always hard to let the Aggies go.
We have lost count of how many students the Campus Ministers, Brian and Leslie Miller, have sent to Neema Village over the last few years but it’s a lot.

Hayden Liebl always leads the groups, getting them up for breakfast, directing traffic, doctoring the sick, making sure they get the jobs done, have some fun and always make it back in one piece.
They love well, work hard and are the hands and heart of Jesus whether in Arusha town or at Neema Village with the babies.
With young people like these our future is in good hands!
Neema means Grace and any good done is done by the Abundant Grace of God,
Michael and Dorris
www.neemavillage.org

December 15, 2022

Who will they grow up to be, these five little Christmas babies who came to Neema Village this month.  As we care for them, we think about who they will become some day now that their lives have been given back.

These little ones who have been thrown out, forgotten, abused, unloved, we wonder who they will become someday. How far can they go now? Whose lives will they change now that their lives have been changed? So much hope and possibility in their lives now.

When we look in the faces of these babies with such tragic stories, we have to wonder what this saving will mean. Could they grow up to be healers and helpers, will they work with the blind, the lame, the sick. Maybe they will become great leaders and help heal nations of hatred and greed. Maybe they will find cures for what ails us all. Maybe they will grow up to be teachers or preachers and help people seek goodness and most of all to seek Jesus?  Maybe they will just be good moms and dads who will love their own children.  As if that is not enough!

This time of year, as I think about all the babies at Neema Village, 62 of them in-house today, and all the possibilities of their futures, it reminds me of that beautiful song,

Did you know that this baby boy could someday help the blind? Maybe.

November 27th, 2023

And suddenly it’s Christmas! But before we go can I just say how thankful Michael and I are for you. If you are reading my blogs, I’m Thankful! When the spirit of inspiration hits it is usually 3:30 in the morning so bless your sweet heart for sticking with me.

Year number ten for us at Neema, can you believe that! God is so Faithful. He has taken this little gift of an idea from two old retired people who landed ten years ago in Africa with little more than suitcases and He made this huge, living, beautiful, sometimes loud and chaotic place called Neema Village.

Thirty-One babies came to Neema this year and twenty-four babies were able to return home, were adopted or entered our Foster Care/boarding school program. Today there are 57 babies living in the baby home at Neema Village. 

Babies must be special to God; he sent his Son as one!

Twenty six moms, like Prissila above who wants to start a rice and beans business, entered the MAP (Mothers Against Poverty) program and 21 moms started new businesses this year through Neema’s program for abandoned and abused women.

To help stem the tide of babies left without mothers in Maasai land thirteen “Save The Mothers” sessions were held this year. That is 143 Grandmothers better trained to save lives of women in childbirth.

In all the work that goes on at Neema, one thing stands out as we look at this year. Our beautiful, dedicated, amazing nannies!

They are just people like us, they make mistakes, they fuss and yell at each other but overall they are giants and they deeply love these babies. They stay late, they come early, they spend nights on end in the hospital with little sick ones and they work on Christmas! 

At Christmas we try to remember them. Every year for ten years we have tried to give each employee a $100 dollar gift. It’s not much but it means everything to them, it means Christmas for their own kids, it means a trip home to the village to see the family, it means paying school fees, it means food on the table for their family. In a country where the average monthly income for a family is one hundred dollars it means a lot.

It’s amazing to write, and a bit scary, but today we have 87 full time employees!

As you have followed along this year, seeing the work (like harvesting the beans above), I hope you have seen standing behind all that happens here at Neema are those 87 incredible people changing diapers, fixing endless bottles, cooking, cleaning up spills, getting little fussy ones to sleep, walking the halls late at night with sick ones, racing breathless to the hospitals, sleeping in chairs in hospital rooms for weeks on end…I could go on and on

We really do try not to ask for money, we have always felt that is not our job. Our job is to tell the story and we let God handle the money, but at Christmas, for our nannies… I’m just sayin’.

At this time of year may you remember that sweet gift in the manger and may He gift you with those three priceless treasures that only He can give, Hope, Joy and Peace. Merry Christmas from our big school kids to you!

You can help make Christmas for the nannies on the official website:

November 1, 2022

We love these beautiful people of the Maasai. Sparkling, under the weight of beads and bangles around their necks, they twinkle and flash in the light while their reds, yellows and purples paint color onto the drab, dusty plains of East Africa.

They love to sing as they come to greet us into their village.

Some of you have asked if we do follow up and keep records of the moms and babies saved by the midwives who have gone through our safe birthing training. Well, Yes, we do! Six weeks after their training we go out to count the number of deliveries and moms and babies.

But it is always fun to see them dance before we get down to work.

October 13. 2022

We don’t often get photos like these so I wanted to share them with you immediately.

Angel, our social worker got a call this morning that there were two babies at the hospital and we should come pick them up. She took three of our volunteers, Kelle Samsill from Fort worth, Texas, Heidi Hanson from Fort Collins, Colorado and Janiece Watts from Abilene, Texas to hold the babies in the car. One baby was abandoned and the other has a mentally ill mom who cannot take care of the baby.

It is quite an experience to pick up a baby that has lost his or her mother for whatever reason. It does something mushy to your heart, right Kelle!

Neither of the babies has a name so the hunt is on for names. I will have to tell you later since at this point I am not sure what their names will be! They are both girls.

They both look pretty healthy and are home safe and sleepy at Neema Village tonight.

I will keep you updated on the two babies in the Nairobi Hospital. For now, no news is good news.

October 11, 2022

“Seated on the plane and asked to get off”

Kim says it was the worst day ever at Neema Village baby home. Ashley had brought baby girl Neema home from the hospital in Arusha, for the fifth time but her nose was still bleeding and she was vomiting blood.

“That is enough,” Kim said, “let’s get this baby to the big Aga Kahn hospital in Nairobi.” So, airline tickets were bought for Mama Musa and Betty to fly baby Neema to Kenya. Ashley would have gone but it takes three days to get a visa into Kenya and we couldn’t wait.

When Neema was home with us we had her in complete isolation and was feeding her with a syringe because her adenoids are so large she could not suck a bottle and breath at the same time. We have all been desperate and knew this baby needed help. After five admissions to the hospital, she has almost spent more time in the hospital than at Neema Village!

It’s always a mad scramble to get ready to take a baby to the hospital; formula and clean water has to be packed and clothes and diapers for who knows how long and finding a nanny who can go and stay and….  Finally, with the baby, they were seated on the plane ready to take off when unbelievably they were asked to get off the plane! Mama Musa and Betty were begging and pleading to be allowed back on.

Kim doesn’t give up easy so she hired an ambulance to drive them to Kenya.

None of this is easy since you have to cross the Tanzanian border into Kenya and permits and documents and visas and car titles and driver have to be gathered and everything signed and stamped and paid, and a nanny hired to leave her family and go to Nairobi and stay with the baby. Thank you sweet Nanny Betty!

But they made it and baby Neema is in a bed in Kenya where finally we hope to get some answers. I am pretty sure after all this, little Neema feels like sticking her tongue out at most everyone!

September 13, 2022

Listening to their story while sitting in their rusted tin and mud shack tacked onto a weathered fence where the holes in the leaky roof had left a baby footprint in the dried mud beneath my feet, it was hard to keep from crying.

The tiny foot print spoke volumes to me of what this young girl has been through. With a baby at age 14, the sole care giver for herself, her baby and her 7-year-old special needs little sister, Joari was trying to keep it all together in the shack that looked like it had been pieced together with pieces of tin.

Joari had never known her mother. Her “sometimes” father appeared occasionally to abuse Joari and her seven year old little sister, below, and disappeared again leaving her to fend for herself and her little family.

The sadness weighing this little special needs girl down filled the house. Then a cousin, below, with a baby moved into the one room shack with them.

There was no light in the house except what filtered in thru the holes in the mud. The cousin said life was just too bad where she was staying.

I couldn’t imagine a place worse than what we were seeing.

As they told their story I could feel the despair on their faces.

We saw Joari’s kitchen where she cooked what little food she had for her family. She had told Anna there were times when she would not eat so the children would have enough. Their bathroom, without water, was a hole in the ground with sticks and a cloth for privacy.

We moved them out. We had to. Now they are safe at Neema Village. The father does not know where they are and hopefully he cannot find them. The move was easy, just a few bags of clothes and some pots were all they owned. Today the children have warm beds and blankets and there is food in their tummies. Erik Tryggestad, CEO and President of The Christian Chronicle helped us move them. Actually, I think we were all pretty moved that day.

On a later note, the little family all came to church Sunday and were prayed over and then invited to lunch at the baby home after church. They have moved into our Jeffrey Scott May MAP Houses where there is electricity and a stove to cook on, sinks with running water to wash dishes and a bathroom and shower. It must feel a bit like Heaven.

They attended the Women’s Rights class last week and will begin meeting with other women who have also been abused, abandoned and left destitute. They will start Bible classes, sewing and other events offered to women in the next few weeks.  Anna, our MAP Director, says they are so young she is going to be their momma.  We have hired a counselor to try to get them to a place where they can even begin to think about starting a business. 

Joari had told Anna, I wanted to run away and leave them all but I couldn’t. Since we deal with abandoned babies and moms at Neema Village it is good to hear a mom say, I just couldn’t leave them. 

September 9, 2022

It’s another full house at Neema Village with 62 babies, I tell folks be careful where you step around here! Seven new babies came to Neema in the last few days. We thank God every day that we can be here for them. Bless you for standing in the gap with us.

These precious twins Ryan, above, and Renee, below, came to Neema this week, they were born August 5, 2022. They are big babies weighing 3kg (6.6lbs) and 3.1kg (6.8lbs). Sadly their mother passed away and the father is not around. They were named by the social worker that brought them to Neema Village. We have had a lot of twins, triplets and even a set of quads in the last ten years of operation in Tanzania.

It’s the sweet potatoes!

Lightness #2

Shown below, is 8 months old and weighs only 7lbs, about what a newborn weighs. She was born February 1, 2022. She was brought to Neema Village by Social Welfare, her mom is a drug and alcohol addict. Social welfare was contacted by people who saw the condition of the baby and the state of the mother. We are trying to see how to help the mom, please pray she will want the help that is being offered

I love this baby, Lightness, she is so tiny, all head and such fragile little bones in her body, it is hard to hold her. At 8 months she cannot hold her head up or roll over. She is just now starting to smile at us. She likes kisses under her chin though.

Namgurululu

We call the small baby above on the right, Koromo, because we cannot pronounce his Maasai name. His mom died at his birth. He is very small but doing well. He is from a village near Maria’s village where so many moms die in childbirth. There are 6 million Maasai and they have so little medical care within a close distance that a poor mom in labor must try to make it in to the hospital on a motorcycle! On these roads I can’t even begin to imagine that.  Our Save The Mothers program is making a difference in the maternal death rates of Maasai women. Thank God!

Koromo’s family from the village brought him in to Neema. The other baby in the picture above is Anna, also from that area out in Maasai land.

Gibson

Meet tiny abandoned baby Gibson, above. He was born the 27th of July. His mother had tried to abort and he was delivered at 26 weeks. The doctor told the mom the baby was very tiny and would need to be moved to the NICU unit at another hospital. She went in the bathroom and then walked out of the hospital and abandoned her baby. When he reached 1.8 kg he was able to come home to Neema Village. He is named for a great man and sponsor of Neema babies, Bob Gibson, a long time ago missionary to Tanzania. Please be praying for little Gibson, he has some big challenges ahead.

Lottie

Tiny, little abandoned baby Lottie was born on the 22nd of July. She weighs 1.7kg now or about 3.7 lbs. Our nannies voted on the name Lottie after I told them about my sister, Lottie McCormack from Edmond, Oklahoma, who was so tiny when she was born she was put in a shoe box on top of a pot belly stove to keep her warm.

Lottie means tiny and feminine. Neema Village picked little Lottie up from Mt. Meru hospital where she was abandoned by her mother. The nurse had taken the tiny baby into the mamas room at the hospital to be fed but no mama came forward to feed her. We pray Lottie’s mother will have a change of heart and come and ask where her baby was placed. Neema Village would be happy to help this mother who felt she had no other choice than to abandon this sweet baby. For now little baby Lottie is safe, cared for and loved at Neema Village.

Neema Jacobo

This little newborn came to Neema Village, Sept 6, 2022. She weighed 2.3kg on her arrival at Neema. Her Maasai mom died at her birth. Beautiful, with a full head of black curls, she is also from Maria’s village, which makes 4 babies from that village. We are talking to the village leaders about doing a safe birthing seminar with the traditional birthing attendants out there. Little Neema is jaundiced so she is under the Blue light a couple of times a day. She loves being under that light.

As soon as these little ones come in our Social worker, Angel, begins planning how they can go back home to a family either through adoption. finding a family member to keep them or into our foster care program. It’s what Neema does best!

If you would like to sponsor a baby please go to our website www.neemavillage.org

Sophia was brought to Neema late one afternoon. Social Welfare said she was twelve. “But we are a baby home and only take babies under age two,” we said. Just keep her a couple of days and we will find a place for her, they said. That was four years ago. We decided we like her, we’re keeping her.

Sophia had been placed out on the street to beg in her wheel chair and she had developed a great smile and knew how to get under your skin. She had never been to school so we put her in first grade. She has done well and knows how to read and write in both English and KiSwahili now. She takes computer at Neema and is fostered with Mama Beni, our washer lady, across the fence from Neema.

Ashley Berlin from Casper, Wyoming has been teaching her the bible and after talking with Babu about scriptures Sophia decided to accept Jesus last week and was baptized. I knew you would want to know.

Now for the bad news. This organization above is based in Uganda and is using photos of our babies and raising money and breaking people’s hearts by promising adoptions. They have so many posts and pictures of our babies it is shocking. Even a picture of one of our babies who died was used. How bad is that! They change the names of the babies but use our stories. One of the sites for The Dolphin Foundation Uganda is legal and helps Autistic children. But these evil people have stolen their name and our posts! Does anyone know how to get this stopped? They post on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. If enough of us can report them as frauds it might help shut them down.

But please, everyone, make sure you know the group before you donate, this hurts all of us who are trying to help.

Love you all,

Dorris

August 17, 2022

Her name is Queenie and she certainly looked like a Queen to us. Regal and in charge and looking out for her people, Queenie was impressive when we took a group of volunteers out to her Maasai village this year.

I have been waiting to write her story. She had promised to come in to town and learn to sew and this summer Queenie arrived.

We had gone out to her Maasai village for a cultural exchange in January and some of the Aggies For Christ students got to take part in the fun and sometimes shocking questions and answers.

The girls got pretty involved in the women’s dances and learned to bounce those huge necklaces up and down.

We learned that Queenie’s husband had left her but she was trying to support several young teenage girls who had run from early marriage and female circumcision or FGM.

We were excited this month when Queenie came in to learn to sew. Our “Save The Mothers” birthing seminar was going on and she was able to join that group and learn how to safely birth babies as well. Kelle Samsill taught some of the early morning bible classes to that group of TBAs (Traditional Birthing Attendants)

Queenie will be setting up a co-op of young girls sewing school uniforms to sell. All students in Tanzania wear uniforms to school. She made the two uniforms above for secondary school in her village area.

So, last week a group of volunteers delivered five sewing machines, chairs, a cupboard, water barrel, and sewing notions out to the village.

Keary and Ian Miller from Goshen, Kentucky, helped put the machines together. Below, Baraka had made a closet so Queenie could lock up the sewing items like scissors, thread and fabrics. Neema will help with the rent of the shop until the business can take over.

Below are some of the stories of the girls in the sewing co-op told to Anna, the Neema MAP (Mothers Against Poverty) Director and designed by Mercy, the Safe Birthing Director.

Above is Toringe, she is 14 years old and ran away to escape early marriage. Unfortunately she had already been cut.

Nembris is also 14 and ran away from home. She had been cut at an early age. Some of these young girls are cut as early as age three.

Nawasa ran away from home to escape marrying an old man. Most of these girls run at night on dark paths where hyenas still lurk in the shadows. One young girl we know walked seven hours into town from her village. Sadly sometimes they are caught and taken back home.

All of these young girls found safety when they heard there was a kind woman named Queenie in a village who would help them. We are humbled and honored to get to be a small part of Queenie’s program to save these young women.

When you donate to the MAP program at Neema Village you can also be a part of helping these young women and others just like them.