Baby Blankets

As a mom, there is nothing more satisfying than taking good care of your baby. When your baby is cold or hungry, moms are there to provide for every need. But not all moms can. If your home is a metal shack with a leaky roof and dirt floors, it is hard to stay warm and dry. If your husband takes your small monthly stipend and spends it on drink, there is no money for food for your baby.
Such is the reality of thousands of women in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Many women raise their families in such conditions with no electricity and if they are lucky, water from a tap outside. If a storm is especially severe, the roof may tear off in places, windows can break, and the rain makes the dirt floors muddy.
It is these women and babies my heart goes out to and who I think of often, especially when someone asks me if I can take donations of things to South Africa. The Holy Comforters, a group of quilters at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield, VA have provided a wonderful blessing to these women and babies in rural Eastern Cape South Africa. I packed an extra suitcase filled with handmade quilts and receiving blankets lovingly created by the Holy Comforters. I was blessed enough to have a midwife named Karen Clarke in Hamburg, South Africa, take me to the women she has recently helped give birth. I was able to show up at their shacks with a handful of these baby blankets made a world away and allow the women to choose which one they wanted for their newborns. I visited three mothers who had two-week and three-week old babies. They were so thankful and joyful that we arrived with the blankets. They had fun choosing the right one for their baby. And then they lovingly wrapped their babies and held them proudly.
Up the coast from Hamburg, a four-hour drive, is another rural village called Canzibe, where 25:40 also has a project. I stayed on the mission property, which is adjacent to Canzibe hospital. Another NGO here has developed a nutrition center on the hospital grounds for moms to come with their children when the hospital staff notices the children are malnourished. Nokuphila offers them a place to stay for awhile and hands-on training for growing a food garden. I also visited Nokuphila with the baby blankets and was able to give them to a few moms – one of whom looked like a very young teenager.
It’s a small thing, one that most people take for granted – having something to keep your baby warm. But when a mom has next to nothing, it really is a gift from God.
Amy Zacaroli

Midwives

Women living in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa can tell you horror stories about the care they receive when they give birth. Except since it is the only care they know, they have no idea their experiences are horrific.
Xhosa women live in shacks and tend to birth at home or go to hospital when labor starts. Typically they do not seek pre-natal care. During labor, they may be tended to by mothers or aunts at home, but if something goes wrong at birth, like a cord wrapped around the neck, many babies die within the first week. If the women make it to the hospital, they are treated poorly by the nursing staff. A typical maternity ward is a big room with 20 beds and no privacy. Guests – husbands, moms, sisters – are not allowed. Women give birth alone. The women are forced to stay lying down in their beds and if they cry out or scream they are slapped on their thighs. Internal exams are harsh and the only goal by the staff is to get the baby out, regardless of whether the woman is tearing or having other difficulties. The babies are taken from them right away to be put in incubators until it is time to feed. There is very little opportunity for mother and baby to bond. Then they are sent home.
These women are abused by the health system and gone through uncaring labor and go home with a baby they don’t know how to care for. This can often lead to a disconnect between mom and baby and the natural instinct for mothering and nurturing is missing because of their experiences.
Noelle (not her real name) had three babies when a midwife named Karen Clarke was checking her during her fourth pregnancy. Karen asked how many kids she had and she replied 3, but Karen only saw two. Where is the other one? “Oh. That one was not right,” Noelle replied. After prodding, Karen learned the baby had a lack of oxygen at birth, probably because the cord was wrapped around its neck, and had difficulty breathing and suffered some seizures early on. He died when he was 8 months old. These things are so preventable with a trained midwife attending the birth.
Karen Clarke moved from Cape Town to Hamburg three years ago with her family to practice in her trained profession of midwifery. Karen’s dream is to eradicate the horror stories of labor and delivery and replace those with positive outcomes as a result of nurturing care for the women of Hamburg throughout their entire pregnancies. The results are already starting to show themselves with the numerous births she already has attended. Right now, Karen tends to labors in the homes women live in – metal shacks. Karen’s plans are to build a small birthing home in the center of town where moms-to-be can labor and deliver in a comfortable, safe environment. Karen will keep them at the birthing home for a week because that is when most newborns die.
She tries to encourage pregnant women to come to her when they first learn they are pregnant so that proper pre-natal care can be administered. It is during this time that Karen can establish a relationship with the women, learn their histories, and test for HIV/AIDS. A simple test can detect the virus and a simple dose of medication can prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS to the baby during birth. About 30 percent of pregnant women whom she has seen have HIV/AIDS. Simply having a midwife in Hamburg can eradicate transmission of AIDS from mother to child during birth – a huge and significant step towards a healthy, AIDS-free society.

Students Get a Second Chance

HAMBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- About 50 teenagers and young adults are embarking on a final chance to pass their high school exams through efforts of a community-based group that formed in 2009 to address social issues in their village.
The Hamburg Social Development Project is a group of 10 community leaders, including the high school principal, teachers and former teachers, with the goal of addressing the needs of children in this resource-starved setting who are not receiving an adequate education under the existing public school system. HSDP’s first priority is to help teenagers who have dropped out of school because they failed their matriculation exams and are unable to retake Standard Grade 12 due to a change of the national syllabus in 2007.
Through 2009 the group worked hard to register as a non-profit organization and set and prioritize goals and to communicate to the community their ideas.
The group has made amazing strides in just the last six months. They negotiated with St. Charles High School in Hamburg the use of three classrooms for the finishing school. They will also have an office at the school. HSDP member Mr. Paliso negotiated with the Hamburg community to be granted 5 hectares of land with the longer-term goal of building a community center at which will be the finishing school, the HSDP office and skills training centers, such as plumbing, carpentry, construction, and engineering. The skills training center is necessary for those students who do not have the means to go to college. Hamburg is in the very rural Eastern Cape where jobs are scarce and the quality of education is poor. With specific skills, young adults can aspire to become professionals.
On Jan. 18, the finishing school opened its doors. On the first day, there were 15 young people who registered. The next day 21 showed up. On the day I visited a week later, there were 46 students who were eager to get started. The news had spread beyond the three nearby villages – Hamburg, Bell and Bodium – to villages a bit further away – Lovers Twist, Wesley, Tceku. These students have a deadline of December 2010 to pass their final exams under the rules of the new curriculum. They cannot take the test again if they fail.
HSDP member Thelma Ncumani, who also is principal of St. Charles High School, gave the students a little pep talk. “This is your last chance. We want plumbers, electrical engineers. You must be very serious. This is for Hamburg. This is for you. We don’t want you wandering around the streets,” she told them.
I spoke with a young woman named Portia, who is 23. She finished school in 2004, but did not pass her final exam. She was very excited to take this class so that she could graduate. I asked her what her dreams are. She said, “I want to matric and then help my community.”
--Amy Zacaroli

New Beginnings

In 2009, God planted seeds for two new 25:40 projects in South Africa that we pray will blossom in 2010. I am writing this just two days before I leave for a two-week trip without my family to visit with the people who are working on these two projects.
In Hamburg, South Africa, a group of community leaders organized last year to form the Hamburg Social Development Project. This group identifies issues in the community that need attention and then works to solve those issues. HSDP formed in 2009, established a bank account, and is in the process of registering with the South African government as a non-profit. It has held a fund-raising event and has identified the first issue it wants to tackle -- students who have finished high school but not passed the final exam to officially "matric". HSDP has negotiated classroom space with the local school and is now arranging for furniture, materials and teachers so that these students can be tutored and then eventually pass their final exams. This will give a huge boost to these young adults who would have no hope of finding a job without passing their final exams. While job prospects in the Eastern Cape are quite limited, these students will be the beneficiaries of model citizens who are volunteering to help them and thus help to improve their community. This gives the students hope and a more secure future.
25:40 has encouraged HSDP to get started and organized and we continue to do so. 25:40 will also help financially when necessary. These types of community-based groups are the lifeblood -- and will be the saving grace -- of villages in the rural areas. 25:40's help has been, we hope, the most constructive. Rather than simply giving food, we are teaching to fish.

A little further up the Eastern Cape coast is the Ngqeleni District, a very rural area of rolling hills between Umtata and the Indian Ocean. There are 22 villages that are spread out and very poor. In 2009, 25:40 funded a survey, executed by Small Projects Foundation and community health workers, to find orphans and vulnerable children. The survey identified 1,504 orphans and vulnerable children in that area. In November 2009, 25:40 hired a local Xhosa man, Nkosana Menzi, to oversee what 25:40 is calling Project 1504. With SPF, we have identified immediate and long-term needs of these children, which 25:40 will fund and carry out with the help of Nkosana, SPF and the community health workers. I will go to Canzibe, where Nkosana lives and works, to review the goals of our project and meet some of the Project 1504 children
I will blog as I can from there. Please pray for travel safety and that 25:40 will properly nurture the seeds God has planted into full-flowering fruit. Most importantly, pray for the children in South Africa impacted by AIDS and poverty who deserve a fair chance at a healthy, happy life. Peace, Amy Zacaroli