What a great opportunity. I wonder if anyone is looking into providing lengths of cloth that moms traditionally use to both wrap AND carry babies in?
Hearing of needs like this is always sobering. It's hard to imagine having literally nothing for a new baby but your body. I attended a baby shower here recently where it took the mom-to-be two hours to unwrap all the gifts, and she wasn't dawdling along.
__________________ "Death before dishonor. Nothing before coffee."
She updated today and they are asking for monetary donations only, it turns out. They are limited in their luggage weight, of course, and the place they are going to has other needs that must be bought here in the States and taken over. They're going to take the money and buy from local sellers, so the babies get blankies and the local economy gets a boost at the same time. Great idea, if you ask me!
Today is the day for Mary's blanket party. What a great day, and it's not even over!
Post #1: They're hoping for about $500 for blankets, which should buy around 100 blankets. And *if* there is any more, they'll put it towards a $2000 commercial washing machine - the hospital laundry is done *by hand*.
An update on the money and what's being done - the person who was taking the money over has been over there for a while now and has distributed the money:
And the last $500 of the money was earmarked to be delivered to Dr. Mary, an amazing doctor who for years has worked with the desperately poor in the Soddo area.
Today I got an email from my sister Sophie saying that she was finally able to deliver that money to Dr. Mary. Dr. Mary is a hard-driving, practical, efficient dynamo of a woman. When Sophie presented her with the money she was quiet for a moment. Then she told Sophie that because of the price of food she had been on the brink of discontinuing a feeding program that she herself had been funding for a group of destitute families living up in the mountains near Soddo. She told Sophie that now — because of YOUR money, my dear readers — she would be able to continue feeding those families.
Readers have asked for a new collection for the Dr.'s feeding program, and the post about that is here:
That “feeding program up in the mountains” is for literally the poorest of the poor. These people are kept in poverty by the witch doctors, who insist that their (expensive) spells and charms are the only things that keep their patrons alive and healthy. So, these people spend their money on witchcraft, and don’t have money for food. This desperate situation is compounded now by the loss of a whole crop due to drought. They usually have 2 crops during a rainy season, but they will be lucky to have 1 this year.
Linear Mode
