Visiting CareNow Clinics in 2008
By Anne Kennedy
Through our involvement in CareNow, Chris Faherty and I felt led to go to Africa in July of 2008. Our desire was to see how the money is being used at the various sites that CareNow supports, as well as to investigate other organization for future collaboration.
The first part of the trip was to visit the Lily Medical Center, associated with Lily of the Valley Children’s Village in Mophela, South Africa. CareNow funded the shipment of a container of equipment, medical supplies and medications to this new clinic to care for the AIDS orphanage of 110 children, as well as an impoverished community of 20,000 people. When we arrived we saw that this clinic was adequately equipped and had the medicines needed to serve the people of this community for many months to come. The highlight of our visit to this clinic was the Grand Opening on July 29th, 2008 which was attended by 200 leaders of the community.
We also visited the 1000 Hills Community Helpers Clinic in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa which CareNow has financially supported for several years. On the day we visited, this clinic was in full operation. They meet the needs of approximately 400 people per week who suffer from AIDS, poverty and crime. This clinic is staffed mainly with volunteers who are often the only source for healthcare and counseling to people living in this area.
After leaving South Africa we flew to Lusaka, Zambia and were transported by Susan Hundshamer and Stephanie Brink to the Longezia Mission Base in Sinazongwe. This isolated area is a five hour drive over rough roads. The mission was founded by Theuns and Karin Engelbrecht in 2001, and is part of Missionary Ventures International. This mission base serves a wide-spread region with an estimated population of 200,000 people.
Susan and Stephanie have been operating a mobile clinic here for the past year and a half. Using their skills as a Registered Nurse and Certified Midwife, they not only provide care, but had been training a selected number of the local people to become community caregivers. Once trained, they would be able to server their neighbors as well as help in the mobile clinics. The mobile clinic typically sets up at a local church where people are used to gathering. We had the opportunity to work as part of the mobile clinic for three days of our visit.
The three mobile clinic sites we visited very different, but the people and the medical issues were similar. Usually, when we arrived, people were already waiting in the “church”, which was either a cement block building or an open thatched roof shelter with split logs for seating. The local pastor helped to facilitate the order in which the people would be seen. Often there would be a prayer team from the church to counsel and pray with individuals who were waiting or had been treated. Stephanie worked with her midwife trainee to see pre-natal and post-natal patients as well as new moms and babies. Susan and Chris worked with the other two healthcare trainees to assess the needs and treat the people waiting. I helped set out the medicines and supplies and hand out medications. On average we cared for 60 to 65 people per day. Their needs ranged from simple coughs and skin rashes, to worms and parasites, arthritis, headaches, tooth aches, eye infections, sexually transmitted diseases, malaria, tuberculosis, and symptoms of HIV/AIDS. For some of these patients blood was drawn for diagnosis, for others they were given a referral and possibly money for transport to the nearest government facility for further care. We were amazed at the patience, overwhelming trust and gratitude of the people. It was a humbling experience for both Chris and I.
Our last CareNow assignment was a trip to northern Zambia to visit an organization called Mission Medic-Air (MMA). They are a group of professionals who volunteer their time on weekends to fly into rural areas and provide medical and dental care. Our purpose was to determine if CareNow would begin to support this organization. (We are!)
We went along on a flight to a remote Catholic Mission base surrounded by mountains. This mission had one nurse who was dependant on the Zambian government for medicines and supplies which often did not arrive. We saw such great need that was often only being met by MMA delivering much needed supplies and medical support.
We were moved by the great need we saw at each location we visited and so thankful to be part of what the CareNow Foundation is doing to meet the needs of the least served people of Africa.
Holidays at 1000 Hills Baby Clinic
By Georgina Dixon
Happy new year. 2007 is over and we have continued to feed 50 to 60 babies on a weekly basis. Breast feeding has been encouraged but its difficult for these young mothers to understand that it must be exclusive breast feeding for 6 months. It is also difficult when they are often unwell and nutritionally compromised for them to even have the strength or willpower to successfully breast feed. One young lady came with a tiny premature baby, weight 900gr, she has successfully breast fed this little girl for the past four months and is encouraged by all of us to continue. I have two grandchildren whom I looked after during the December holidays and I was exhausted. 
Can you imagine the strain physically and emotionally on our grannies often sixty years and older, trying to raise anything of up to 12 children on her meager pension, never mind her health problems such as high BP, arthritis and diabetes. Please spare a thought for our grannies and child headed families. I phoned Dawn during our break and asked if she had managed to rest, Dawn’s reply made me think. "The poverty of the poor doesn't disappear because it’s the holidays". Let us remember Gods command that we must care for the poor 365 days of the year, not just at Christmas. Thank you for all your support, without you we could not continue this work
A Cry For Help
By Wendy Bjurstrom
“I just want to live long enough to see Timothy grow up.”
I had no idea how to answer a mom suffering from AIDS that posed this question to me in Zambia when I first came in contact with the “face of AIDS” in Africa in 2004. Let me tell you about this mom named Joyce.
Joyce lived in an area called ZamTan, where the incidence of AIDS is above average for Zambia. When the copper mines were closed in the ZamTan region about 30 years ago, people had no place to go or to live. They began setting up “shanty’s” or mud huts outside of the main city, which eventually turned into a large community of people. When AIDS came to this region of Zambia, it ravaged this community.
Joyce lived in one of these one room mud huts with her children. Her hut was starting to crumble, and would not survive the rainy season that was coming. Joyce was not able to receive any ARV’s to help her live longer. They simply weren’t available.
What Joyce did have were two special caregivers, also called “Bible ladies”, named Evelyn and Evelyn, who came around to check up on her, to make sure that she had food to eat, and to give her comfort in any way that she could.
Evelyn and Evelyn carefully put out a grass mat on the ground for us to sit on, and Joyce stumbled weakly out of her hut. She looked very thin and tired. We smiled at each other, mom to mom, and I sat down on the mat next to her. There is something about being a mom that makes us all one, even though we come from completely different worlds. Timothy was her youngest child, about 11 years old, and was the only child home with Joyce. Timothy was not able to go to school because his family did not have the money to pay for his school uniform. We gave Timothy a pen and small notebook, and he was thrilled. I sat with her and held her hand, I could not think of anything comforting to say when Joyce made that comment to me. Joyce was going to die. Yet she had an infectious smile on her face, which is also the face of AIDS. “How could someone in her situation have any reason to smile,” I wondered.
In that moment, I felt the hopelessness and helplessness of her situation, but now I knew why I had come to Africa. There had to be a way to help people like Joyce live long enough to raise their children. Ed and I came back home with a burning desire to help the world’s least served by starting the Care Now Foundation. Though it was too late to help Joyce, it is not too late to help many other moms like her.
We travel to regularly to Africa to visit the clinics we support and meet the people of the communities served by CareNow. Now, I have hope and when I meet a mom like Joyce, because of your support I can say, “We can help you!” Please join us in the fight to keep moms alive. Help us by joining the Coalition of Caring, so we can support caregivers like Evelyn and Evelyn. Together, we can bring hope to the smile behind the face of AIDS!
Akim's Smile and My Nutrition Kids
Taken from Susain's Blog
When I first came to the Longezia Mission Base I had no idea that one of my jobs would be to run a malnutrition program. I am not qualified to head a program like this, but it has quickly become one of my favorite things to do. I spend many hours doing research on diets, malnutrition, vitamin supplements, and nutrition related diseases. More than just the physical side of things and I am extremely attached to the children. Due to their weakened state these kids are brought faithfully every two weeks by their caregivers, some as far as 15 miles by foot. I have watched expressionless 2 year olds weighing only 8 pounds blossom into bouncing fat little toddlers. It is a tedious job that brings me so much joy, I always look forward to Thursdays when I get to see them.
One of my favorite kids is Akim. He is a street kid that was taken in by a local pastor when he was one year old. From the time he was taken in till about 8 months ago he never smiled or said a worse. He is extremely shy and timid.
I have been seeing him for about 7 months now and from the first day I was drawn to him. He has never said a word to me and I have tried so desperately to get him to smile with no success. Over the past few weeks he has started to come to me and give me hugs and hang out with me while I work, but he still never said anything nor smiled. Until last week. I saw him walking down the hill with his brother and mom so I ran out to meet them. When he saw me he started walking a little faster to come and greet me and came to give me a hug. When I pulled back a looked at him he smiled and said “I am fine”. 
I had not even said a word to him but here he was talking to me with a big smile on his face. Of course I cried, I had been waiting 7 months for this. Luckily he kept smiling that day so I was able to get a picture of him. I saw him two weeks later and now he won’t stop smiling and talking. I guess its true when they say that all good things are worth the wait!
Here are photos of other kids I have fallen in LOVE with!
