A Vote That Really Makes A Difference

Here in the United States, many of us will go to the polls tomorrow (Tuesday) to elect our representatives to Congress, state capitols and city halls. It is an important election that has generated a lot of debate, argument and emotion. For the most part, though, it is not life or death. Without minimizing our differences, whatever the results tomorrow our country will keep rolling along.

Elections in other parts of the world often have more at stake – even the continued existence of the nation itself. Such is the case in the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire. Eight years ago the nation sunk into civil war. The country was divided in half. The rebel group controlled the north and government the south. U.N. peacekeepers patrolled the middle. In the midst of that, I had the chance to travel across the country, passing through government, U.N. and rebel check points.

The past Sunday, Cote d’Ivoire had its first national election in years. The nation was tense as people went to the polls, but the voting went mostly peacefully. Now the voters wait for the results, which should come by Wednesday. The question is: will the party that loses accept the outcome peacefully … or will they revolt? That is something we do not need to worry about here in the U.S.

Let’s watch the results in Cote d’Ivoire closely in the next couple of days … and pray for peace. 

809.7 Miles To Go

I plan to run a long way to bring attention to the health of women and children around the world – 809.7 miles to be exact.

On March 20 next year, board members, staff and friends of MAP International will run in the Publix Georgia Marathon and Half-Marathon in Atlanta to raise awareness and funds to support programs that benefit the health of women and kids in some of the world’s most impoverished communities.

Tomorrow, Sunday Oct. 31, I start my formal training. I have devised a 20-week training program that will, I hope, get me to the finish line of the marathon. If I follow the program exactly, I will run 783.5 miles in training and 26.2 miles in the marathon itself for a total of 809.7 miles. Seems like a long, long way.

The woman and baby in this picture are my motivation. The mother is Maria Ramos. Her baby is Albert Geovanni Ramos. I wrote about them last month after meeting them in a very remote community in Guatemala. They are beneficiaries of a maternal/child health program MAP helped to support with prenatal vitamins. Maria was married at 17, had her first daughter at 18 and another at 20. The family lives in a simple tin-roofed house with a dirt floor and a few chickens running in the compound. She makes corn tortillas, beans and a few vegetables on an open wood fire to feed her family. Her husband works every day for a small wage at a nearby commercial farm. There is no doctor or health center anywhere near their village.

  Albert, two-months-old in the picture, is a healthy young boy. That is in part because his mother received high-quality prenatal vitamins she would never have had access to if not for our program.

Women like Maria and children like Albert need our help. That is why we are running. You should join us. If you, or anyone you know, wants to join the MAP team, simply register for the Georgia marathon at georgiamarathon.com. Make sure to select MAP International in the “join a team” section. Run the full marathon at 26.2 miles or the half at 13.1 miles and help make a difference for a mother and child.

In the meantime, I will be updating my training along the way here at this blog and on Twitter (follow me at @michaelnyenhuis). If you see me slacking off, you have permission to get on my case. Someone will have to keep me accountable to run all those miles.

Going to the hard places

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – My team at MAP and our partners are good at a lot of things. Here is one of them: getting vital medical supplies to the farthest reaches of where ever. I know FedEx and UPS have incredible global reach. But their trucks don’t go where we go.

I have been in Guatemala this week following up on a mother/child health project we are carrying out with our partner, Vine International. A key part of that project is providing high-quality prenatal vitamins donated by our corporate partner, Shionogi.

These vitamins have gone to mothers in remote communities where no one else goes. I want to show you a series of pictures to prove my point.

1. A road we traveled turned out to be almost impassable. That’s our blue van behind the truck as our driver, Vine’s Dennis McCutcheon, tried to figure out how to get past it. (And that’s Dennis celebrating after making it through,)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Another road turned into a riverbed when the heavy rains fell. I was shocked the van made it through.

3. This is a typical homestead in the village of Monte Carlo. No package express delivery there. Not surprisingly, the pickup doesn’t work.

 

4. And here are pregnant moms getting prenatal vitamins for the first time in their lives.

As I said … we go to the hard places. Take a look at this little girl and you will agree that it is worth it.

Brewda Care

MONTE CARLO, Guatemala – Maria Antonia, an 18-year-old young mom with two children already, is quite pregnant. She has that glow and her belly gives away that she is past the half-way mark. But she does not know the date she became pregnant and does not know how long she has to go.

“Your due date?” I asked her. 

“I lost track of the date,” she said through a translator.

She has not seen a doctor. There is no family doc – let alone a gynecologist – anywhere nearby. She does not know the sex of the baby. She has never seen an ultrasound machine. She will give birth again with the help of a traditional midwife in her one-room home with a dirt floor where a small wood fire burns in one corner to provide heat for cooking.

That is the state of prenatal care in the rural communities of Guatemala I have visited this week. In Maria’s village there is, well, nothing … nothing, that is, but Brewda Avila.

Brewda is a wonder. She is a type of saint, something along the lines of a Robin  Hood, bringing what she can from the rich to help the poor. What she brought on this day were prenatal vitamins and messages for moms, expectant moms and future moms about how to be healthier for themselves and their children. Her work is part of a larger prenatal health program MAP is sponsoring along with its partner in Guatemala, Vine International. Our corporate partner, Shionogi, donated the vitamins.

Brewda is part community organizer, part health promoter, and full-time action hero. She travels from community to community in his rural area bringing health messages, medicines and supplies to those who are without them. Bringing vitamins to pregnant moms will make a big difference, she said.

“Its very important because they do not have a health center near,” she said. “The vitamins and medicines coming to this community are very important for their health.’”

Maria was one of the beneficiaries on this day of both the health messages and the vitamins. She is hoping for a healthy remainder of her pregnancy. She has a better chance now.

Little Albert’s healthy start

COBADONGA, Guatemala – The picture of this beautiful mother and child nearly speaks for itself, but I will add a few comments for context.

The serious mother is Maria Ramos. She was married at 17, had her first daughter at 18 and another at 20. The family lives in a simple tin-roofed house with a dirt floor and a few chickens running in the compound. She makes corn tortillas, beans and a few vegetables on an open wood fire to feed her family. Her husband works every day for a small wage at a nearby commercial farm.

Her content-looking, chubby little two-month-old son is Albert Geovanni Ramos. He is a healthy young boy. That is in part because he is a direct beneficiary of our project to improve the health of mothers and children by providing prenatal vitamins to women who would never have them otherwise. MAP, Vine International and our corporate partner, Shionogi, made the project possible.

Prenatal vitamins are almost unheard of in this remote community far down a rocky and often-flooded road from the nearest city with a health center. But Maria received them as part of our project. She took them in the last months of her pregnancy and benefited from the boost they gave to her health and the health of her baby.

“No,” she said through a translator, “we never have had vitamins like this. This is the only time.”

Maria is a good mom. She has taken good care of her daughters, Aida and Karla. She said the vitamins gave her a peace that little Albert would be healthy, too. And he is. I watched him sit contently in his mother’s arms, saw him squirm a little and fuss when he got hungry, then calm down when he nursed. He then fell asleep briefly before waking up bright-eyed. That’s when I took this picture. As I said, the picture nearly speaks for itself about the good start to life little Albert has been given.

Expecting a healthy pregnancy (against the odds)

CHOCOLA, Guatemala – Kayley Ovalle is 22, pregnant and one of up to 260,000 women receiving prenatal vitamins as part of a six-country MAP project. Along with most people in this small jungle town, she was in the fields picking coffee beans today. She left home at 4 a.m., traveled by bus for three hours, worked in the fields in the heat, high humidity and torrential afternoon rains and then traveled back by bus.

She does not have a choice. Work, or don’t eat. That is the bottom line.

I did not get to meet Kayley today because she was away. But I did meet her mother, Marilia Leticia Ovalle Ramirez. She told me Kayley’s story. Brace yourself …

Let’s start with Mrs. Ramirez. Her husband left more than two years ago to make his way to the United States to find work. He took their little savings and mortgaged their small house to pay the smugglers who would get him there illegally. He has not been heard from since. The family does not know if he died along the way or made it to the U.S. and abandoned them. On top of that, a fire recently destroyed Mrs. Ramirez’ house. Having lost that collateral, the bank repossessed her small plot of land. The family was left with nothing. Mrs. Ramirez moved back in with her father.

Kayley is the oldest of two daughters. Her husband is away trying to find work on a banana plantation elsewhere in Guatemala, so she lives with her mother and grandfather now. She has been pregnant once before, but lost the baby at 10 weeks because of her heavy workload and lack of nutrition.

Coffee prices have bottomed out here. Storms earlier in the year damaged the crops. While it is possible for someone to pick 100 pounds of coffee beans in two days to earn $3 (do the math … that’s $1.50 per day), the beans are so small this year that pickers are lucky to get 40 pounds.

Kayley is stuck. Her workload puts her pregnancy at risk. If she doesn’t work, she risks malnutrition because she won’t have the money to buy decent food. Here is her hope: the prenatal care program she takes part in at the Hospital Christiano Santa Fe, which includes the prenatal vitamins MAP provided with the help of our partners, Shionogi, Inc. and Vine International. Kayley did not have such a program in her first pregnancy.

Mrs. Ramirez said she and her daughter are believing the vitamins will strengthen mother and child enough to ensure a healthy birth.

“We are really poor,” Mrs. Ramirez said through a translator. “We can’t pay for a private clinic and medicines. My daughter never had prenatal care until now. Now we know in this little hospital there is a special program to help her, even if we don’t have money.”

23 Million Vitamins

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – I went to prison today. Gratefully, I also got out.

The prison was the “Center for the Orientation of Women,” also know as the Pavon Prison outside this capital city. My mission was to deliver prenatal vitamins to the facility’s health center. My accomplices were Woody Woodson and Dennis McCutcheon of Vine International, a U.S.-based agency working in Guatemala, and Richardo Gonzalez of the local prison ministry El Barrio for Christ.

You might be wondering: why do they need prenatal vitamins in prison? Here are a few reasons:

1. Pregnant women are serving time there. They either come in pregnant or get pregnant inside (a small bribe will often get them a little time with a visiting husband or boyfriend).

2. Their babies, who are going to have a tough beginning to life (they will live with their moms in prison for their first four years), deserve every chance for a healthy start. Prenatal vitamins can be a part of that.

3. The prisons have no resources. Dennis had this to say about men’s prisons in Guatemala: “They are the closest thing I have seen to hell. The only thing missing is the smoke and flames.” The women’s prisons are better, but not much. They certainly do not have vitamins to strengthen pregnant moms and their unborn babies.

MAP has had the privilege, through an incredible donation from the Shionogi Inc. pharmaceutical company, to distribute 23 million prenatal vitamin capsules – enough for up to 261,000 women in six countries over the past several months. I am tracking down some of those donations in Guatemala this week. I think the prison was a good place to start. Who else is going to care for these innocent children who will be born soon into hardship?

It is World Water Week

A group in Stockholm that works on clean water issues globally has declared this “World Water Week.” I will go along with that. My home state of Minnesota is filled with people from Sweden, so I learned early to follow them. The official dates are Sept. 5-11. A big awareness event is planned in Stockholm. You can read more here: http://www.siwi.org/worldwaterweek.

This is a good week for this to cross my desk. Also crossing is a report on MAP’s clean water initiatives in seven countries. So far 7,000 people in 50 communities have benefited from projects to introduce a simple water filter technology that does a terrific job taking dirty water from ponds and rivers and making it pure.

Here is what one villager in Uganda said:

“MAP is God-sent. Since I was born no one has done this wonder in my long life and that of my village ever…for the first time, my village folk and I drink pure and clean water…our children will not be sick anymore!”

Here is a fact: dirty water carrying bacteria, amoeba, and the cysts of various intestinal worms accounts for up to 75 percent of the disease burden in many rural villages across the globe.

By tackling the problem of water, we are tackling health head on.

Clean water is also a great way to get children involved in the struggle for better health for themselves and their families. Here is part of the report from a village in Cote d’Ivoire:

“The project is aimed at primary school children in rural areas.  The young students are provided filters at their schools, and they are taught the importance of good hygiene and clean water.  Not only will they have this knowledge from a young age, but they can also share what they have learned with their families and communities.”

So drink a cold, clear glass of pure water today … and be thankful.

A Dream Coming True

A met young Kwasi Owusu on a trip to Ghana earlier in the year. He told me his dream: He simply wished that his right hand could become the same as his left hand.

You see, his right hand was badly deformed by the tropical disease Buruli ulcer, which is something like leprosy. He could no longer use that hand for writing or anything else. At school, kids called him names and made fun of him. All he wanted, he said, was his right hand back.

Eight-year-old Kwasi broke my heart. I wanted to see if there was anything we could do to help him recover the use of his hand. I asked the MAP team to investigate what options there might be for reconstructive surgery in Ghana. Yesterday, I received news that brought tears to my eyes:

Kwasi is on his way to the neighboring country of Cote d’Ivoire to get the surgery he needs. Here is the email I received from MAP’s Cote d’Ivoire director and regional representative in West Africa, Dr. Julien Ake:

Dear Michael,

Last week, I visited the Ghana office for supervision purposes. In regard to your wish, and with God’s grace, the MAP Ghana and MAP Cote d’Ivoire teams have completed all the required formalities to get Kwasi transferred to Cote d’Ivoire for the reconstructive surgery of his right hand damaged by Buruli ulcer.

We are collecting pictures of the process to develop a video. Attached is the picture of Kwasi’s family: Dad, Mum, young brother and the Nurse Florence just prior to his departure to Cote d’Ivoire.

We are all praying for the success of the surgery.

I‘ll keep you posted on the process.

Blessings

The restoration of his right hand is a big dream for a small boy from a poor village in Ghana. It is also one bright light for a middle-aged man from the United States (me) who has seen too much pain and suffering in the world.

Please pray with me for a successful surgery for my friend, Kwasi.

Kenya 7: The Log(frame) Cabin

One last story from Kenya …

Kilonga, Kenya – In my country, everyone knows the “log cabin” as a symbol of life on the frontier. Made by stacking uncut logs, settlers built these cabins as they moved across our continent long ago. Today, families build them in the woods as vacation getaways.

In my industry – the international relief and development industry – everyone knows the “logframe.” That term is short for “logical framework” and it is a systematic way to describe a development project. It starts with an overarching goal, and describes the activities, outputs and outcomes necessary to achieve a desired impact. That might sound complicated, but it is not. It is a useful tool to make clear what needs to be done by whom and when to accomplish something important.

In Kilonga village, the log cabin and the logframe have merged into what I am calling “The Logframe Cabin.” This structure, shown in the photograph, is a community building in the center of the village on which has been painted a logframe that describes the project the community designed to improve its health and development. In the photograph, the MAP Kenya program director, Safari (left), and the village chief, Joseph, are explaining the logframe to visitors.

I have seen a lot of buildings and I have seen a lot of logframes, but I have never seen the two combined like this. The point, the chief told us, is to keep this plan in front of the village members. With the MAP team serving as a catalyst, the villagers themselves sat together to plan the kind of community they wanted in the future and what they would do to achieve their vision. This is the foundation of MAP’s Total Health Village strategy – a community owning its own future. So, what message does the Logframe Cabin tell us? It says this:

• The village’s goal is to improve the quality of life by improving socio-economic status.
• To achieve that, residents believe they need to reduce the incidence of disease, increase surplus food production and income generation for families, and reduce the degradation of their soil.
• Some of the activities needed to achieve these outcomes include improving access to medicines and health education for families, training in clean water, sanitation and hygiene, preventing HIV/AIDS, utilizing sustainable agricultural practices, implementing small-scale irrigation solutions, building entrepreneurial skills and accessing microfinance loans.

The residents of Kilonga developed the plan. They own it. So why not paint it on the wall?

I am a planner by nature. I wonder how my wife, Sandy, would feel if I repainted the side of our house with my plan for the year? Our home could be the second Logframe Cabin!