What a remarkable thing to spend Mother’s Day with children who don’t have mothers.
Last week, I flew to Kilimanjaro with Basden for her month-long adventure at Neema Village near Arusha, Tanzania. Neema, which means “grace” in Swahili, began as a rescue center for orphaned, abandoned, and at-risk babies. And yet over the years it’s become so much more. Neema offers housing for single mothers and their children fighting poverty, ongoing training for childbirth and childcare, a youth and adult soccer outreach league, and apprenticeship programs for young men and women. And this still barely scratches the surface. In caring for orphaned and abandoned babies, Neema Village has grown to care for an entire community.
One of the things that has most surprised me about Neema Village is the palpable culture of joy and hope. Every baby here has a story: Born blind and left to die in a field; cast out as “cursed” when born with a deformity; natural quadruplets thought to be just one baby, whose births completely overwhelmed their struggling mother and father. Just yesterday, two day-old babies arrived at Neema – a baby girl whose mother died suddenly during childbirth, and a baby boy whose mom left the hospital and entered a sober home. One was likely born with HIV, the other with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Long roads ahead for these two precious ones.
And yet.
The stories are shared with hope. With reality and with lightness. No matter the circumstances, everyone here is excited about a baby. Neema’s Tanzanian nannies are constantly singing and smiling. Throughout the manicured complex, children are playing, sleeping, laughing, and crying. All the time and all at once. The babies – all 80 of them – are the VIPs in Neema’s landscape.
During this morning’s Mother’s Day church service, Basden and I cradled infant orphans. Meanwhile, a group of children we’ve quickly grown to love, each with significant disabilities, played and danced at our feet. Humming along with the children’s choir, and then a Masai women’s tribal choir, and then listening to a sermon in Swahili over a passage from Luke, my thoughts drifted to the women who sacrificed their lives for these babies. So many of these little ones lost their mothers during the very moments they were born. Others are trusting Neema with their babies until they can better care for them.
Motherhood. Beauty and joy, and always sacrifice.
Reminds me of Someone else I know.
Happy, happy Mother’s Day to all of you lovely mothers ~ may our hearts be filled with the One who willingly, intentionally, gave HIS life for us.
