RENEWED HOPE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, INC.

Working Together For Zimbabwe's Future

October 15, 2006

Dear Readers,

I want to update you on the Bilharzia situation here.  The Hospital staff from Murewa hospital spent last Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday testing and treating children here at Nyamashato Primary and Secondary Schools.  Because of the large enrollment, they tested only the children who came voluntarily.  425 children were tested and 88% tested positive.  This is a higher percentage than had been previously estimated.  We are requesting that they come back and screen all of the children.  We have been told that the medicine is too expensive and yet this is a life threatening ailment.  We are also requesting an extensive educational program for not only the school children but also the community at large.

Thursday morning, I was called to the Orphan Care Center to meet with four women each with an infant.  They had come asking for food assistance.  All four women had lost their husbands but only two had death certificates to prove the fact.  Food assistance for the babies was issued for two weeks and the women were told to bring the death certificates in order to keep receiving food supplies.  One of the women had a child that was 19 months old and was not even as big as a 6 month old child.  It was not very responsive and its mouth was full of sores.  The clinic had sent the mother here for formula because the staff indicated that the baby was undernourished. A 19 month old should not require formula.  Because the baby was so listless, we decided to transport to the hospital.  The child was admitted and the Dr. scolded the mother for not coming sooner.  The baby died Saturday in the night.  The truck had to go to the hospital Sunday morning to pick up the body.  When the body was delivered to the home for the funeral five other children were seen at the home.  All the children were dirty and in tatters and none looked very healthy.  The children rarely attend school even though two meals a day would be provided.  I am puzzled by the fact that the mother did not look undernourished.

Joann Briggs, who is here visiting from Denver brought with her knitted baby blankets.  She took the opportunity of the mothers who had come with their babies to distribute the blankets to the babies.  The blankets were knitted by a woman in prison who had heard of the Zimbabwe project from a church in Denver.  She decided that she wanted to help by knitting the blankets.  The beautiful blankets brought smiles to the mothers’ faces.  It is probably the only new thing they have ever had for a baby.  I imagine that the baby that died was buried in the blanket it received.

Doug Briggs, Joann’s son, spent a week in Zimbabwe.  He was a big help to Ralph in trying to get some computers working again.  Most of the children that Ashley spent a lot of time with have been asking for an opportunity to work on the computer.  We won’t let them play on Godfrey’s, the bookkeepers, computer or mine.  So Ralph has taken a couple old computers and tried to get them working again.  Between Ralph and Doug and a phone call to Bryce, our son in Houston, the children here now have two computers to begin learning on.  Just one problem, Doug wasn’t here long enough.  Cheunje has several of its computers down.  Ralph just hasn’t found time to go there and work on them.  Ralph is kept busy trying desperately to keep the electrification program on track as well as the construction of the new building for the knitting and sewing co-ops.

Recently I have begun working with two orphan girls who have completed secondary school.  I am teaching them to sew and eventually my plan is that they will become part of the Sewing Co-op.  It is amazing how quickly they are catching on.  I am finding it much easier to teach them than to teach the women I began with in 1999.  Some of the women I began with have quit and others still don’t do very well.  I have suggested that they find something else to do to make money.  We can’t afford for them to mess up expensive material any more.  I feel some of these women were the cause of some of the machines being broken down.  Perhaps this is the beginning of our vision of a skills training center for the orphans who complete their “O” levels satisfactorily.  I am beginning with only two girls and we will see how it works out and where it may lead.

Florence and I went early last Wednesday morning to dress Oswald’s wounds.  Florence could not go later because she was going to the Dr. in Murewa with eight other orphans that day.  She and I had decided Oswald was not able to make the trip.  However, when we arrived at his home, Oswald was dressed ready to go and wanted to go and so he did.  However, the Dr. did nothing for him.  He said the dressing was well done and did not want to change it.  He prescribed some medicine but we know that Oswald is not going to get well.

Oswald continues to decline.  I spoke with Florence, the Nurse Aid at the Dispensary here at school, today, Sunday.  She indicated that Oswald was now critical. I decided the end might be near and so decided to go see him for what might be the last time.  Florence and Joann went with me.  Since Florence had dressed his wounds earlier that day, no additional dressing was done.  We found Oswald seated in the house.  His breathing was rapid and shallow, his feet were swollen and he had a fever.  He has wasted away; he is only a skeleton with skin stretched over it.  He coughs and it sounds like his chest is full of congestion.  I feel certain his lungs are filling.  I am helpless and taking him to the hospital is futile.  They do nothing.  Florence washed his face and chest with cool water to help bring down the fever.  He is refusing medicine saying that it makes him vomit.  The left eye that appeared to have a boil forming on the eye ball the last time I dressed him is now bulged and I know he no longer sees out of that eye.  I suggested that Florence close the eye lid and put a patch over it.

With Oswald, Precious, Jessca, Actavia and others like them, we are really seeing the need for a hospice care center.  We are also seeing the need for a place that abused children can seek refuge. This would not be something that would be developed here at Nyamashato but nearby.  I have dealt with suspected cases of abuse in the past, but last Tuesday I had a child come to school that complained of chest pains and a headache but I couldn’t get her to talk.  Even Florence couldn’t get her to talk.  She laid in the Dispensary all day facing the wall and talking to no one.  I am certain she is an abuse case.  She was one in a family of six that lived alone in 2001.  Vincent, who died, was one of six in that family.

When we left the U.S. in June, we thought that possibly this would be our last trip to Zimbabwe. Now, Ralph and I feel that God may be opening a new door for this mission.  Are we to continue?  Is it time to pass on the leadership?   We are praying for direction and we seek your prayers as well.  We pray that we will be guided to carry out God’s will for this place in this time. 

In His Service,

Ralph and Roberta

October 27, 2006

Oswald sent word to school that he wanted to see me.  Ralph and I along with Joann and two others drove to his home in late afternoon on Wednesday.  He was in critical condition but smiled at me.  He was too weak to talk above a whisper.  I stayed only a few minutes.  He seemed pleased that we had come.  He whispered to the Dispensary Nurse that he was happy.

Thursday morning at about 5:00am his uncle came to say that he had passed away.  Now he no longer is in pain.  Praise God!

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Renewed Hope Charitable Foundation, Inc. | a 501(c)(3) charity | P.O. Box 1476 | Castle Rock, Colorado | 80104-1476

2006 Journal 08