What do These 2 Things have in Common?

THE FUND FOR GABRIEL’S HEART PROJECT HAS NOW REACHED $9,841.15!  (Just under $150 away from my $10,000 goal).  Friends on the ground in the D.R.C. continue to make travel plans for Gabriel and his father to travel to Kinshasa for their passports, so pray that the government will not slow down the process and that Gabriel will soon be on his way to India for heart surgery.

I have been completely humbled and blessed by the outpouring of support for Gabriel, but the knowledge that he is just one boy in a country of so many who do not have access to the medical care that they need to have a chance at life continues to weigh on my mind.  It is for this reason that I have launched a small business to create a sustainable income for medical infrastructure in the Congo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know it’s unconventional, but when else can buying skin care products, lotion, cosmetics, and gifts for others have a global impact?  For the rest of 2009, I am going to give half my profits from Mary Kay sales to the HEAL Africa hospital and the Paul Carlson Partnership to improve medical services in the Congo and ensure that Gabriel’s story does not stop just with him.  Shipping is free anywhere in the United States, and you can order from me on my Mary Kay website.  I would also encourage you to check out jewelry that empowers women and girls in the Congo through the Little Things organization, and other fair trade items sold through Bambootique and SERRV International.  There are an endless number of ways to be a more responsible consumer and ensure that your purchases have a purpose behind them.  Please let me know if you would like more information, or if you would like to tell me that I have gone off the deep end.  Thank you!

 

Gabriel’s Update

After an incredible outpouring of support, I have now reached $7,745 for Gabriel’s Heart Project, with more on the way!  Hallelujah!  Friends on the ground in the D.R.Congo are working to help them get passports quickly so that we can begin to make travel arrangements to Chennai.  It has been such a blessing to see the sacrifices people are willing to make for the life of one precious child.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking a stand with me to make a statement that LIFE IS PRECIOUS and that everyone deserves a chance to reach his or her full potential no matter where he or she is born.  Helping one person may seem insignificant, but it will be sure to have a ripple effect on Gabriel’s family and their surrounding community in realizing the willingness of people across the globe to join together and forever intertwine our lives with theirs.

On November 20th I will be having a fundraiser to finish closing the gap with my goal.  Information below.  Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Fundraiser with music by Tom Rorem & band: November 20th, 2009 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Location:  Delux Bar & Grill, 669 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL

Cover charge: $10, with all proceeds benefitting Gabriel’s Heart Project and the HEAL Africa hospital

Gabriel’s Heart Project

Dear friends,

Many of you have heard me tell the story of 10-year old Gabriel (See A Day in the Life of Humanity), a boy in the D.R.Congo with a severe heart condition called ‘tetralogy of fallot.’  I recently received an e-mail from the Congo alerting me that he has not been doing well and has been in and out of the hospital incurring expenses that his father, who is a painter with 8 other children, simply cannot afford.  While this news was weighing heavily on me, I received a call that there is a surgeon in India who is willing and able to perform the necessary, life-giving surgery that Gabriel needs.  All I need to do is raise $10,000 for the medical supplies and medicine needed for the surgery, along with the airfare to send Gabriel and his father to India.  An anonymous donor has already agreed to match all donations up to $5,000, so we are already half-way there!

A situation I once wrote off as impossible now seems to be filled with hope, and I am excited at the possibility of standing with others to not only save Gabriel’s life but to make a statement that life is precious and valuable in a country where so many have lost their lives due to war and disease.  If you would like to join me in this effort to send Gabriel to India for surgery, to intertwine your own life with the life of a precious child across the world, please PRAY and contact me, kmenglund@gmail.com, for details on how you can give to “Gabriel’s Heart Project”.  I will be sure to keep you updated as Gabriel’s story moves forward.

Thank you!

LRA Attacks Continue with No One Watching

An Alternative to Orphanages?

Rural Swaziland

Centre d'Accueil, Bamako

I have visited over a dozen different “orphanages” by now in Mali, Ethiopia, D.R. Congo, and Uganda, seen rural orphanhood in Swaziland, and no matter how impressed I may be with a specific place I am always left with the same pervasive feeling: There must be a better way. What is the best way to care for orphans and vulnerable children who have been left on their own?  Placing children in local adoptive families is ideal, but where are all the parents who are willing to adopt?

By 2010, sub-Saharan Africa will be home to approximately 50 million orphaned children.  Although the number of orphans is slowly decreasing in Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, it is drastically increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa.  About a third of these children are orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Orphan villages seem to be all the rage these days, in an attempt to provide more individualized care to children.  See: SOS Villages, Rafiki Villages, Restoration Gateway, and New Hope Uganda.

The concept of an SOS Village began in 1949 with the vision of an Austrian man named Hermann Gmeiner.  Gmeiner started the first village for children in Imst, Austria to help those who lost their homes, security, and families as a result of World War II.  Today, there are over 450 SOS Villages serving 132 countries and territories.

SOS Villages are based on four fundamental principles that Gmeiner believed every child requires: a mother, brothers and sisters, a house, and a village.  Children are placed together in families with up to ten children, a “mother”, and an “aunt”, all in a house that is modeled after the middle-class lifestyle of the country in which it is located.  The houses are constructed adjacent to one another, creating a small village that becomes a part of its wider surrounding residential area so that children can become integrated into community life outside the SOS Village.

Another organization I have been struck by here in Uganda is Dwelling Places, which works to rehabilitate and restore street children.  They actually work not just to care for the child but for the child’s parents and family for the cases in which a family exists.  If a child’s family member can be found, the potential for reconciliation with the family is researched and parents are provided with counseling and income-generating possibilities to better equip them to care for their children.  Once the family has been empowered to provide a safe and loving environment, the child can be resettled back into their family.

Better solution?  Maybe.  I don’t have any answers, but I will keep searching.  I do know that every child has infinite potential if given the right opportunities, but because of the failure to see the image of God within each one of us, people have become the most wasted resource on this planet.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…” Isaiah 49:15-16

SOS Village Sanankoroba, Mali

Addis Ababa Foster Home

Don Bosco, Goma, D.R.C.

A day in the life of humanity

Gabriel has a severe heart condition called ‘tetralogy of fallot.’  In my limited medical knowledge, I have come to understand that this means he is not getting enough blood to his body.  The hole in his heart results in the two types of blood mixing together, which is coupled with the blockage of the pathway that is supposed to be carrying blood to his body.  He lives in a tiny, 11-year old body – unable to play or run or exert himself physically.  In America, if a child is born with this problem, he or she will typically undergo surgical repair before hitting 1 year of age and will then go on to live a normal life.  Without surgery, a child usually lives to be between 10 and 15 years of age.  You can do the math.  There is no hospital in Africa with the capacity and surgical expertise to operate on children like Gabriel, their only hope is to be put on a flight and sent abroad to a country that can.

As I have been blessed by knowing Gabriel, I have also been blessed through my interactions with his father.  The pain of being a parent completely helpless to do anything for your child is unbearable, along with the knowledge that IF your child just happened to be born in another country everything would be OK.  IF the Kingdom of Heaven reigned on earth and every child was born with the same opportunities and the same chances to live life in a just and equitable society, THEN I would not have to wake up each morning wondering why.  Only prayer remains.  I see the same quiet strength in another Congolese father I know whose daughter was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Christmas Day last year.  Every moment of every day all you can do is wonder…Will today be the day my child dies?  Will today be the day my child is set free and recovered?  Will today be the day a miracle will happen?

More than Enough

5,600 families is a lot of people. Crowd control is nothing less than an act of God. After the ropes had been staked in, the 7 trucks were parked, and people had lined up outside the ropes, I stood inside the box waiting. Watching. Wondering how that many people were possibly going to be able to fit through the opening the size of a door in an orderly fashion. And for about the first hour, I was worried. Especially when I saw the ropes collapsing and people poring over into the territory where the police stood, armed with sticks to keep them back.

Why do they push? Why can’t we just be patient? What about waiting your turn?

Then I realized: I come from a world paradigm where waiting has never really made me miss out on much. I can let people go before me, and I still expect to get my share of the meal. But that has probably not been the life experience for many of these people. They are used to things running out. They are used to being left with nothing, if they don’t get in before someone else. Who am I to question?

When all was done at my site, and every single person who had a ticket from the previous registration had walked through a session of hygiene education and received a hygiene kit, I peered into the truck. Only one kit remained.

Enough is a beautiful thing.

Life in a 1 X 3 Meter Hut

Despite the peace we feel in Goma every day, many people are still fleeing their homes to escape violence and the threat of violence in favor of taking up residence in one of the many displaced persons camps in North Kivu. While some people are coming, others are returning home:

1. Because they hope that stability is here to stay.

2. Because they want to farm and supplement their meager food intake from the camps (only to return a few days later), or

3. Because they have grown weary of life in a camp and nothing, not even the threat of war at their doorstep, could possibly be worse.

Those who are providing people’s immediate relief needs often grow tired of their work as well, and hope that a situation has improved enough so that people can leave the temporary camps, thus leading them to pull out prematurely.  People can argue that food relief should stop to encourage people to go home, or that they don’t want to create dependency, or even that no relief services should be provided so that people have to fend for themselves and find work.  I cannot, however, believe that anyone, no matter who they are, would willingly choose to live in an IDP camp unless they felt seriously threatened.  No amount of free food and non-food items that people may receive from NGOs can make up for the loss of human dignity that accompanies the inability to find employment, or the desire to have your own home and farm your own fields.

I cannot believe that anyone would choose to live in a tiny, shared room made of leaves and sticks, in unhygienic conditions, not knowing when or where their next meal is going to come from, just as much as I cannot believe that anyone would choose to panhandle on the streets of downtown Portland over work, if the opportunity was given.  People, perhaps Americans in particular, do not like asking for help from others – it is only the most severe desperation that can drive people to comprise their dignity and independence enough to do it.

Food Distribution

One at a Time

While working in a big city it is easy to wonder about all that we are not able to see, and to understand that there are always people worse off. As our Congolese co-workers inform us, there is even more suffering in the interior of the country than what we see on a daily basis in the city: something that is sometimes hard to imagine. Rural and urban came together for us this last week when we had the opportunity to bring two children to Goma on two separate occasions to the HEAL Africa hospital for treatment.

Sadiki, 12-years old, has been living in an IDP camp near Lake Kivu since about 2 months ago when the CNDP (Nkunda’s former rebel army) attacked his village, located further west from the Kivu provinces in the interior. During the attack Sadiki was shot, and since then he has had a bullet lodged in his knee that he cannot bend and walks around using a pole to balance. Another boy, just 5-years old, has been suffering for about a week from something I prefer not to mention here. Needless to say, we were able to drive both boys back to Goma with their fathers, and they have been staying in the hospital as they await surgery that HEAL Africa provides free of charge.

It is a relief to be caring for a couple people at a time rather than worrying about thousands. Certainly there are an endless number of needs that no one will be able to fill, but I find that in personal relationships and the chance to help just one person I often find greater satisfaction than in facilitating a distribution that will benefit thousands. I am fighting for this one boy, for his right to get well physically, to increase his potential, and to regain his life back. He is only one, but for a few days he is the most important person on earth to me and I am personally responsible. It is impossible to hold ourselves accountable for many, but I have the chance to be accountable for just ONE, for this moment, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that at least this ONE will be saved: at least this ONE will have a different life starting now.