I love this photo of Joanne's children -- Michael, Philip and Ronika; it tells such a beautiful story about the project.
You may well have heard us talk about one of the first meetings we had in Kantolomba, now over 10 years ago. We asked the group of 30 women gathered how many had lost a child. Every hand went up. Every hand! Many had lost far more: Violet, 8, Martha 3 sets of twins…
When Theresa sent this photo last week I realized Joanne has not lost any children—very unusual. And then it hit me that it is NOT unusual! Joanne has not lost any children because ALL of her children have been born since Living Compassion started in Kantolomba. In a decade the norm has moved from losing at least one child (the anecdotal statistic we were told was 70% by age 5) to being very unusual to have a child die. That’s astounding.
Another recent photo is a joyful representation of the how of that. Here Priska leans down and cups her hand to offer this little girl a drink of clean water. It reminds me of the heart-opening conversations we have been having on the Seeing Through the Eyes of Love radio shows. What could seem more overwhelming than to tackle a child mortality rate of 70% in a community?! And the way the team has done it is day-by-day, meal-by-meal, one clean, safe drink of water at a time.
Child mortality, like everything, is caused by single factors strung together—drinking contaminated water over time; being bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito, slowly starving, improper nutrition leading to disease, not having the few coins for transport to get to medical care in time, not having the information about how to properly take medication, having a language barrier and a lifetime of believing oneself unworthy preventing effective communication with health care providers… The factors are innumerable AND they are all factors, all places where, when we bring attention to the moment and address what is going on HERE, now, we can attend to. That’s truly the only ‘place’ we can attend to anything.
At this challenging time, it is incredibly inspiring to realize that the team in Kantolomba has nearly eliminated child mortality in 10 years, through moment-by-moment actions.
In Gassho
Jen