News from Mozambique
Well it’s an exciting time here at AOSCI - AIDS Orphans Skills Centers, Inc., and here in Mozambique we are known as TIOS – uma Divisao de AOSCI - Treinamento Internacional para os Orfaos e sua Sobrevivencia – as here they speak Portuguese and we needed a name that said exactly what we are doing which is survival skills training for orphans.Our journey began approximately 2 years ago when I arrived here in Mozambique. After 4 months with an aid agency, I could see the children and the adults here simply didn’t know how to stay alive. They were dying from ridiculous things like dehydration, diarrhea, drinking impure water, eating poisonous mushrooms, HIV/AIDS, stepping into the road in front of cars and minor injuries which could have been treated but then turned bad at the hands of uneducated and inexperienced people.
The turning point for me came when I was visiting friends in Quelimane in October of 2004 when a man was riding his bicycle down the road and a car came past and just tapped his handlebars. It was enough to unbalance him just one block from the hospital. He fell to the pavement and struck his head. I was about 4 blocks away. I watched as people pulled him from the road with his bicycle still between his legs and then sat him up on the curb with his head hanging forward with blood pouring from it.
I was running and yelling to lower his head to lay him down. It seemed like it took hours for me to get there, but it was only seconds. He had been bleeding profusely and twenty people who didn’t know what to do were surrounding him. We laid him to the ground and I instructed them to cover the cut – to which they took my bandana and just wiped the cut. I showed them how to apply direct pressure to the wound. Nobody would go to the ambulance to get a stretcher so I ran the final block. The final result was the man died – from a simple cut to the head because nobody knew the first aid to keep him alive.
After that incident, I returned to America to form my own NGO – AOSCI AIDS Orphans Skills Centers, Inc. in order to start programs of teaching survival skills to orphans and the people who are raising orphans. From there I returned to Mozambique and registered here as TIOS- A division of AOSCI. We received that registration here in January of 2006 and now we are opening our third center – The Creativity Center for the Support of Orphans – I will be posting photos this week for you to see.
There are a million of these stories – my friend Manual’s son who fell in the well and was left for dead by 30 people until Manual got there and discovered him covered in a blanket in a corner with 30 people crying and screaming. When Manual opened the blanket he discovered his son wasn’t dead but had been left smothered up in a blanket for 15 minutes after falling into the well and becoming unconscious. He raced his son to the hospital but it was too late and his son died just two blocks from the hospital. His son – Psalm – was dead at two years old – the week of Christmas.
Our new Creativity Center for the Support of Orphans houses an interactive library with all kinds of “how to” books and resources to teach skills to orphans and the people and organizations who are supporting them. It has a front room which will have all kinds of art and craft courses – a sewing center where we will be working with older orphan girls who are the primary head of household or caregiver for their younger siblings to teach them how to make anatomical dolls for AIDS education.
We have been using anatomical dolls in AIDS education and have been having phenomenal success!! It makes the training more theatrical and interesting. Also you don’t have to graphically explain things like oral sex – you can simply hold the dolls together to show the activities that put people at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. When we finish our courses, the people say, “Amy you’ve got to teach our families, our neighbors – the information was so simple and we just didn’t know – we had no idea it was so simple – we had heard all these stories about HIV and where it came from – but now it’s so clear”
We are opening this new Creativity Center to be a training Center for Orphans (primarily girls – but also boys) and to train those who are caring for orphans – particularly in the rural areas. There will also be a program called “Under the Mango Trees” which is basically like a small Safety skills preschool to teach the children life skills and safety training. We are teaching nothing more than what most Americans had learned by the time they were twelve years old – alphabet – simple math- skills to make small crafts to generate income – first aid and basic safety and hygiene, like how to cross the road and how to pasteurize water – not to use unsafe water from a river or mud puddle, etc.
Also, we are finalizing plans to install a road course where the children will be able to practice walking and riding bicycle on the road and where we can have formal classes twice a day with a couple of small pretend cars for the children to practice with. I continually see children along the road side holding their breath and then running out into the road without looking either direction because they simply don’t know how to look both ways and cross safely. They have no idea they have any control of their own lives and staying alive – only that cars can kill. It’s such a shame. We, in America learn all these things for free – and here it’s all a great mystery.
Thank you so much each and every one of you for joining the Campaign for Consciousness to help us to teach these children how to stay alive. By the way, I want to tell you a short story about the children on the front page of the web page –
I visited them in 2004 when we were making plans for our first orphan center in a small community called Macate. I took that picture that day. Then three weeks later I returned to find the baby (with the plate) was in the hospital – the little girl (in the center back) was covered in sores, called bubolas all over her body and the 2 year old (in front) had some kind of foot infection which had gone bad and was all infected. Now, nearly two years later– Benjamin – the older boy to the right is one of our best students at the orphan center, as is his sister, who is a phenomenal artist.
These children in the rural areas will sit for hours – tracing, coloring – it’s just such an honor for them, and a new experience. They’ve never seen scissors or crayons or crochet hooks. They can easily see that their lives depend on learning any skill at all. We base all our skills training and income generating projects around things that will support better methods of living (hygienic or wellness based) like making candles to repel mosquitoes or soaps that are anti-bacterial or teaching painting and other crafts that can be used later to make educational materials that are non-existent here.
It’s such a great blessing to be here in service for these children. Though I sometimes wonder about the sensibility of being a one-woman NGO, I trust that God sent me here for a reason and things will unfold as they are intended. May God bring great blessings to you also in all your endeavors. Please feel free to contact me at amy@aosci.org
Blessings and Grace from Mozambique - Amy
posted by emccabemusic @ 6:22 PM
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