Build a tailoring business with Aba

Aba’s report is late, but we expect that after reading the reasons why you will forgive us, you should forgive us also for this exceptionally long report, they are supposed to be kept short, but we feel we cannot explain this problem without exposing the whole story.

The truth is we have not made much progress with Aba.

Shortly after we post the project, even before we started getting donations for her, we could provide for her to start training with a local seamstress.

We paid for 9 months training, what we assessed necessary, and left her be while hoping to receive your kind donations to fully assist her with her whole situation.

But shortly after her training the problems began. Around 3 weeks after starting, she had severe pains and went to a nearby Hospital, where she had to be operated to extract her appendix.

Aba’s mother came to see us in the office to explain the situation, after the operation, Aba had to remain in the hospital. She was being retained because of being unable to pay the bills. This sounded particularly outraging to expatriate volunteers, as it is literally retaining someone against her will, but it turns out to be common practice in all medical facilities in Cameroon, due to the lack of identification and tracking resources, you can only leave a facility if you have paid.

So she pledge to us for money to release Aba from the Hospital (add up that every night she spent there the bill was growing and the mother was obliged to bring her food, mounting the costs even more). This was a though internal discussion. In the end we decided to not help with this, for several reasons we expect you to understand: Even though donations had started to come for Aba the project was for her economic empowerment (so she can eventually provide for herself) and for the rights to fully develop for Mendi, her child, not for just any need she would have. We would be setting a precedent we could not sustain if we started helping Tole inhabitants with hospital bills, we just don’t have such a structure and running budget, it would not be an appropriate message and it will not be fair to the rest of Tole population, to add up to all this, Aba was in a private Hospital, not in a government facility.

Eventually our decision turned out right, as she was released of the hospital shortly after her mother’s visit thanks to a friend of the family.

But her problems had just started to aggravate.

A few weeks after she went back to her hospital, as she had started to bleed. She was operated and gave birth to two stillborn babies. It seems that the past procedure for the appendix killed the twins. At that time she was asked if she was pregnant and she denied so no appropriate measure was taken, so a few weeks after two dead children were taken out of her.

Before judging her to harshly try to think of her situation (household conditions, economic problems, disabled child and abandoned by the father) for a second, using the Western terms of stress, anxiety and depression.

We were disappointed and we understand you disappointment if you are feeling it too, the reality of Aba’s life proved more difficult than we expected. A reminder that development work is not only about impressive success stories, the pressures and difficulties that our beneficiaries are under are tremendous.

We had several talks with her and our experts counseled her on Reproductive Health and Family Planning.

Recovering of her two operations with bleeding and fatigue maimed her for more than two months, by then we were even suspecting of depression, but luckily checkup visits showed a different more positive Aba with time, and it was three weeks ago that she re-started her training with the local seamstress and she still has a long way till she is able to set up a tailoring shop of her own.

On Wednesday March 11^th we delivered to her a sewing machine and some sewing materials so she can push her training further in her house and even start doing lesser tailoring jobs to bring income to the house as fast as possible (The only income being her mother´s job at the tea plantation, for 25.000 francs a month, roughly 50$).

What about Mendi? It was also three weeks ago that we could visit the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled in Tiko. It was his first visit in more than one year, when Aba’s economic situation pushed her to stop the treatment. She was accompanied by this same volunteer that is writing and the professionals there re-assessed her situation. There were certain items to be bought (a different kind of walker, boots with an insole, massaging materials and even toys are absolutely capital), and she must continue her visits, but the fact is that we could not budget for weekly visits, considering together the transportation costs and the fees in the Health Center adds up to a weekly cost of 7000 CFA (14 dollars), a sum that we cannot sustainably cover over the years, so it was agreed that she would go to ten subsidized visits and learn how to stimulate the child herself, the visit confirmed us that she can be trained on this easily, in fact is the 1 hour that she is supposed to spend with her child daily stimulating him that is the single most important thing for his mental development, rather than the 20-30 minutes with the expert two times a week.

Mendi has a paralysis of his brain and spine originated a few days after his birth after something went terribly wrong during his circumcision. Even though he cannot walk his legs are quite strong and he uses them with a walker or crawling, his left hand has almost no use and is the right hand that he relies on, he is almost 4 years and does not seem to be able to talk, but I can abide for his communication skills, he is a kid you can play and interact with easily. The exercises that he is supposed to do are tailored basically to stimulate that unused left hand and his brain, tying the right hand while playing with toys to force him to use the left, or tying the left hand to the walker to push him to grab it, there is also a lot of massaging involved to avoid the muscles to become stiff, although in the Health Center they use olive oil we were told about cheaper alternatives that work just as good. If the treatment is followed at home and she can be going to the center periodically to learn new exercises and have professionals assessing his situation, a sustainable solution for Mendi can be achieved, eventually she can start paying for the visits herself but it is a real burden to her to be paying those prices on Cameroonian terms (and on Tole village terms specially), and there is no government structure appropriately tackling the rights of the disabled.

What are the limits of Mendi? Will he be able to have full use of his left hand? To walk? To even talk? We cannot tell yet, but his limit has not been reached yet, not even close, due to inconsistent treatment in the past, and we ought to him and to you to keep doing everything to develop his brain at the fullest. In fact, the most positive note of this report, when we went to deliver the sewing goods to Aba’s place we were surprised by Mendi walking on his own pushing the walker one side and the other. After just two visits and a week of in-house treatment he picked up the process and was enjoying his newly discovered skill!

This is our final report, but it is not our last report, we hope to have a proper “you-changed-a-life” report eventually, we have faith on this girl as you had it too, and we are not backing off from the worst situations but pursuing them, this is what the job is about. We want to give you facts on how the economic situation of Aba evolves, on how Daniel improves and on how the whole family (grandmother, mother, two sisters and grandchild) keeps holding up and slowly pushing forward on this journey out of poverty. We will report back when we have substantial news.

Thank you for believing in her, and please keep doing it, we will not let you down.

We have to add also that today is Bonus Day and you can make donations to the parent project (the one that allow us to keep working with many girls like Aba) that will be increased by globalgiving by 30%. http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/make-an-impact-girls-education-cameroon/