Rehabilitation of 64 Vulnerable Women in Ethiopia

Occasionally the baby is found alone and cold and if s/he has the energy crying. Often they are no longer crying, they are too tired. So what has this to do with vulenrable women you ask? It is their mothers...

What would lead you to abdnon your baby, this wee soul that has grown within you for nine months? What happened at birth or two months down the road that you leave your infant beside the road, near a police station or bus terminal? The dispair is beyong imagination, alone, a victim of rape, unemployed, you are hungry and your baby doesn't stop crying because s/he is also hungry. Then you consider that death may be better... 

These last few weeks we have had two rape victims comes to Abraham's Oasis. The fa ily solution for one was to kill both of them! For the other, a young girl who has never been to school, guided her blind mother through the town, raped and comsidered mentally deficient, who in fact is simply unlearned... 

Both mothers have been following intensive counselling sessions with the psychologist and have met the psychiatrist who has given  one given medication to help her settle and reduce fear of being murder edby her family. Both have settled in, learning to cook, learning to care for their babies and making friends at the residential home of Abraham's Oasis.

So as we help the babies we help the mothers... And you dear supporters are right their with us and we are so grateful!

Thank you,

Ruth

We are still looking for additional funding to run this project to full capacity but this doesn't mean that we are not helpoing vulnerable women at this time. We are helping at a lower capacity. Currently we are awaiting the approval of five women who are being selected by women affairs and we will assist them by means of counseling and economoc empowerment as well as small business skills training.

But in the meantime we have one young 19 year old girl who has been raped by a family member and this resulted into a pregnancy....she tried to terminate this pregnancy in secret but needed parental approval for this...it meant she had to tell what had happened to her...by the time she had sorted out that problem she was to far advanced in her pregnancy and was referred to another hospital where they tried to induce an early labor, she was between 6 and 7 months at that time. The very premature baby was born alive, much to the horror of the young mother. Some people in the hospital had agreed that she could leave her baby behind and go home...that was what she did, trying to ignore what had happened to her, working and starting cooking classes. The baby kept thriving and spent around 75 days in the intensive care. Around that time a doctor in the hospital found out what the hospital staff had done and greatly opposed the idea of baby abandonment. So he traced the mother and turned up with the baby, a police officer, a nurse and they  all went to social services office to deal with thie problem...apparently there was a lot of arguing going on as especially the grandmother of the baby was greatly opposed to this baby and she expressed interest in killing the baby as otherwise the family may kill her and the mother...a solution was not reached and finally we were called.... We can't take a baby when there is a mother on the scene and as this was an ongoing crisis situation we decided to take both baby, motehr and grandmother for the nigh so everyone could calm down....we had to keep mother and baby seperate as we were afraid that they may try to kill the baby or abandon the baby. We had a guard in front of granmother and mother's room. The next morning we did extensive counselling and finally the mother agreed to stay with the baby and with us. For the mother we got women's affairs and the police involved and after a lot of drama she was taken to her home with police follow-up. The mother of the baby was severly depressed and we got the psychiatrist in to prescribe her some anti-depressants. We have been doing intensive counselling with the mother and we are currently at the point that she has accepted her baby and is caring for her little girl. Tomorrow she will start cooking classes for six months and working in our kitchen as assistant to the cook. For the time being we will keep this mother and baby in our residential setting for abandoned children, the long-term plan is that mother and baby develop a strong bond and eventually will be able to live independent from us with the mother being able to work as a cook somewhere. We hope that our intervention will work to keep mother and baby together and we thank everyone who has contributed to this project for helping us assist this traumatized young mother and her baby!