#WATWB: Dodging Bullets to Deliver a Baby

Sometime in 2015, the Taliban attempted to recapture an Afghan city called Kunduz. War began between the Taliban and the government military. All roads were closed and hospitals became battlefields. People were trapped in hospitals for weeks. Hospitals were running out of medicine, blood, and even food. One hospital was blown up by a mortar.

A gynaecologist named Dr. Marzia Salam Yaftali was working at the last-standing public hospital in the city. She couldn’t go to work during the attack and it worried her sick. The situation was getting worse. The injured kept arriving at the hospital despite the diminishing supplies.

I was desperate to go to work but I couldn’t because all the roads were closed and the hospital was a battlefield. It was in the crossfire between the Taliban and the government troops. My colleagues were trapped in the hospital for two weeks. No one could leave.

One night when the fighting had worsened uncontrollably, Dr. Marzia was called to help her neighbour deliver twins.

There was heavy fighting one night. The battle was going on from street to street and house to house. It was so bad that no one dared to leave their homes. If you were shot at no one would know if it was from the Taliban or government troops. My family was hiding in the basement.

Around 8 o’clock in the evening, there was banging on our door. We were terrified. But it was a neighbour. They had a lady staying with them called Fatma. She was young and pregnant with twins. But it hadn’t been an easy pregnancy. My neighbour said, ‘Please come. Fatma is going into labour. We need your help.’

Dr. Marzia was living with her sister, also a doctor. But her sister refused point-blank to go outside. The risk was too great. She had her own children to look after and going outside meant certain death.

Dr. Marzia had to decide what to do. She had met Fatma and seen the scan of her babies.

I knew that if I didn’t go, Fatma would die.

When I stepped outside the front door, there was a rain of bullets. It was absolutely terrifying.

I was running. I will never forget that night. There were NATO airplanes above. It was pitch-black but I could see the laser lights coming from the jets looking for the Taliban fighters. I ran like I had never run before. The neighbour’s house was ten minutes away but it felt like a whole hour.

Dr. Marzia managed to deliver the first baby. Unfortunately, the second baby was trapped at the shoulder and needed caesarean section to be delivered. She needed a hospital.

I called my government contacts and asked them to send a military tank to take us to the hospital. Then I rang the hospital and my colleagues there said absolutely not. You cannot come here. The hospital is a war zone. Earlier a patient and his father left the hospital and were shot. Their bodies are still outside in the driveway and no one dares to pick them up. The same could happen to you. Don’t come.

The rest of Dr. Marzia’s story can be found here.

Dr. Marzia Salam Yaftali. Photo by BBC.

 

This is the 16th celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Belinda Witzenhausen, Sylvia McGrath, Simon Falk, and Andrea Michaels.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

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#WATWB: Comforting the Dying

There is a concept from ancient Greek called “Doula.” According to Wikipedia,  “a doula is a non-medical person who stays with and assists a woman before, during, or after childbirth, to provide emotional support and physical help if needed. They also may provide support to the mother’s partner and family. A doula is also known as a birth companion, birth coach or post-birth supporter.”

In the US, a man named Henry Fersko-Weiss is practising doula for the dying. Henry does the same things as the birth companion, providing emotional, physical and psychological support, except his patients are facing the end of their lives. He calls it “the end of life doula”.

Henry worked at a hospice as a social worker, and it was there that he witnessed events that would change his life.

It was then working as a hospice social worker that I began to see there were gaps in the kinds of service and care . . . I felt that too many people that I was seeing dying were dying in the ways that they hadn’t wanted to. For example, going into the hospital when they had always wanted to die at home.

One particular incident upset Henry so much that he began to contemplate other ways of approaching death. An 86-year old WWII veteran named Sam who had been under the care of his 88-year old sister died alone and unattended in a hospital room.

To die in a hospital room like that, unattended, unnoticed . . . to me it is just a tragedy.

With the help of a friend, Henry first went for training as a birth doula. Later on, he began to adapt the same skills he had acquired to comforting the dying.

In the conversations we have before somebody is actively dying . . . or the labouring process of death, we try to talk about not only how the atmosphere would be in the last days and how we can make it more meaningful or more comfortable for the dying person and family, but focus also on talking on the meaning of the person’s life . . . and then talking about doing some kind of a legacy project that would allow them to leave behind something that would help their family and friends reconnect with them in some kind of a deep way, not in a casual way . . . and perhaps even inspire future generations in the family.

We are not judging the mistakes they may have made. We are there to really listen to what they have to say about their own lives, and perhaps help them to see it with a little bit different perspective or to see pieces that still seem to be hanging unfinished . . . how they might still address that.

Henry now trains people in the United States and he has helped thousands of people in their last moments.

Henry’s wonderful story can be found here.

BBC

This is the 16th celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Belind Witzenhausen, Inderpreet Uppal, Sylvia McGrath, Roshan Radhakrishnan, and myself.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: Mother of Millions – Caring for Children Born in Prison

Have you ever thought about the children born in prison? The innocent young souls locked up behind bars with their parents?

When pregnant mothers are arrested and sentenced to years in prison, their babies, when delivered, become prisoners as well. These children grow up in the sickening filth of the prisons, surrounded by criminals, including murderers, conmen, thieves, child molesters, etc, and are watched over by cruel, inhuman guards who sometimes beat up their parents as they watch. When their parents have to work outside the prison walls, the babies too are made to wear prison outfits for identification.

It is a harsh, traumatizing life. It is horrifying to imagine a child growing up in such circumstances.

In Zambia, there is a light that shines for these children, growing bigger and bigger everyday.

Faith Kalungia cares for these children. Faith has a deep, resourceful heart, and she has always loved the disadvantaged and the marginalized. When she visited Lusaka Central Prison in 2012, she had a nightmare seeing the children there, dirty, sick, lonely children, having no school to go to, having never seen the outside world. Their ages ranged from newborns to toddlers.

“When a mother gives birth, there is always celebration, but the first a place a child calls home is that prison,” she says.

Faith set up a school for them, hired teachers and social workers to take of them. She experienced challenges with the authority and with finance but she managed to give those children a better life. She started Mother of Millions Foundation. She now has 500 children under her care. She takes care of 5 prisons.

“In her early life Faith dreamt of one day owning an orphanage. At just 14 years of age she convinced her parents to adopt street children and send them to school so they could have a better future. In 2012 Faith visited the Lusaka Central Prison in Zambia to hand in donations to the female inmates, but she was shocked to find kids roaming around the prison grounds. Faith then quit her job and created the Mother of Millions foundation, which gives education, nutrition and playtime to children growing up in prisons in Zambia.”

Faith’s rich story is found here.

Faith Kalungia, BBC

This is the 15th celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Damyanti Biswas, Dan Antion, Mary. J. Giese, and Simon Falk.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: The Nun Rescuing Sex-Trafficked Women

Some days you come across a horror story about the agonies of sex-trafficked women. Young girls in their teens–children, really–kidnapped or sold, enslaved, abused, tortured, raped, degraded, and dehumanized, their bodies full of cuts and burns and bruises and deformities, their eyes wells of deep-rooted fear and despair, their children sold without their knowledge–they have no hope but to die.

In the Italian town of Caserta, near Naples, a little hope shines there for these women, growing bigger and bigger every day.

Sister Rita Garietta dedicates her life to helping women trafficked for sex. She was initially a nurse and a trade union representative, but when she was 29, she quit her job to follow a calling, becoming a nun. Later on, she left her home city for Caserta where, together with other nuns, opened Casa Ruth, a shelter for victims of sex trafficking in Caserta.

When she first saw the young girls on the streets, she was worried. All of them were about fifteen and sixteen years old. Sister Garietta was with a few other nuns and they stopped the vehicle to talk to the girls, thereby beginning a new journey in her life which would see her become families with the enslaved women.

“When there are stories about loss of dignity, you never get used to them,” she says after encountering the young girls and listening to their harrowing stories.

“What happens to your heart is that it grows in tenderness. This is the essence of Casa Ruth . . . of feeling loved with no judgement. It is a process of healing to the girls. They call us ‘Mama’ and every time we hear this, it sends a shiver down our spines. Being a mother today is about joy, it is about responsibility. It is about the responsibility of being entrusted with the care of other people’s lives,” she says about her experience with the women.

“My reward is joy . . . and the smiles. When these women arrive, they are desperate, and the pain is etched on their faces. Then the lines relax, joy sets in, hope sets in . . . All I want to do is to bring light into these people’s lives.”

Sister Garietta’s rich story can be found here and also here.

Sister Rita Garietta, BBC

This is the 14th celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Damyanti Biswas, Andrea Michaels, Inderpreet Uppal, and myself.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: Helping Homeless Women Give Birth

In a world where humans are increasingly isolated and the cost of healthcare is always rising, being pregnant and homeless can be too harsh an experience. Every child deserves a home to grow up in, but looking forward to having a child who will never have a home or a country can fill the heart with despair.

Fortunately, there are women like Memuna Sowe whose compassion, love, and kindness  lead them to dedicate their lives in helping the unfortunate women in the world.

Memuna helps pregnant drug addicts, asylum seekers, street families, and people who have escaped war-torn countries with only their lives.

 “Memuna Sowe is Britain’s midwife of the year according to the British Journal of Midwifery. Memuna stands out from many of her colleagues because she devotes her life to helping marginalised pregnant women, including asylum seekers and rough sleepers. Her family are originally from Sierra Leone. They inspired her to take up her chosen career.“

Memuna’s story can be found here.

Memuna Sowe, BBC

This is the 13th celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Dan Antion, Simon Falk, Michelle Wallace, and Mary J. Giese.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: Mother to Rejected Children

We are all born innocent. We are born with young, feeble limbs waiting to grow strong and serve humanity, and an almost empty brain waiting to learn from the world. We never ever ask to be born. We never ever ask to be brought here. But once you are born, you begin experiencing the world as it is. Depending on where you are born, and of whom, your first taste of the world can be varied from too lovely to too hostile, from too sweet to too bitter.

If you are the child of a sex worker, who herself is subjected to repeated abuse and contempt, your chances of ever having a full positive life begin in the negatives and linger there for days on end.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh, one tender-hearted, compassionate woman cares for the children of sex workers.

Hazera Begum was born in an abusive family. When she gathered the courage to run away to her aunt, who lived in a different part of the city, she got lost and ended up in the streets. Hungry, unwashed, foraging for food and work, she later met a woman who sold her to a brothel. She was eleven years old.

It was in that hell of rape and torture and suicide and never-ending series of abortions that she learned of the inimical fate of the children of sex workers.

“Actually, I saw that the children of sex workers often end up in the streets. No one wanted them. They were suffering very pathetically.”

The children face too much discrimination even in school. Normal parents do not want their children mixing with the children of sex workers.

Hazera says that it is the little girls she worried about the most. She didn’t want them going through what she herself had gone through. Abandoned girls are more prone to being sold away for sex work.

When she could, she quit the brothel and set up a facility for the children. She now takes care of as many as 35 of them. Sex workers in the city know her and they bring her their rejected children.

“She knows from her own traumatic personal experience that the children of sex workers can have a rough time. They’re often shunned, end up on the streets or in the same trade as their mothers. So Hazera looks after as many as she can – 35 at the current count – all living in her home. For some, it’s the only chance they’ll have to get fed, clothed and educated.”

She loves the children as her own.

“Love has no limits. They love me and I love them. And they call me mum. Likewise, I treat them as my own children. I enjoy and love it so much.”

Hazera’s story is found here.

Hazera Begum. Photo Courtesy of BBC.

This is the twelfth celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Shilpa Garg, Eric Lahti,  Belinda McGrath Witzenhausen, Sylvia McGrath, and  Sylvia Stein.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: Muslim Man Who Saved Christians from ISIS

In May this year, Muslim militants linked to the dreaded (but now defeated) ISIS attacked the Philippine city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao.

As the fighting raged on between the Philippine army and the militants, the latter began hunting down Christians. They would meet random people in the city and ask them to recite the Qur’an, failure to which would lead to merciless executions.

It was in this period that one kind-hearted man, Norodin Alonto Lucman, a prominent Muslim in the area decided to save the persecuted Christians. He started by hiding his Christian workers as soon as he heard the news of the executions. Not long after, however, more and more Christians poured into his compound. They came with their children, the youngest of whom was ten months old.

It was a great risk for him and he was scared. He could have run away and left them to their fate but he stayed in order to save them. He says:

“The first thing that came to my mind was to save these people. I had a chance to leave. I had three cars in the house. I could have left, put my belongings there and then leave but I figured if I left these civilians will die.”

Later on, when he had a total of 67 Christians in is home and he was quickly running out of food to give them, he took even a greater risk to lead them to safety outside the city. He disguised the women to look like Muslim women and made the men to carry the babies so that they all looked like couples. Then he taught them how to recite a Muslim prayer and bravely led them out of the city at dawn. On the way, more people from neighbouring homes joined them until they were about 144 in total, excluding him.

Alonto says:

“I saved their lives because I had to save their lives, because they came to my house and asked for help. It is a human thing. It is not something about being a Christian or a Muslim. They are human beings like me.”

His home was burnt down by the militants.

Alonto’s full story is found here.

Norodine Alonto Lucman, Source: BBC

This is the eighth celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are:   Belinda McGrath Witzenhausen, Sylvia McGrath, Mary Giese, Shilpa Garg, and Guilie Castillo.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: Mother to 100,000 Children

In early 90’s a devastating civil war broke out in Burundi between the Hutu and the Tutsi people. Violent murders, rapes, displacements, and appalling suffering became the order of the day. Children were not spared, but were subjected to the same unspeakable atrocities their parents were experiencing. Things were dark.

In these bleakest of days, one woman, a teacher named Marguerite Baranktse, emerged an unlikely hero. When she was only twenty-three, she adopted a young Hutu girl aged thirteen. At first, her relatives did not welcome her decision and urged her to reject the girl, because the girl was from the Hutu people (the enemy) while Marguerite was Tutsi. Only her mother encouraged her.

Marguerite’s entire family was later slaughtered by the Hutu fighters in October 1993. They spared her because of her work.

Nevertheless, she refused to hate the Hutu people. She went on to adopt more children from both the warring Hutu and the Tutsi sides.

She had to defend them and fend for them. She had to watch people die and had to bribe the killers to save the children.

“She set up Maison Shalom, the House of Peace, in 1993, a shelter providing children displaced by Burundi’s civil war with refuge, medical care and education.”

It was an undertaking so risky at the time that people started to think of her as insane. They called her “Maggy the Madwoman”.

As the war went on, the number of her children grew to over 100,000. Later on, her efforts were recognized such benevolent organizations as the UNICEF, WFP, and ActionAid.

She says the name “Maggy the Madwoman” suits her best because what she did was crazy.

“[It is crazy] to decide sometimes alone in the streets, whether to teach love when the others are killing. I would like everybody to follow this madness, to create hope and to break this cycle of violence. To teach love.”

Marguerite’s story is found here.

Marguerite Baranktse. Source: BBC

 

This is the seventh celebration of the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB which is carried out every last Friday of the month, and which aims to spread love and positiveness in this vulnerable world. A celebration of heroes who can still restore our faith in humanity, especially in this period when our world seems to be full of endless series of horrible happenings.

Our generous co-hosts for this month are: Michelle Wallace, Emerald Barnes, Andrea Michaels, Shilpa Garg, and myself.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List

#WATWB: The Woman Who Has Restored 35,000 Sights

This post is for the WE ARE THE WORLD BLOGFEST #WATWB announced early this month, and which will continue every last Friday of the coming months. The blogfest aims to spread love and positiveness in this rapidly darkening world where human relations are increasingly deteriorating. We aim to show that there is still light in this world, there are still great heroes amongst us going great lengths to do tremendous things for others, despite the overwhelming effusion of pessimism exhibited almost all around us.

The blogfest co-hosts include: Damyanti Biswas, Belinda Witzenhausen,  Emerald Barnes, Eric Lahti, Inderpreet Uppal,  Kate Powell, Lynn Hallbrooks, Mary Giese, Michelle Wallace, Roshan Radhakrishnan,  Simon Falk, Susan Scott, Sylvia McGrath, Sylvia Stein, Chrissie Parker.

My choice for today’s post is about one extraordinary Namibian ophthalmologist who has saved 35,000 people’s sights.

Dr. Helena Ndume, known locally as “Dr. Miracle”for the unparalleled work that she does, is an unshakeable pillar of human inspiration. Growing up in the hostile apartheid era and having to make a traumatizing escape to Zambia where she lived in a refugee camp, and being only fifteen years old, she might have been expected her to harbour a vengeful heart or to use her harrowing experience as an excuse for her future failures. Instead, she turned out with a heart of gold and tremendous strength and vision exploited for the benefit of her people and for the world.

I first heard this story on BBC Outlook program and I was uplifted with a poignant sense of hope. I was inspired.

Surely to still find your humanity in these bleak, divisive times is no mean feat.

To sign up for We Are The World Blogfest, please see the guidelines below.

~~~GUIDELINES~~~

 

1. Keep your post to below 500 words, as much as possible.
2. All we ask is you link to a human news story on your blog on the last Friday of each month, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Something like this news  about a man who only fosters terminally ill children.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing news that warms the cockles of our heart. No story is too big or small, as long as it goes beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help us spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. More Blogfest signups mean more friends, love and light for all of us.
5. We’ll read and comment on each others’ posts, get to know each other better, and hopefully, make or renew some friendships with everyone who signs on as participants in the coming months.
6. To signup, add your link in WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List