by Blair J. Packard

Darkness Below, Stars Above

It’s the darkness that scares people at times when they think about Africa. It’s the unknown, and perhaps misconceptions. The long journey home recently from a week in Mozambique included an overnight flight to London. Most flights to and from southern Africa are at night. You look down from 30,000 feet and see mostly darkness – very few lights. However, as you look up at the night sky you will never see more stars than in an African sky. It’s just an amazing sight. Perhaps there is a message of bright hope in those stars. There certainly is in those we know, love and work with in Mozambique.

Long flights provide good reading time. On an earlier flight I finished Elder Glenn Pace’s new book, Safe Journey, about his experiences in the Area Presidency in West Africa, and the long journey to get the temple approved and completed in Accra, Ghana. I loved the book. I laughed and I cried at times as I read, knowing firsthand some of the types of experiences he wrote about. I’ve experienced both the good and bad that Elder Pace describes about working in Africa. The Spirit of the Lord is moving over Africa and its poor as he described. The people remain humble and teachable despite centuries of “difficulties,” a term that hugely understates what they’ve gone through.

Meridian provided great coverage of the dedication of the temple in Ghana. The joy in the faces of West Africans celebrating the completion of a temple in their midst, and of their prophet who loves them and wanted to celebrate with them, was captivating. In Mozambique the growth of the Church is probably a decade behind where Ghana and much of West Africa is now. But we look forward to a day when the growth of the Church and the faithfulness of its members may also bring a temple to Mozambique.

Care for Life has now been working in Mozambique for almost four years. Church missionaries have served there for over five years. The first two districts of the Church were formed in Mozambique only late last year. There are no stakes as yet, but ground was broken a few weeks ago for a “stake center” building in Beira. Care for Life’s national director in Mozambique, Augusto Cherequejanhe, is one of those two new district presidents.

Care for Life in Mozambique

Responding to requests, I’m sharing a few specifics about Care for Life’s work in Mozambique and more about those who help us. Thousands of non-profit organizations (known as NGOs or non-government organizations) do charitable and humanitarian work throughout the world. We meet many from different faiths, nationalities and missions, all trying to help in their own way. A significant decision made two years ago focused our NGO’s efforts on one geographical area – around Beira. Africa is a big place. As a relatively small organization, we felt if we were going to make any sustainable differences we had to concentrate our energies.  Beira is one of two emerging centers of strength in the Church in Mozambique, but also one of the poorest areas of the world. There are now five branches of the Church in this area.

President Cherequejanhe shared a sobering statistic with me recently. In his entire district, 90% of Church members have a family income equivalent to less that $50 per month (and I suspect that dollar threshold is high). We sustain the center of strength concept as the Church grows, but it is important to understand that in Africa “centers of poverty” must also be factored into the equation. On this subject Elder Pace wrote about the great importance of teaching and helping members achieve personal self-reliance as the Church grows in developing nations.

Mission and Areas of Focus

The mission of Care for Life is to instill hope, alleviate suffering, and foster self-reliance. This is done through the establishment of CFL Centers and Outreach Programs with a principle focus on (1) Education – both basic and vocational, center-based or outreach, (2) Orphan and Vulnerable Family Support and (3) Health Services. With each focus, where we can, we also work with organizations as partners or friends to leverage our own resources and experience. Here are some specifics:

Education – A Pathway Out of Poverty

In May 2002 the first CFL Center was established near Beira in Manga. It is now a beehive of activity. All day long, six days a week, classes are held throughout our Center and in the back yard area. Basic classes include literacy, health, Out-of-Poverty (life skills and personal finances) and leadership. Vocational classes include sewing skills, construction, agriculture, English, and basic computers and keyboarding.

Figure 2 : Literacy classes at our Care for Life Center in Manga, both inside classrooms and outside under trees and shade, provide opportunites for mostly women to learn to read and write in their national language of Portuguese along with basic math and science. It would be the equivalent to an adult GED program in the US.

The largest numbers of students are in literacy classes, and probably 80% of these are local women who may walk miles in order to attend. The provincial government sanctions our CFL center as a literacy-training center. The principle idea is that the road out of poverty begins with education – something the majority of these women never had during the civil war years in Mozambique. Another factor of great import is that a proportionally smaller number of women in the Church in Africa are linked to the lack of reading skills and not being able to read the Book of Mormon and other Church literature in order to fully participate in the missionary discussions and be baptized.

The second CFL center in the area is nearing completion at Marrocahne, a rural area outside of Beira. The school building and clinic for this center are partially funded by a grant from NuSkin International’s Force for Good Foundation. Classes will begin at this location within the next 30 days. This center is on 15 acres of fenced-off land that will also serve as a model-farm project. This farm will support vocational education in agriculture and will tie back into supporting our Orphan and Vulnerable Family services.

Figure 3 : Marrocane CFL Center nears completion. It will be an education center and a small model farm to grow food for orphanage children and provide revenue to help with orphanage staff salaries.

Outreach education also is occurring on several fronts. Recently we repaired a little building in the village of Nhangau and donated two sewing machines. LDS Charities donated most of the sewing machines we now use at our Manga center. Our sewing program director, Jorge Mounga, a returned missionary and branch president, will provide vocational training in sewing and tailoring at Nhangau as he now does at our Manga center.

Figure 4 : Women in a project in Nhangau receive CFL funding from the author for their individual and group enterprise projects.

Through a partnership with United Families International (UFI) and the “Stay Alive” Program we plan to reach every school child in the Sofala Province, and eventually all school children ages 8-12 years old in Mozambique with AIDS prevention education. Last year we gained approval from the provincial ministry of education to teach Stay Alive in all primary schools of Sofala Province and we conducted the first training with about 2,500 children and their parents. The program is value-based and focuses on behavioral changes. Along with teaching accurate information about HIV-AIDS, it encourages abstinence prior to marriage and fidelity in marriage in order to “stay alive” and achieve one’s goals in life. It involves parents and child, an important element in a culture where discussion between parents and children about sexuality and about AIDS is largely lacking. The program involves the schoolteachers as instructors after proper training by Stay Alive supervisors, combined with regular follow-up and monitoring. Funding is our only major hurdle at the moment.

Célia Sambo Jeremias, our newly hired Education and Stay Alive Director, became quite emotional during her employment interview and shared that she had lost her father in the last year to AIDS-related disease.  She was recently contemplating what she could possibly do to make a difference in her country when she saw our position advertised. Celia is a 2^nd year law student, married mother of one child and speaks Portuguese, French, and English along with native dialects. She has the tools and the passion to make a difference in her country and in the Sofala Province, where 26% of the population between 16 and 34 years old are estimated to be HIV positive.

One of our partnering organizations is Esperanca, a non-profit based in Phoenix, Arizona that has been sending medical and surgical teams to Central and South America for 30 years to help the poor. While these teams get a lot of publicity, Esperanca also quietly works in public health to make sustainable improvements in health. They will work with us in Mozambique in both clinic and outreach programs. Our shared and new Public Health Director, Matilde Cunhaque, although not a member of the Church, had a great answer that included the words chastity, fidelity, Adam & Eve, Christian and responsibility (all of which I could recognize in her Portuguese-only response) when I asked her in an interview what she would do to stop the rampant spread of HIV-AIDS in Mozambique.

Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Families – Hope for the Innocent

From Cindy’s very first visit to Mozambique in June 2000 we have been drawn to the orphans and the poorest women of Africa. They are everywhere. During the first two years near Maputo Care for Life volunteers worked in orphanages housing up to 700 children. A consequence of AIDS and many other lethal diseases, combined with the lack of adequate health care in these poorest of the world’s countries, leads to an unbelievable number of orphaned children in sub-Sahara Africa. Statistical projections vary with sources but there is an estimated 12-15 million orphaned children from AIDS alone right now in sub-Sahara Africa, projected to rise to over 40 million by 2010. It breaks your heart to see these children, to hold them and play with them and to know what they will never have.

One of the unintended consequences of our decision to move to one area of Mozambique was that we would become much closer to a couple of these orphanages and the people and agencies that help care for these children. A short walk from our center in Manga is an orphanage and school for about 200 children. Ernesto Catique, who directs the orphanage, is a dedicated young man who grew up himself in this very orphanage. The orphanage is for children ages 5 -16 years old. We quickly recognized that we had a location where our CFL volunteers could provide significant service.

Figure 5 : The author with ASEM orphanage director Ernesto (left) and music activities director Wilson (right). CFL volunteers love to teach and work each year with the nearly 200 children and students at ASEM.

Many others provide great service. Margie English followed her heart to Africa with a CFL team two years ago. Her husband Dr. Paul English, a dermatologist, wasn’t quite sure about this, but after hearing about Margie’s experience they both went back the next year. Dr. English, taking a month away from his medical practice in Arizona, personally saw every one of the 200 children at ASEM during his stay, screening and treating them for a variety of skin conditions and buying up all the medicine he could find to leave it with ASEM for follow-up care. (The story of Paul’s trip to Mozambique can be found at a link on our CFL website, www.careforlife.org). Paul came back with a vision of an expanded health care clinic and other programs that will help care for orphans and others in the area.

Our friends at ASEM told us of another orphanage in Beira for infants up to 5-year-olds. From our first arrival at the front gate of the Collegio Infantil orphanage two years ago, we sensed that our lives would change. We just didn’t know how much. The director, Ana Paula Salgado, is remarkable. Her husband is a local surgeon at the Central Hospital in Beira. As the civil war was winding down in Mozambique, Ana Paula came to this orphanage, then run by the government, and saw deplorable conditions with nearly 200 children of all ages sitting all day with no activity and just lined up against walls. Care was nearly nonexistent with few to help. She asked the government for responsibility over the orphanage, which was granted, and also received ongoing management support from Social Action, the local national social service agency. Ana Paula went knocking on doors to get financial support. She instituted changes, turning the facility into an infant and toddler orphanage and relocating older children to other facilities. It is now the only orphanage in the province where infants are brought for care. She has never received any personal compensation. She started a pre-school kindergarten on the ground floor of her home and has used that income to pay for staff. When we arrived in Beira two years ago, the orphanage was still understaffed.

Figure 6 :Orphanage staff, supported by CFL donations, takes care of the 40 to 60 young children at the Collegio Infantil orphanage in Beira Mozambique.

During one crisis in July and August of 2002 when a number of babies were sick and some were hospitalized, Ana Paula asked if our volunteer students could start coming at night to help her small staff hold, feed and change babies and help get toddlers ready for bed and up in the morning. It became a nightly labor of love for our volunteers. As we left for the United States at the end of that summer, we knew we couldn’t leave Ana Paula and the kids alone. We began to hire the poorest of women enrolled in our work for assistance program (most from the Church branch in Manga) as caregivers for the orphanage. The staffing program and organized learning and play activities for the children has expanded with CFL’s help.

I sat down with Ana Paula recently, evaluated her need for more help, and worked with her to reorganize a pay scale for her still underpaid staff. I told Ana Paula that we were family; she couldn’t get rid of us if she tried. We had to help. We are committed to this ongoing support but need to raise $1200 to $1500 per month for staff salary support.

Figure 7 : Ana Paula holds the attention of a little underweight 7 month old AIDS baby, while other healthier children (below) play on the floor.

Our youngest daughter, Linda, is adopted from this orphange. The long and challenging experience with her adoption, one of the first international adoptions from Mozambique, gave us further insight into the challenges of adoption in Africa. International adoption is just one option and, right now, not a very easy option for these children due to existing laws and long-standing practice. Care for Life has supported orphan-led families (children raising children) through our Orphan and Vulnerable Family initiative. This has included construction help to repair or build houses so these children can have adequate shelter. It has involved help with school supplies and with clothes or books as children enter primary school. Sometimes health care is provided for the children and their families. Their needs are varied.

The support for orphans and vulnerable families is intertwined in almost all that Care for Life does. This includes the Marrocahne farm project. The project idea, conceived by Ana Paula, is to grow, produce and raise animals to feed her children at the orphanage, help pay her staff with food (or from sales of produce) and help other vulnerable families care for orphans or children who could easily become orphaned without a little assistance. We have also developed an internship relationship with BYU-Idaho and hope to place agriculture students into this farm program as well as in other CFL areas of focus.

Health Services – Staying Alive in Africa

Disease and death are a reality of everyday life in Mozambique. The 26% HIV infection statistic alone is staggering. Malaria, cholera, malnutrition and pregnancy-related complications also claim many lives, especially young mothers. We see daily funeral processions when we are in Beira. Virtually all of the 40 - 60 small children now at the Collegio Infantil orphanage lost their mothers at birth or within the first year after their birth. Some children are HIV positive. Many still have fathers who aren’t able to care for small babies.

Figure 8 : Ana Micas stands in front of the CFL Manga Center and clinic where she provides healthcare services.

To make a difference in “relieving suffering,” one can’t avoid addressing this healthcare crisis. CFL started with a small and very modest clinic in our Manga center.  It is usually mothers with small children who line up on our front porch each day to see Ana Micas, our dedicated nurse. With Dr. Paul English’s help, and through a partnership with Esperanca, another building just down the street from our Manga CFL Center has been obtained and will become a new and expanded CFL clinic. The back of this building includes a living area for medical teams and other volunteers who will come to Mozambique to work.

This health center will also be the base for public health and community outreach efforts in partnership with Esperanca. Ana Paula’s husband, Dr. Elder Miranda, is head of surgery at the Central Hospital in Beira and is anxious to work with U.S. physicians coming to Mozambique. There is a new medical school at the Catholic University in Beira that is about two years away from graduating its first physicians. Again, there are opportunities for partnerships.

The Stay Alive program ties directly to preventive health care, and therefore to preventing a greater orphan problem and the attendant suffering. The agriculture program at Marrocahne will support Orphans and Vulnerable Families as does our other educational offerings. Clinic patients are referred to our education programs in health. Correlation and integration of CFL services allows them to be mutually supportive of each other. Organizational friends like Esperanca, BYU-Idaho, LDS Charities, Social Action (Mozambique government), the Force for Good Foundation and many others, plus the volunteer hours provided assist us in making a difference, even in a small area of the world far away from our homes in the United States.

Contrasting Worlds, But in Reality – One World

Coming home from Mozambique I’m always physically tired but energized, and a little introspective, especially on returning flights. Contrast seems to jump out at me. Approaching London before the flight’s landing, early in the morning before the light of day, I looked out the window to see quite the opposite of what I saw flying over Africa at night. The winter sky is dark, overcast and cold, but below a sea of light from streetlights, businesses, homes and civilization witnesses immediately of a very different world found at the end of these returning flights.

In this, and my own part of the world, there will always be beautiful homes appropriately warmed or cooled against the elements as opposed to 1-room adobe shanties with dirt floors that barely stand against African rain and oppressive heat, and that have no electricity to run even a single appliance or light. Once home I drive in well-made automobiles on superhighways, something very different than the pot-holed water-filled lanes I’m used to negotiating in Mozambique with Augusto Cherequejahne’s little beat up clunker. The only running water I see in some African villages is that which runs along footpaths from heavy rains.

However, there is one thing that is not different. People are really the same. Humanity goes on with families and relationships, with struggles and joy at times, with life – and with death.  Augusto has a medallion that hangs from the rear-view mirror of his little car. It is a double-sided yellow and black “happy face,” more a symbol of who he is already, rather than a reminder of what he should do. How appropriate for this little man who shoulders the burdens of district members of the Church over whom he presides. His smile is instant and pervasive, even when (as he often describes) “life is very difficult” in his land. Throughout my week he was my constant companion. On a Saturday he broke away from our agenda of activity to visit his ailing brother in the hospital. Upon his return he informed me his brother was dieing of AIDS and he did not expect him to live another two weeks. After our lunch meeting, he returned again to the hospital where it was not two weeks, but only two hours later that his brother died. We try to understand that life in Mozambique is indeed far more difficult than any of us will ever know.

Figure 9 : Augusto Cherequejanhe, his wife Rita and three small children in their home.  His warmth and love are genuine.

The term “Third-World Country” is not one I particularly like even though it may evoke images that are accurate – conditions so alien and foreign that it could not possibly be part of the world we know. Yet these conditions indeed exist in our world, not another. They are our brothers and sisters, all granted the opportunity by the same Eternal Father to come to this earth, not another world, and experience mortality. It is easy to ask questions about why our world is like this, why one man dwells in splendor and another in abject poverty. There are not always easy answers to these “why” questions. Certainly governments, politics and man's oppression of others have played a role. It is not God’s capricious design, however, that some of his children sit in robes and others in rags. The more important questions are those we must ask ourselves when we become aware that in our world, this world, not another world, these conditions and needs exist.

What will we do as our awareness increases? Edmund Burke is quoted as saying, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” There are opportunities every day in this world to do a little, or to do much more, whether close at hand or around the world in far-off places. “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good…” the Savior reminded us (Mark 14:7). Will we be with them and do them good?

For more information about or to donate to Care for Life visit their website www.careforlife.org