A New Egg business

Maria Joseph is 31 years old, she is the mother of nine-month-old twin boys and a 16-year-old boy. She has been on her own for a long time.

( I hope you never tire of reading the stories of the women we help at Neema Village.  They are not just words on a screen, they are real flesh and blood lives of women who have been beaten down, used, thrown out and forgotten by most of the world.  Very few people can pull themselves out of such deep poverty without some help.  Thank God for those of you who really see their stories and help)

It was sixteen years ago, when Maria was just 15 years old she went to the hospital to give birth to her first son and they told her that she had the sickness.  She was working for an Indian family as a housekeeper during the day and coming home to her son at night. She began taking the medicine and was surviving day by day.  The Indian family paid her $25. a month.

Last year she became pregnant with twins and began going to one of the hospitals that provide free HIV medication.    (Thru a grant from George Bush all Tanzanians have access to free AIDs medicine).  Unbelievably from her salary of less than a dollar a day Maria put back some money to pay for the birth of the twins but then learned she would need a c-section.  She was not able to afford that so she asked to be referred to a government hospital which was more affordable.

Maria transferred to another hospital where she could deliver for free and only pay for equipment used. She was able to use the money she had saved from her $25 dollars a month salary to survive while she recovered from her caesarean birth.  With her siblings Maria lives for free in a room in a mud hut left to the kids by her father.

A few months ago Maria went back to the hospital for her twins to be tested for HIV. The doctor was concerned that the babies were not gaining weight. Maria was breastfeeding the babies, but she was only having one meal a day for herself and not able to provide them with enough milk. They told her to stop breastfeeding them and give them formula, but formula is very expensive. She isn’t able to go out to work because she has no one to care for her babies and is unable to afford daycare

A nurse told her about Neema Village and contacted Anna, our Mothering Center director. We went out to do an interview with her and decided to help her through the Map Program. She is yet to start the business, but she is getting monthly support for food. She wants to sell eggs wholesale, and Neema will help her start her business when she is ready.

Bless you if you stuck with me to the end of this story.   It appears hopeless sometimes as we read so many tragic stories of women like Maria.  Please remember God is never Hopeless and we are making a difference one woman at a time.

To help women like Maria Joseph go to www.neemavillage.org.  Your gifts are always tax deductible and always noticed by the Great God of Hope!