Sarah’s Story

SARAH’s STORY

Sarah is the mother of the Blooming Twins at Neema Village!  At birth she was named Aisha which is a Muslim name but she changed her name to Sarah after she was baptized at Neema Village. She is 20 years old from Moshi. She lived with her mother who was supporting her family by selling fish.  She does not know her father.  Sarah became pregnant at 17 with her first baby while she was a secondary school student. Her daughter was named Shamila who is now 3 years old and living with Sarah’s mother in the village. The father of that baby denied the baby was his and ran away from police. Once Sarah’s baby was 3 months old she left her mother’s house to live with her sister where she stayed until the baby was 1 year old. She then came to Arusha to work as a house keeper for 6 months. After that she decided to work as a cook at a local hotel where she met a man. This man later became the father of her new twins but he was a married man. The man left her while she was pregnant and went back to his wife.

Sarah left the cooking job because it was too hard for her with her pregnancy and went to work as a house keeper for a month.

At 6 months pregnant she started bleeding and went to the hospital {Maternity Africa}. It was found that the babies were not in a good birth position and she had to deliver early. The babies stayed in the NICU for 2 months. The nurses were asking her for babies diapers but she couldn’t provide as she had no money and no one to support her.   Sarah was so stressed that her milk supply began to dry up. Nurses learned her story and offered to help her.  They brought her to Neema Village at the end of February. The babies were 2 months old at that time. The babies are now currently 8 months old- Madeline and Michael Bloom. The father of the twins is not helping with financial support.

After Sarah leaves the MAP housing she hopes to open a small grocery store with rice and other household staples. She is attending Bible classes and sewing classes while she is living in teh MAP housing. She says the Bible classes have been most impactful for her while she has been at Neema.