The “gift” of a “chance” meeting

Sitting on the back of Joseph’s motorcycle we pulled into the Community Health Centre (CHC) at Gondoma. We had been travelling around the chiefdom visiting numerous Community Health Centres and smaller Peripheral Health Units. I assumed this would be another short visit with the in-charge to hear about the work that was taking place and we would soon be on our way. I could not have been more wrong, Tuesday, 8th January 2019 proved to be a pivotal day in my life, the life of Joseph, and the work of Rural Health Care Initiative.

On that day, four years ago, I met Aminata Kabba, the head mid-wife at Gondoma CHC. A woman with a big heart and a deep love and concern for the people she is serving. We explained to her the work that RHCI was doing in Tikonko and how we had, a year earlier, opened the Mbao-mi birth waiting home, my recollection is that she became quite animated and began to explain that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) used to have a building across the street that now lay vacant. She said it would make a great birth waiting home. As she spoke with great enthusiasm it was clear that an opportunity was going to present itself. It felt like she grabbed our shirts and dragged us across the street to see the building. It was an empty shell, but in the perfect location for RHCI to consider expanding its work to Gondoma.

To make a long story short, upon returning to the United States the board set up a committee to discuss the possibility of a birth waiting home in Gondoma. Agreements were reached with the community for the land and renovations began on the building. We opened the Gondoma birth waiting home in February of 2021 and have twelve beds available. These beds allow us to provide a safe place for women with higher risk pregnancies to come during their last few weeks of pregnancy so they can be assured of the best medical care possible at the time of delivery.

At the same time, as discussions about and then work on renovating the building were under way, we also began operating mobile outreach clinics to four villages in the Gondoma area. This work is carried out in partnership with the Gondoma CHC. The RHCI outreach clinics address family planning, nutrition, under 5 health care, pre-natal and ante-natal care, and other needs. To make this happen we needed to add staff. RHCI decided to hire my friend Joseph to run the work out of Gondoma. This was a great blessing as Joseph had struggled to find steady work for the previous couple of years after his contract work with World Vision had ended. Indeed, his unemployed status was why he was free to drive me around and have the experiences I had that have shaped my life. I was blessed by Joseph’s unemployment, it’s a strange and complicated world in which we live.

Today Joseph oversees the four mobile outreach clinics that we run out of Gondoma as well as the birth waiting home located across the street from the CHC. He coordinates our partnership with the Community Health Officer for the chiefdom, Mohamed Tarawally.

Some might say that first meeting with Aminata was a “chance” meeting, others might call it a “blessing,” or “providence.” Whatever you want to call it, it is a gift. The gift of life to women who live in a nation with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. It is the gift of life to som many under the age of five in a nation with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. It is the gift of a better life for those in the community as they have access to health care that was previously lacking.

When I saw Aminata at our Ngandorhun outreach clinic today, my heart was full. We have come a long way. If I allow myself to stop and reflect on the last four years since that first meeting on the 8th January, 2019, my eyes fill, I am overwhelmed with gratitude, a true sense of awe, and so much joy. We are making a difference in the world today, but there is still so much to do.

“Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you do for me.” – Jesus.