How does one know that their work is making an impact? How does one measure their performance especially in the work we are doing as Vessel Is Me? These are questions we keep receiving when we approach people for funding or Sponsorship. Ours isn’t about numbers. No, it’s a pouring into others and having that replicated. Of course at this point, the people are bored because we have entered a world where numbers matter more than the human beings. It’s a sad reality. We are not statistics, we are human-BEINGS!
Meaning of Being: a living thing that has(or can develop) the ability to act or function independently.
On Monday a young lady sent an SOS on an HR WhatsApp group looking for an NGO/person who helps mothers who have lost their babies for her friend who had just lost her baby. This message reached me and my team mates not once or twice, we kept receiving the same message over and over. The young lady finally called me, as she updated me I realized this is going to be a challenge for me. 1)The lady who lost the baby was in Bombo. 2)She spoke Luganda 3) she didn’t know how to read. All our tools of operation were down. We couldn’t just drive to go see her, I can’t speak Luganda so phone calls were out and I couldn’t send her a copy of my book. What to do?? What to do?? Thankfully God had already created a way for us to deal with the first hurdle. This young lady was going to visit her friend on Independence Day and she was hoping one of us could go along with her. I love road trips but I was skeptical, my Luganda is shadiest!!I asked my fellow Vessel Racheal if she could avail herself, her Luganda is waaay way better than mine. She agreed immediately. We arranged to meet at 9am, and head out.
As I entered bed anxiety creeped in, a friend told me that’s a good sign it’s good adrenaline 🤷 never heard of that but hey I needed something to calm me down.This young lady has a lovely baby girl, 9 months old who I feel in love with immediately.calmest baby I have met in awhile. As we drove to Bombo, this young lady requests that we share abit about ourselves, so she shares her story. I am slowly learning everyone has a story to share so I always let them speak. This Baby girl was a preemie, she had intrauterine growth restriction a condition in which a baby doesn’t grow to normal weight during the pregnancy.(
yes,things they don’t tell u during antenatal 🤦) She had a stressful after birth season but she overcame it. Apparently her and her friend were months apart in their pregnancies, but they had started calling their babies sisters. I shared my story that led to the birth of my book and then Vessel Is Me.
She had many questions, I could tell she didn’t understand how we could be doing such work. Like who wakes up in the morning to encourage others and make sure they are better than they were the day before.🤷 She was perplexed.
When we reached our destination, I was taken by the silence. This was about 11am-ish the birds were still singing. Mbwenu Kampala isa lie! No traffic, I could hear my thoughts 😂 We meet the friend. Her name is Sawiya, she was cooking 🤦 please note her baby had passed away a week ago. I was amazed that she was up and about. Sawiya had lost her baby at 6months after birth. She had watched her baby grow from 3.6kgs to a healthy baby sitting, starting to talk, breastfed her, taken her for vaccination, waited in those long lines to be told the vaccine is finished come back another day(
still wondering how this happens, who is eating this money? How do they sleep at night?) Anyway I digress, we were taken into the sitting room to talk and do what we do best with her. Racheal took the lead on this one. Funny thing is I understand Luganda I just don’t like butchering people’ languages so I would ask Racheal questions in English and she would translate. This lady’s story gave me goosebumps, first of all her baby Sauda wasn’t breathing properly she went to a nearby hospital they sent her to Kawempe to get the baby’s heart checked out, on reaching there they sent her to old Mulago(she needed to get the baby’s heart scanned) she got there and they scanned and told her the baby is fine. She gets back home but the baby isn’t well, not breathing well. The guys of Old Mulago call her back and say that there was an issue with the machine she should come back and they scan the heart again. 🤦🤦 Uganda, we are all surviving on the mercies of God! She moves from Bombo to Old Mulago, they push her to the top of the line they scan and guess what. The baby has a hole in the heart.(
babies hearts have several holes as they form the tissue around them covers up the holes…..yes something else you won’t learn in antenatal)They admitted them for 2/3days she gets better the heavy breathing stops and they are discharged. She gets back home, a couple of days later as she’s bathing Sauda the heavy breathing starts, the baby gets whoozy. Sawayi dresses up her baby, hops on a boda to the nearest clinic on the way her baby eyes start to roll to the back of her head. Yap. When they got to the clinic, the medical practitioner declared the baby dead on arrival. This is one and half months of moving up and down between Bombo and Kampala.
Sawiya(that afro!) Racheal, Shamim & Kecho.
I asked God to give me the right words to speak over her.
Mothers who miscarry always tell me that my loss(8months pre-term) must have been more painful than theirs because they didn’t get to hold their babies. I tell them, ” we are dealing with the after effects of loss. The pain is the same. The side effects are copy and paste. Anxiety, depression, anger, denial, sadness, loss of appetite, yearning for isolation, suicidal thoughts etc”
As I watched Sawiya try to guma and hold it together, I wondered how many women in Uganda are going through this pain and they don’t have a friend who will look for us and bring us to them? How many are silently suffering?How many have been given our numbers but don’t have the strength to dial yet they yearn to be heard? This isn’t something we should take lightly and hope the person snaps out of it. Noooo. This is war. We are fighting an invisible enemy embedded in our minds whose biggest weapon is silence and isolation. This is what Vessel Is me has come to mend, join us as we speak the pain and speak life into our seasons.
We have purposed to reach out to Sawiya and hopefully she will become our Vessel in Bombo to walk with other women who have been robbed of the joy to be mothers. We grow by helping others. I want to thank all those friends who step in to reach us on behalf of their friends, you are our heroes 🙏👏👏God continue to bless you.
