Mama of the Month: Dr. ABD

Our last three MOMs (mamas of the month) have been women of influence with passion to affect change in the world around them.  We highlighted a mother of six who is changing the lives of women through economic empowerment.  We celebrated a woman living with her family of seven in the jungles of Costa Rica to bring hope and healthcare to pregnant women.  Last month, we applauded the work of a woman who has spent the majority of her life supporting education for all.

This month, we’re doing something a little unexpected, but we have a really good reason.  The reality is that so much of what are described as “women’s issues” for lack of a better term are not simply women’s issues—they are issues that affect men and children alike.  Statistics and anecdotal evidence supports the idea that communities thrive when women are empowered, supported, and given the chance to lead.  While we are a community of women committed to helping women, much is being done in the world for women by men who stand up to champion our rights and well-being as well.  

Our “Mama” of the Month this time around is a man who does just that.  We first met Dr. Abdullah Daniel Sesay through Steve, the founder of our parent organization, 4HIM.  Steve was hosting Dr. ABD (as he is known by his friends) while he was visiting the U. S. for a medical conference.  During that time, we learned about Dr. ABD’s plight as a doctor in Sierra Leone, a country that has been ravaged by civil war in the recent past.

4HIM helped Dr. ABD over the course of a few years with securing funding for building a clinic and for life-saving hernia surgeries for over 60 men.  4HIM also arranged to send two shipping containers full of medical supplies for use at the Magbenteh Hospital and Dr. ABD’s Gardenview Clinic in Makeni.  As we got to know Dr. ABD, we learned of his desire to build a maternity ward—which gave us the idea for our first ever Love Club fundraiser.  We are going to build a maternity ward at the Gardenview Clinic in Makeni, Sierra Leone!

Dr. ABD at the Sierra Leone House of Parliament

We have watched Dr. ABD’s commitment to his patients as a general practitioner and general surgeon, as well as his devotion to the country of Sierra Leone as a member of parliament.  He often works 16-18 hour days seeing as many patients as possible because healthcare is so limited in the region where he lives—one regional hospital and a few private clinics for about 2.5 million people.

Sierra Leone’s maternal and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world.  Much has been done to improve these numbers in the past decade, but they still fall short of the World Health Organization’s Millenium Development Goal of reducing mortality rates by 75% by 2015.

Dr. ABD lists lack of education, poor nutrition, and other social and economic factors as reasons for high maternal mortality rates.  Infant mortality rates continue to be high because of infectious diseases, herbal/traditional medicine intoxication, and poor counseling from relatives.  Despite the fact that Sierra Leone launched a program to provide free healthcare for all pregnant and post-natal women in 2010, the problem remains that 42% of births are still delivered at home without the aid of trained physicians, midwives, nurses, or aids.  It is simply too difficult for many of these women to travel the distance to the nearest hospital or clinic.

Dr. ABD and his staff with an ovarian tumor they removed from a patient

Dr. ABD has already been providing the best level of prenatal and postnatal healthcare possible at his clinic, as well as saving the lives of women suffering from cancers and other tumors through surgery.  Recently, a foundation out of Europe has offered a great deal of funding to hospitals in Sierra Leone that have functioning maternity wards.  Helping Dr. ABD finish his maternity ward will open the door for him to partner with another organization willing to grant funding for the hospital.

We emailed Dr. ABD to explain who we are at Somebody’s Mama and to ask him a few questions.  His responses were weighty and humbling.  He shared several specific stories about women who have come to him for care—a 35-year-old woman suffering from swollen extremities and difficulty breathing who walked for four hours before she was able to get transportation to the nearest hospital.  She was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver from herbal intoxication.  Dr. ABD was able to help her deliver her baby successfully, and she is still under his care for her liver issues.  

Dr. ABD says there are too many stories like this to tell.  However, he is adamant in his belief that things will get better—it is what drives his long days of work and why he fights for the rights of his people in parliament. 

When we asked Dr. ABD to share his thoughts about his own mother and other mothers who inspire him, he was brought to tears thinking about the sacrifices his own mother made and his regret that she was not alive to see the fruits of her labor.  His mother suffered from abuse by the aunt who brought her up, leaving her crippled.  She lost five babies before he was born and almost lost him, as it took him three months to stabilize before he was able to leave the hospital.  She went on to have six more children.  He shared, “Mum taught me to cook, take care of my room and be helpful to others. She was caring and loving and I just miss her. There is so much I can write about her but time does not permit me.”

Dr. ABD paid tribute to an aunt, a single mother, who taught him to be “honest, true, and God-fearing.”  He added that he admires Dr. Christina Thorpe, the current electoral commissioner of Sierra Leone because she is smart, honest, firm and forthright in all she does.  Lastly, he added his admiration for his wife, who took in his two children from a previous marriage and cared for them as her own while she struggled to get pregnant for eight years.  They have raised five children together, and he pointed out her strength to endure hard times and her patience.

Dr. ABD and family members sending his son to medical school in Ukraine

Dr. ABD appreciates deeply the influence strong women have had on his life and passionately advocates for women's rights and access to healthcare.  We are proud to call him a friend and excited to crown him April's "Mama" of the Month! 

Thank you, Dr. ABD, for all you are doing, and we look forward to partnering with you to build this maternity ward.

What Now?

So you’ve agreed to host a Love Party!  And now you’re like—wait, what have I gotten myself into?  Never fear—your friendly neighborhood SuperMamas are here to guide you along the way to forming the best ever Love Club.  Remember this is about creating an event that fits the personality of YOUR group of friends, so it’s going to look a little different for everyone.  Here are four simple steps to being the best CHUM a girl could ask for:

 Create your guest list and event.  Do your friends all communicate on Facebook?  Create a Facebook event.  Are your friends of the more traditional calligraphy-loving type?  Send out invitations!  Are you friends with a bunch of texters?  Text out that info!  Do what you do when you want all your friends to come hang out.

 Have your information ready to answer people’s questions.  This is the part that we’re going to help out with.  Between now and your party, we will arm you with all the information you need to answer questions about why we’re asking people to donate money.  For now, you should know that we are attempting to build a maternity ward at a hospital in Sierra Leone (West Africa).  Sierra Leone is one of the poorest nations in the world, having been at civil war for almost two decades.  Medical facilities are few and far between.  We have partnered with a doctor who wishes to build a maternity ward at an existing hospital that will serve thousands of women who would not have access to any other form of maternal healthcare.  We are still gathering all the appropriate information and will send out more details as it gets closer to the time for our parties.

 Use this time together to get people excited about what we’re doing.  The goal of Somebody’s Mama has been to turn ideas into action from the beginning.  It’s one thing to talk about how much we care about making lives better—it’s another to move forward to affect real change.  This time, we’re building a maternity ward in Sierra Leone—but next time we might be investing in small enterprise businesses or building a school.  There is no limit to what we can do if we pool our resources.  The key to our success as Mamas is to find other Mamas who get just as excited as we are.

 Make sure to collect money!  Obviously, we’re building community and awareness, but the goal of this even is absolutely fundraising.  Some people get a little anxious when we start talking about money, but there’s no reason to worry about this part.  We want to make it as simple as possible.  We will provide you with all the information about how to send in any cash or checks you collect, and you will also receive information about how you can have technology available (computer, iPad, etc.) for people to give directly on a website—the simplest way to give.  As always, all donations are tax-deductible!

Thank you for stepping up to be a House Mama.  We can’t wait to see what great things come from the power of partying!

Lots of love (obviously),

Erika Wright and Leia Johnson

Founders of Somebody's Mama

Who Wants to Party?

For the past few months, we’ve been working on building a community of people dedicated to awareness and action.  We’ve been overwhelmed by the response people have had to some of our informational posts about maternal health and education, our inspirational posts about our MOMs (mamas of the month), and the posts celebrating the beauty that is being a Mama.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked in conjunction with our parent organization to complete two small projects that changed the lives of women in Uganda and one mama in Costa Rica.  These projects were successful because we had YOUR support.

NOW IS THE TIME TO DO SOMETHING BIG!  

So, here’s our first official roll call for House Mamas!  Want to know if you qualify?  Here’s the application:

1. Do you have friends?

2. Would you like to help change the lives of women?

If you answered yes to those two questions, you’re hired!  And you know what we want you to do?  We want you to have a party!  A Love Party!  We want you to gather with your friends in the same way you always do—but this time, we want you to share the vision of Somebody’s Mama.  We’ve picked a really special project, and we can’t do it without you.  Here’s what you need to know in order to say YES to being a House Mama:

• Our first quarterly project involves building a maternity ward at a hospital in one of the poorest nations in the world (more information to come shortly).  
• Our goal is for each of us to plan our parties between April 8th-15th (you pick what works best for you in that timeframe).
• You are in charge of what your party looks like!

Here are just a few ideas about how you can structure your party:

• Host a potluck dinner party and tell everyone to chip in what it would have cost if you’d gone out to dinner!
• Host bunco/bridge/game night like you do every month and instead of giving out prizes for the winners, dedicate one evening to Somebody’s Mama!
• Is your group of friends into garage sales?  Pool your stuff together for a big sale and donate the proceeds to our project!
• Come up with something cool that YOUR friends would love and run with it!  This is about connecting our everyday living with some simple giving.

Once you have agreed to be a House Mama, we will send you an information packet (via email) with more information about the project.  It will answer the who/what/when/where questions and provide instructions on how to structure your “presentation” to your friends.  We will equip you with all the resources to help engage others in the mission of Somebody’s Mama—and we hope you’ll have fun doing it!

Please contact us via Facebook or by email (somebodysmama@outlook.com) if you are ready to join us in our worldwide Love Party!