by Sarah Sensamaust | Oct 16, 2013 | 2013, Africa, Being Thankful, Cultural Differences, Expat Life, Health, Hospital, World Motherhood
This summer our three-year-old daughter had her tonsils and adenoids removed. Many children have this routine surgery, but we still teared-up a bit as they wheeled her away. Then we enjoyed our coffee while we waited for the surgeon to tell us everything went “just fine.” Because we knew it would be. Even if there was a complication we rest assured in the fact that we were in the United States.
This summer Mama Youyou, our nanny in Congo, also had a routine surgery and we were scared out of our minds. Mama Youyou waited to have her surgery until we left for our summer break in the States so she wouldn’t have to take off work. (Bless her.) When she told us she needed the surgery, we did everything we could to make sure she had access to good health care.
You see, Mama Youyou has already outlived her life expectancy as a Congolese woman. Complications during routine surgeries in DRC, and lack of access to medical care, are the type of thing that keeps her life expectancy rate down. (more…)
by Natalia Rankine-Galloway (Morocco) | Oct 2, 2013 | 2013, Africa, Cultural Differences, Culture, Expat Life, Family Travel, Kids, Living Abroad, Morocco, Moving, Relocating, USA, World Motherhood
The customs officer handed us back our passports at Dulles International and said, “Welcome home.”
All my life I’ve been a global nomad, so home has always been a fluid concept. If you add up the years spent in any one country, the US now comes out on top, which I suppose wins it the title of “home” (congrats America). But given that we’d just left behind our comfortable house in Morocco for temporary lodging with family and the fearful prospect of finding something new with our now drastically diminished buying power, home seemed to be farther away than ever.
Starting on the drive back from the airport and throughout the rest of our first weekend home, I was confronted with many things I had missed and a few I hadn’t.
Rubber surfacing on the playground: missed!
Gridlock around the DC area: Could have gone my whole life without seeing again.
Trader Joe’s: Be still my heart!
Inflammatory Cable News: See DC gridlock above. (more…)
Natalia was born a stone's throw from the Queen's racetrack in Ascot, UK and has been trying to get a ticket to the races and a fabulous hat to go with it ever since. She was born to a Peruvian mother and an Irish father who kept her on her toes, moving her to Spain, Ireland and back to the UK before settling her in New York for the length of middle and high school. She is still uncertain of what she did to deserve that.
She fled to Boston for college and then Washington, D.C. to marry her wonderful husband, who she met in her freshman year at college. As a military man, he was able to keep her in the migratory lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Within 5 months of marriage, they were off to Japan where they stayed for a wonderful 2 and one half years before coming home to roost. Baby Xavier was born in New York in 2011 and has not slept since.
A joy and an inspiration, it was Xavier who moved Natalia to entrepreneurship and the launch of CultureBaby. She has loved forging her own path and is excited for the next step for her family and CultureBaby.
Natalia believes in the potential for peace that all children carry within them and the importance of raising them as global citizens. She loves language, history, art and culture as well as Vietnamese Pho, Argentinian Malbec, English winters, Spanish summers and Japanese department stores...and she still hopes one day to catch the number 9 race with Queen Liz.
You can find her personal blog, The Culture Mum Chronicles.
More Posts
by Elizabeth Atalay | Oct 1, 2013 | 2013, Education, Eye on Culture, Hobby, Humanitarian, Kenya, Media, Social Good, World Moms Blog
The Founder of the View Finder Workshop describes her inspiration:
“I WAS WALKING THROUGH CITÉ SOLEIL, the largest slum in the Western Hemisphere located in Haiti, one of the poorest places on Earth. Trash littered the streets and dirty stagnant rainwater was often used as latrines. The sun pulsated directly overhead, bleaching the blue sky to a blinding white. Sweat droplets raced down my spine and pooled at my lower back. Children dressed in rags – or for some, in nothing at all – played a spirited game of soccer with a half-inflated ball. I snapped a picture of a group of rambunctious kids, only to have eager young hands grab at my camera to see the image captured on my screen.
The novelty of the reproduction faded and most darted off between the shanty houses. One remained, diligently pointing at each face on the screen, as if ticking them off in his head. He stopped at the last one. His own. He let out a burst of pure, innocent, giggling glee and scampered off. Alone, I realized that for people who have next to nothing, a mirror is an unattainable luxury. This child only met his reflection by process of elimination. For he knew which ones were his friends and which one was the stranger.
I was struck dumb. For I never realized a person could walk through life without knowing his own physical self. But photography can change that. It lets a child see himself & his world through different eyes. By learning tangible skills & creating new avenues of self-expression, he can contribute to his life & his community.
And thus, the seed for View Finder Workshop was planted.”
Babita Patel.
founder, humanitarian photographer – Excerpted from the View Finder website
From that moment View Finder Workshops were born. They were born to put the camera into the hands of children who have never had a lens through which to objectively view or portray the world in which they live. Children love taking photographs, and especially love taking, and seeing photos of themselves. These are not children growing up in a “selfie” obsessed culture, but kids who may not have ever even seen a mirror image of themselves. To put a camera in their hands proves liberating and empowering in a way that is hard to imagine, until you witness the pure joy on their faces when they see the images that they capture.
Photography as a visual medium provides a creative expression and ability to both view, and share a perspective from each child’s personal lens. And there is nothing like viewing the world through the eyes of a child.
The results of last January’s workshop in Haiti in collaboration with Respire Haiti, brought fresh views to the children of Gressier, Haiti who had been serving as restaveks (children enslaved as domestic servants), orphans & other vulnerable children. The images captured were often stark and beautiful. The photos were then exhibited in September in an LA gallery show in Santa Monica where gallery patrons were able to view the results of what the children were able to capture with a camera in their hands. A few of the kid’s prints even sold!
Next the Viewfinder Workshop is gearing up for a workshop in Kenya This fall, where they will be introducing photography to 40 students enrolled at their new school in the Lenana slum, in the country’s capital, in a program that they hope to make a sustainable curiculum. These programs need support to become sustainable, and this is where you can come in. You can like View Finder on Facebook , follow on Twitter , and/or make a donation to help other children to tell their story through images. You may just be the one to benefit from the enchanting worlds they share.
Have you ever put the camera in your own kids hands to see what they come up with?
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Elizabeth Atalay of documama.org.
*All photos credited to the View Finder Workshop website.
Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.
More Posts
by Mama Mzungu (Kenya) | Sep 25, 2013 | Africa, Being Thankful, Family, Gun Violence, Humanity, International, Kenya, Kids, Living Abroad, Media, Motherhood, Safety, Stress, Tragedy, World Events, World Motherhood
This post is a reflection by our editor, MamaMzungu, in Kenya on the September 21, 2013 shooting in Nairobi, when 10-15 unidentified gunmen opened fire in an upscale, downtown shopping mall, killing 62 and wounding more than 175 people.
I’ve spent the last few days fighting back (often unsuccessfully) tears. When I communicate about this tragedy to friends and family, I find myself most often saying, “there are no words.”
Sixty dead souls, children among them, nearly 200 injured and the senseless death toll keeps mounting. Ravi Ramrattan, among them, is a friend who was kind-hearted, whip-smart and had a manner that immediately put everyone at ease. They identified him by his shoes.
Unthinkably, when I describe him, I have to use the verb “was” not “is;” his bright future snatched from him, leaving a crater-sized hole in the hearts of people who loved him. Those are words. And as I type them, here I go again fighting that tightening in my throat and welling in my eyes.
Still, I need to find words. I need to find some sense or meaning out of this tragedy.
When we first heard about the shooting, we were camping in a forest with some friends. We were walking amid astounding beauty with our children, 3 four-year-olds and 3 babies. We received information in fits and starts when cell phone reception worked.
First it was 15-20 dead. Shit. That’s gotta be a terrorist attack.
Then it was 29. Holy crap. Pit in the belly. Do we know anyone?
Then it was 39. But these numbers could keep going up. Where will it stop?.
Then, 59 dead. Silence.
But it was one small detail, not the numbers, that finally made that scene at the luxury mall real: It was a children’s day at the mall. Something I might have taken my own babies to. Some of these children were now dead.
I was going to write something about numbers, how we interpret tragedy and risk through a narrow and almost tribal lens. How I’ve seen a lot of equally senseless and avoidable death from terror of poverty. And those numbers are higher than 60.
How disappointing the truth is that it pains me to my core, when the victims look like me – when I can picture myself and my children in that circumstance.
How, as much as I think of myself as part of a truly global community, the world spins off its axis more for me when my bubble of safety and comfort is exploded.
But forget all that. I’m not in the mood to be philosophical yet. I just want to be sad. I want to mourn.
All life is precious. And fleeting. And nothing is sure. I just want to hug my family extra tight. And I want to pray to a god which I have to cling to, even though such senselessness make me doubt his existence, to bring comfort to the people who are unexpectedly burying loved ones too soon.
Mama Mzungu is a World Moms Blog editor and contributor living in Kenya with her husband and two young children. You can read more about their life and recent events on her blog: Mama Mzungu This article was reposted on World Moms Blog with permission.
The image used in this post is credited to US Army Africa and holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Originally from Chicago, Kim has dabbled in world travel through her 20s and is finally realizing her dream of living and working in Western Kenya with her husband and two small boys, Caleb and Emmet. She writes about tension of looking at what the family left in the US and feeling like they live a relatively simple life, and then looking at their neighbors and feeling embarrassed by their riches. She writes about clumsily navigating the inevitable cultural differences and learning every day that we share more than we don’t. Come visit her at Mama Mzungu.
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
by Alison Fraser | Sep 24, 2013 | 2013, Africa, Canada, Childhood, Education, Eye on Culture, Family, Girls, Human Rights, Humanitarian, Humanity, Inspirational, International, ONE, Philanthropy, Poverty, Uncategorized, United Nations, Women's Rights, World Voice
City of Kitchener Councillor, Kelly Galloway-Sealock, and the author’s three daughters at a 2012 International Day of the Girl Child event
Mark your calendars and celebrate October 11th with your families and in your communities! Why you might ask? Well, the reasons are two-fold. Firstly, October 11th is Eleanor Roosevelt’s birthday. Eleanor was a world-renowned advocate for human rights and world peace. She was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, how fitting is it that the United Nations has declared October 11th as the International Day of the Girl Child.
This October 11th marks the second annual International Day of the Girl Child. This day will be celebrated worldwide in an effort to bring attention to the human rights of girls around the world, and to highlight the gender-based struggles that so many young girls face daily.
Forced childhood marriages, rape, and female genital mutilation are just some of the issues that many little girls are forced to deal with at very early ages. In many countries, young girls are not valued and as a result are not invested in, particularly when it comes to schooling. The resulting long-term effects are alarming and have been documented in an eye-opening video by the Girl Effect movement. Please watch this video and share with friends and family – it will change the way you see the world. Girl Effect – the clock is ticking!
Last year, the focus of the very first International Day of the Girl Child was child marriage. This year, the focus will be on education. There are so many wonderful ways that you can participate in this important day. Whether you plan a family event or a community event, we all need to ensure that this very important day is recognized. Spread the word – girls are important and need to be valued, respected and treated as equal partners in our local and global communities.
What can you do to honour this important day? You can host a community screening of the Girl Rising film that is receiving acclaim worldwide. You can act to spread the word about struggles some young girls are facing in the world today. You can talk to your children about these critical issues. You can ask your child’s teacher to discuss this day with their class. You can organize a fundraising event in your office/workplace. Whatever you choose to do, whether it be large or small-scale, YOU can make a difference on October 11th!
Last year, my three young daughters tied pink ribbons in their hair and joined a local city councillor on a hike discussing the importance of human rights for all girls. It was a simple but highly effective way to celebrate this day. So many people asked them why they were wearing the ribbons, allowing them to speak about the day in their own words describing what it meant to them. It was so great to see the passion being shared by a younger generation, especially given that many of these issues are often difficult for them to understand and rationalize!
This year, we are planning a yoga event at a local studio for young boys and girls in the community. We are asking for small donations, which will then be used to support the educational needs of girls in Tanzania. In addition, my two older daughters have done small research projects on the significance of the International Day of the Girl Child, and will be presenting all that they have learned to their classmates on October 11th, thanks to the support of their teachers. I encourage you to plan an event too!Your event does not have to be fancy or sophisticated. Sometimes the smallest and simplest acts can have the greatest impact.
Let’s all celebrate October 11th together – girls are worth it!
As Eleanor Roosevelt once said;
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
In what way might you celebrate the Day of The Girl Child?
This is an original World Moms Blog post written by Alison Fraser.
Alison Fraser is the mother of three young girls ranging in age from 5 to 9 years old. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Alison works as an Environmental Toxicologist with a human environment consulting company and is an active member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). She is also the founder and director of the Canadian Not for Profit Organization, Mom2Mom Africa, which serves to fund the school fees of children and young women in rural Tanzania. Recently recognized and awarded a "Women of Waterloo Region" award, Alison is very involved in charitable events within her community including Christmas Toy and School Backpack Drives for the local foodbank.
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
by World Moms Blog | Sep 16, 2013 | 2013, Adoption, Adoptive Parents, Africa, Being Thankful, Cultural Differences, Discipline, Ethiopia, Family, Guest Post, Health, Humanity, Humor, Inspirational, International, Kids, Motherhood, Multicultural, Netherlands, Parenting, Special Needs, Uncategorized, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Sometimes I’m really weary of explaining. To grannies in the supermarket. To teenage girls at the playground. To fellow mums at school.
My daughter is clearly adopted, yes. She’s from Ethiopia, yes. She’s had a rough start, yes. She’s lost part of her eyesight, yes. And she’s got some countless more issues, yes.
But she’s still a four year old. And I’m her mother. I’m raising her my way. Just like I’m raising her big brother, who is blond and looks a bit too much like me.
The big difference between raising my daughter and raising my son, is that people seem to feel a kind of responsibility towards my girl. It feels like adopted children are in a way public.
I do understand how we stand out, in our not so worldly little town. We are getting used to the extra attention she brings with her, although I admit I have been thinking to teach her to growl when a stranger touches her hair and skin unasked.
We were prepared for all this. We knew we were going to feel like we have arrows flashing around our heads when taking her out. Now that she’s been with us for two years, we’ve all grown a thick skin, filled with humor. We have a series of catchy replies to go with all the ridiculous questions. The next one who dares to ask me what we feed her, will be answered ‘grass’, without even a blink.
But I still can’t really cope with all the unwanted ‘advice’ we get about raising her. When my son was little, I never ever had some stranger giving him candy or cookies. I never had to explain myself in the supermarket when I refused to let him take everything he wished for. And I certainly didn’t have to listen to people telling me how neglectful I was for letting him cry out a tantrum.
With my daughter, I do have those encounters. This one time in the supermarket, I was truly abashed. I had just taken away some nasty sugar bombs from my daughter’s hands and put them back, much against the little miss’s wishes. An elderly lady came over, took the candy and handed them over to my girl again. I was confused, believing she misunderstood. So I explained I didn’t want to buy that rubbish for her. At that moment she cursed me for being so horrible towards that poor little black girl that has been hungry all her life. She put the candy in my cart, ordered me to buy it, and took off while nodding her head.
At such encounters – yes, plural – I have the urge to scream.
For one thing. She’s NOT a poor little girl. She’s in most ways an ordinary four year old preschooler. She can throw the worst tantrums I ever witnessed, just because I can’t peel an apple while driving my car or because I can’t make the Easter bunny magically appear in August. The last one was about having only six colors of nail polish to choose from. Poor girl indeed.
But most importantly, I’M THE ONE raising that ‘poor little girl’. Of course we are aware of her issues, mostly the ones regarding attachment and anxieties. We try to give her everything she needs, truck loads of patience and care which unfortunately aren’t always replenished in time. But she doesn’t need everything she wants. Just like any other child doesn’t. Unless you plan to end up with a spoiled brat that demands a yellow sports car at age eighteen.
Spoiling her will not make right all the things she missed out in the first two years of her life. Maybe that sounds harsh and loveless, but I can assure you it isn’t meant that way. I cry with her when she mourns her lost heritage, when she is homesick. I’ve swallowed away rivers of tears all those times I had to explain her history to medical doctors and hospital professors.
But I can’t raise my daughter based on pity alone.
This is a first-time, guest contribution to World Moms Blog from our friend and mother of The Penguin and the Panther in Belgium, Katinka. Her Flemish blog is in transition over to an English-only blog. Stay posted to World Moms Blog for more from Katinka.
The photograph of the author’s daughter used in this post is credited to the author.
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
More Posts
