Independence and Progress

Tommorrow Sierra Leone will have it's 48th year anniversary of indepedence. Freetown is filled with national flags posted along the streets, and people are waiting in anticipation to celebrate this special time in their country's history. Certain places in town have been under renovations these past two weeks in oerder to prepare for this day, as the city will hold festivals and parties at these sites, not to mention many smaller parties where family and friends get together for "Thanksgiving", as Sierra Leoneans call it.

As we think about the importance of this historic day for Sierra Leone, we are also thinking about the progress that has been made for the PPB factory, not least in successfully installing and testing the machinery! Sometimes it is easy for us to overlook a remarkable step for this program, because we are constantly planning on what to do next in moving PPB forward. But it has been a good learning experience for us in knowing when to take time and celebrate ourselves. Praise God!

Dr. Manary came on April 12th to see us through on setting up the machinery, as well as to observe and help at out clinic sites. As for the setup of the machinery, we worked together in finding a company that was able to electrically install the mixers, and by the 28th we actually were grinding up groundnuts in the big mixer! We are so glad that he was able to come and see first hand PPB Sierra Leone.

Blessings,

Mike and Chelsea

Equipment Arrival

Tuesday morning Chelsea and I received word that the equipment had arrived at the Freetown Shipyard. We were filled with excitement, as well as relief. A shipping company out of Florida organized all things and had the equipment shipped from Charleston, South Carolina. From my understanding it was not a direct trip to Sierra Leone, as the ship first stopped in Hamburg before coming south to Sierra Leone. The estimated time of arrival was March 22nd, but because of the stop in Hamburg, it was delayed for eight days. Upon arrival, the Sierra Leone Ports Authority follows protocol by going through registration and inspection procedures for all crates on the ship. This has taken approximately two and a half days. At around one o’clock today our clearing agent called and said that registration and inspection has been completed and that he has hired a trucking company to delivery the machinery by four or five o’clock today!

This week I have been at the factory everyday making sure everything is in perfect order and that we are prepared for the machinery to arrive at anytime. The time has come! First priority is security. Once the machinery arrives, the masons will close off the open area that was needed to load the machinery inside. Then, I will lock all doors with several padlocks. I told Chelsea today that I may even sleep with the machinery tonight so that I know that everything is okay. We have security for the compound, so this will be unnecessary, but I still feel like I need to after what it took for it to get to Freetown.

Unfortunately Chelsea is up country right now running the PPB clinics, so she will not be here when the machinery arrives. Nonetheless, she will be able to see it tomorrow evening. I will be sure to take pictures of our factory, as you will be able to compare from the pictures I sent awhile back. Thank you all for making this possible. The hard work of all of us, especially through everyone’s thoughts, prayers, and support, has made all this happen. We are so grateful for everything.

Blessings,
Michael

Back in the groove...

This is the bathroom in our factory. We caught these guys sleeping on the job! They were supposed to be finishing the wall but got sleepy and decided to take a catnap:)

This is the electrician installing all the light fixtures in our Finished Product room.

Chelsea with one of the kids that lives in our neighborhood, Mark, and our dog Barnabas.

View of the Salone mountains behind our apartment

Wow, it has been a long time since we have last posted on our blog!

We went to the U.S. for a month in Dec/Jan, then we got back to Sierra Leone January 18th. It was so great to see family and friends!

FACTORY

Now we are back and some really exciting things are about to happen with PPB!!! First of all, our factory machinery is coming. It was supposed to arrive last Sunday, we thought it did, then we finally received confirmation that the shipment is running a week late, grr! So our shipment should be arriving this Sunday, March 29th. Even though we were anxiously anticipating the equipment's arrival, it endedd up working out better this way. We went to the villages last week to run PPB clinics, and we left what was left of our factory construction in the hands of our contractor. Well, they ran into a few minor problems, so things were not finished as quickly the construction team thought they would be. So our factory would not be ready for the equipment even if it had come last Sunday.

DR. MANARY IS COMING APRIL 12th, EASTER SUNDAY! We are so pumped that he is

coming for the first time to see PPB Sierra Leone in action! We have been talking, planning, and working with him over email and when we were in the U.S. It is great that he will now have the opportunity to see what we have been discussing and will be able to help us direct PPB as the program expands.

CLINIC SITES
Our clinics are going really well. With our three sites we treat about 150 patients every two weeks and screen close to 200 kids in all. At our Njala clinic there was a team of nurses that came to help and obseve our program last week. On a regular basis they do a lot of work at the community level, teaching by using various hands-on approaches. One of the things they do is teach the basic principles of nutrition for the family. Next Wednesday, at the Njala clinic, these nurses are going to begin teaching the mothers about nutrition for their families before the PPB clinic begins. It was a blessing that they were willing and able to come and add to our clinic in this way!

OUR LIVES

Since we returned in January, we have moved to a new apartment. This apartment is located on the outskirts of Freetown in an area called Regent Village. We are really happy with our decision to move here. Being outside of the city a bit makes a huge difference. It is so much quieter, there is grass, and we do not have to have as much security as we did at the last place. Our dogs absolutely love it here! They have grass and mountains to run around in! We have gotten to know our neighbors which has been fun. They are mostly Temne. Since we work in all Mende areas, we have not been able to learn as much about the Temne tribe. It has been cool to learn about it in this way. The neighbors right beside us are a family that just had a baby! The mom is Isata, the father is Michael, and they have another little girl named Victoria. Victoria is scared silly of us! She hasn't been around white people before, so our skin is pretty frightening to her. She is already starting to come around though, so we will just give her time. Their baby is a few weeks old, and a couple days after she was born they asked us to name her! It was such a delight and honor to be given this priveledge. We decided on the name Isabel. It is a fairly common name here, and we both think it is a beautiful name that suits this beautiful baby girl perfectly. The family has been going to church with us, and last Sunday they had a special prayer for baby Isabel.

This is Marion with her daughter, Tinah. Marion is a health care worker that has been assisting in the nutrition program in Taninahun. She is also working part time in the Taiama UMC Health Center.

Marion was previously a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) in Taiama for sixteen years. SHE HAS DELIVERED 575 BABIES!! She explained to us that she has kept a record of each child. One of the reasons Sierra Leone has the highest infant/mother mortality rate is because women in labor would prefer going to TBA's rather than hospitals to deliver their babies. TBA's are trusted women in the village who usually have had the responsibility of delivering babies passed down from generation to generation from the mother to the daughter. The problem is that there are so many TBA's, unlike Marion, that have received no training. The only training they have received is the experience their mothers were able to pass on to them through experience. While this experience is valuable, there are still many things that can go wrong in a delivery. Taiama is one of the clinics where TBA training has begun. All the TBA's in Taiama also have a cell phone. If there is a complication in delivery, then the TBA can call the Taiama Head Nurse, Christiana, for assistance. This simple development plus the training is saving countless children and mothers. Hopefully, with the training, there will be more TBA's like Marion who will be able to tell their stories of many, many successful deliveries.

Njala Health Center pictures

Two of the nurses, Catherine and Anthony, screening a child. You can tell how much he likes being on that scale! Mike training Nurse Josephine on the enrollment process

Patients outside Njala Health Center waiting to be screened

Njala Health Center and general updates

The past couple of weeks we have been training 6 health care workers to extend Project Peanut Butter to the Njala Health Center. Last Wednesday was the first clinic day, and we had so many people come with their children. The health care staff did an excellent job! They screened about 75 children and enrolled 43 in the program.

Our other two clinics, Taninahun and Taiama, also went really well. The number of children are growing at each of our clinic sites. The mothers are coming with their children from farther and farther away. This means the word is spreading about the nutrition program! We had a couple serious cases of edema (swelling) with some of the children at Taiama and Taninahun. These children's edema had completely disappeared! What a blessing! The mom's are doing a great job.

There is a short term UMVIM team coming to Taiama at the end of December. The nurses are getting excited for the team's arrival! They are already spreading the word for everyone from the villages to come to the clinic on the dates the team will be there.

We leave in a little over two weeks to go back to the U.S. for Christmas! Until then, we are making a little over one ton of RUTF in order to stock up each clinic's supply and working with our contractor in building the factory.

Mami en Pikin Welbodi Week

Yesterday we participated in a fair for the kickoff of the mom and child health week (in krio it is called Mami en Pikin Welbodi Week) in Freetown. Mike and I were there representing Project Peanut Butter. All the organizations that work on behalf of the mothers and children of Sierra Leone came to explain their programs and give hands-on demonstrations to the mothers that attended. There were presentations on safe handwashing, malaria prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, blood pressure testing, good complementary feeding examples, safe feeding habits and many more.

The mom and child health week is done by the Ministry of Health in order to raise awareness of the major issue of the child mortality rate in Sierra Leone. In this country, one out of every four children will die before his or her fifth birthday. This makes Sierra Leone the country with the highest child mortality rate in the world. 40% of these children are dying from malnutrition. Others are dying from preventable illnesses such as diarrhea, measles, and malaria.

It is an exciting time to be working in the field of nutrition in Sierra Leone. Since the government has made child nutrition a national priority, many organizations are collaborating in order to eradicate malnutrition in the country. Let us continue to pray that God will grant the organizations involved the ability to help the families of Sierra Leone help their children.