Today the midwives and I hiked up to Mt. Muahay about an hour hike; our goal was to get to the Assembly of God church in the village and ask their pastor if our Mercy In Action team can do a medical mission in June. Well, when we arrived, the pastor was not there and the church was locked up. So, we asked some locals where the pastor lives, they told us that he lives in New Cabalan which is, by the way, close to where we started this whole hike. We gathered our things and started to go back hoping we could find the pastors house. As we were walking along, we passed a kind looking man who said hi to us and thought nothing of it until, we were told by a vendor a while later that the pastor just walked by him not to long ago. That’s when we realized that that kind man who said hi to us was the pastor we were looking for! Ugh! We quickly turned around and headed back for the church (all this work just to talk to one man!) We were very hot and sweaty by then, especially poor Jen who had Ken Ken her 71/2 month old baby boy in a sling carrying him. But, it was worth it because the pastor told us that he would love for us to do a medical mission at his church and also said he would spread the word about our team doing free prenatals every Thursday in Mercy Land. This is great, because our Mercy In Action team has to do everything we can to advertise and start getting the Aeta tribal families to trust and know us...apparently a rumor is circulating that there is a cult of people capturing children and harvesting their organs… well, if you thought that wasn't bad enough,
there is another rumor going around that our team is that cult. We have to
break this rumor and gain trust so that we can start serving these
families with much needed health care! 76% of the Aeta tribal woman are giving birth to their babies alone with no one there to help in an emergency, so the infant and maternal mortality rates are very high, and breastfeeding rates are low...the other day we went and did another postpartum checkup on that mom and new baby in Iram and found out that the mom is bottle feeding!(we encouraged the mother to start breastfeeding immediately before her milk dries up) The thing is, she has no way to sustain buying formula. In these situations the mother usually ends up feeding her infant rice water, or diluted formula, or some other thing that she can come up with. So you ask "why do these moms even start bottle feeding then." Well sadly the Philippine people as a culture believe that if one can give their baby formula it is the very best thing for the infant...why? Because Americans do it so it must be! And you ask, "well why do Americans do it," I honestly do not know that answer. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever does." Margaret Mead
Pics of our hike:
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| Aeta children, because of their dark chocolate colored skin and curly hair they look much like Africans instead of Philippino |
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| Looks alot like Oregon, don't you think? |
