Africa - The Tree

One of the things I had looked forward to most about our trip was going to "the tree".  I had heard so much about this tree, but it still wasn't at all what I had expected.

Although the tree is huge, you hardly notice it.   

Underneath the tree are dozens of tents and ladies.

Most of the ladies there travel to the tree when they are about 8 months pregnant, from out in the bush.

 The tree is across the street from the hospital.  They camp out under the tree while waiting to go into labor.

Some of them make beautiful baskets while they wait.

I bought one from this beautiful lady.

We were thankful to find one lady who could translate for us.

We came to see them two different days. One time we brought rice and bread for each of them.

They carried the food in all sorts of containers, some on their heads.

I'm not sure what they normally eat, but they seemed very thankful for the food.

Several of them already had babies with them. Some were there to be with family members who were expecting, or other family members who were in the hospital.  Laurie named it the Ronald McDonald House of Outapi.

There were so many ladies there, and so many looked SO young.

The other day we brought blankets we had brought that several ladies from the church had made.  

We brought 97 blankets, and handed out around 75 of them that day.

It was very emotional.  I took 3 blankets that Reese had once used.  At first when Reese saw them in my suitcase, she wanted them back to use for her dolls.  Then I explained about the ladies under the tree that were going to have babies, and that it was going to be winter soon, and she was happy to "share with the babies in Africa."

This sweet lady waved me over to her tent to show me a precious little one...

...this little guy was 2 days old and happily sleeping in her tent while she got her strength back up to trek back to her home.

Two of the ladies in our group went to see the hospital one morning.  They said there was an incubator and a c-section room.

They said it was fairly clean other than the laundry room.  Apparently, the washer had gone out weeks ago, so soiled hospital linens had piled up waist high, and they were just shipping what they could to be cleaned a little at a time.

The ladies are asked to pay what they can, usually five to ten Rand, to have their babies at the hospital. One American dollar is about 7 Rand.

 They have the babies at the hospital to be prepared if there are any issues, but also because they do AIDS testing there, and they are anxious to know if their babies are infected.

There were almost no men under the tree.  The women look for love from men, then men are not interested in a long term relationship.  Men who marry before age 30 are considered weak.

This lady has one of the blankets that used to belong to my baby. Her baby has probably arrived by now.  It makes me feel so humbled to help in even such a small way.  We went to bless the ladies under the tree, and the blessing we received was more than I expected.