by Rachel Vreeman | Nov 21, 2015 | Uncategorized
We will celebrate Brenda. You have to follow a series of bumpy, dusty trails to find Brenda’s home. Brenda, her two young daughters, and her teenaged, orphaned niece live together in a one-room home with mud walls and a corrugated tin roof. The furnishings in Brenda’s...
by Rachel Vreeman | Jul 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
She walked all this way to collapse in my exam room. Noelle is thirteen, but she bears the weight of two adults. At home, it is only this teenaged girl and her mother. Her mother is bedridden, terribly sick with a combination of HIV, TB of the spine, and malnutrition....
by Rachel Vreeman | Jul 5, 2015 | Uncategorized
Because I have to rant every so often to stay sane… In 2004, when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, Gordon Brown gave a speech describing how the world was failing poor families – and poor babies in particular. One doesn’t often hear the person...
by Rachel Vreeman | Jul 2, 2015 | Uncategorized
“I have heard this story too many times,” I think, as I listen to the grandmother in front of me. The stories all start with years of sickness and suffering. Rotich is 3 years old. His father died just months after he was born. His mother spent most of his first two...
by Rachel Vreeman | May 23, 2015 | Uncategorized
Oh Venice. In the blur of too many projects and deadlines and barely making it on the plane, I suddenly opened my eyes in this labyrinth of stone and pink and glimmering light, all floating/sinking in the Adriatic Sea. I had not expected to be so captivated by this...
