What I Learned on Safari

On Saturday, I returned from a vacation to Kenya. My first visit to Africa was unforgettable, the game parks were lovely and the safari rides thrilling. But, I am haunted by the images of the cities, villages, and reservations we passed through on our way to the game parks.

Like many tourists, we visited a Masai village. We sat in a mud and cow dung constructed hut, little bigger than the office I am writing in now, that housed 10 people in two beds. We watched mothers nursing newborn babies, covered with flies. We were told about teenagers, both boys and girls, going through circumcisions and women having babies attended only by their mothers-in-law. When I asked, I was told that “only” about one in ten women in the village die in childbirth. The cities outside of Nairobi we drove through on barely passable roads were filled with children begging when our 4 by 4 vehicles stopped for traffic, with corrugated aluminum tiny homes dotting the roads.

These so-called optional tourist excursions broke my heart and brought home the reality of the need to address poverty, maternal mortality, and access to family planning. It provided me with a renewed commitment to the Religious Institute’s Rachel Sabbath Initiative to engage religious leaders and faith communities in working for U.S. support to reach the Millennium Goals worldwide.

I know that Kenya is not the poorest country in Africa, and compared with its neighbors, it is relatively peaceful. But, still, one in 38 Kenyan women will die in childbirth, 26% of women will marry before adulthood, and female genital mutilation is still widely practiced.
The average woman in Kenya has six children, while her desired family size is four, although in the Masai village I visited fertility was much higher -- yet this marks substantial progress from an estimated 8.1 children per woman in the late 1960s). Fewer than half of Kenyan couples use contraceptives (46%), although that marks a significant increase compared to the 39 per cent reported in a 2003 study. According to the CIA World Factbook, the urban population in Kenya is “growing at an alarming rate as many Kenyans migrate from their rural homes to urban centers,” which has led to a scarcity of jobs and opportunities.

World population growth stops being an abstract idea when confronted with individuals and whole communities suffering without enough food, shelter, sanitation, health care, and economic opportunities. At the end of this month, the world's population will reach 7 billion. It was 4 billion when I first started working thirty five years ago.

The Bible calls us to be stewards of the earth and caretakers of our neighbors. I hope you’ll join us in rededicating ourselves to living out our faith through renewed action on behalf of all the people of the world.

Speak Out Against Maternal Mortality Worldwide and For Universal Access

The Religious Institute is committed to working towards a just, equitable, and inclusive world. On September 15th, as part of that global commitment, the Religious Institute is releasing its first internationally focused theological framework, the new Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Maternal Mortality and Reproductive Justice.

The Open Letter is being released to coincide with the United Nation’s High-Level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the leaders of 189 countries agreed to eight goals to eradicate extreme poverty. Goal Five calls for improved global maternal health by reducing maternal mortality by three quarters and achieving universal access to reproductive health.

Every year, more than 340,000 women and girls die as a result of the preventable complications from pregnancy and childbirth, almost all in developing countries. According to the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund, maternal mortality could be reduced by more than 70 percent by improved access to reproductive health services, including contraception, treatment for pregnancy and birth complications, and strategies to prevent or manage abortion related complications.

The new Open Letter recognizes that this is not just a public health crisis but a moral one. As the letter states, “the sacredness of life is best upheld when women and men create life intentionally, and women are able to have healthy pregnancies and childbirths.” Surely, people of faith from diverse perspectives can agree to work to create a world where no woman loses her life to create a new one.

The Open Letter calls on all religious leaders to:
• Educate themselves and their faith communities about the crisis of maternal mortality.
• Publicly advocate for increased support for maternal health and reproductive health services, domestically and globally.
• Work within their traditions to make the reduction of preventable maternal mortality a social justice issue.

You can help. If you are a religious leader, please become one of the endorsers of the new Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Maternal Mortality and Reproductive Justice. Become involved with the Religious Institute’s Rachel Sabbath Initiative. As a person of faith, join the U.N. Millennium Campaign.

The Open Letter ends, “We are called to bear witness to the harsh reality that without comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, women and girls around the world suffer illness, violence and death. Our mission as faith communities compels us to work together to assure that all may flourish. We renew our call to sexual and reproductive justice. We make a solemn commitment to help create a just and equitable world where no woman will die giving birth to the next generation.”

May it be so.