But recently I heard from an old friend, Amanda, founder of an organization called Shine that empowers women and girls around the world through service, art, yoga, and travel. Amanda went to Uganda last year with Off the Mat, Into the World, a non-profit that uses yoga to inspire grass-roots activism, to help build a solar-powered birthing center in Nsaasi Village. When I read that the first baby was born at the Shanti Birth House and Learning Centre, in late January, a little spark went off in my brain, connecting all the stories I’ve been reading about sub-par birthing conditions in developing countries with my love for Africa and my own two births. After hatching two tiny squirrelly newborns, I’ve come to understand that birthing is probably the most powerful and unifying of all human experience. It should also be the most hopeful: There’s no good reason why half a million women should die in childbirth each year.
under african skies, 2006 |
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