Don’t let that shy smile fool you - Halima is one brave and outspoken little girl, but we suppose that comes with being the youngest child in a family of 13! She is one of the full time students at the Ubuntu Life Foundation Special Needs Centre. Her family brought Halima to Ubuntu when she was 5 years old because she was not reaching the developmental milestones that her siblings were - she could not perform tasks that other peers her age had mastered such as being able to groom herself. The school she was attending was not equipped to give her the attention that she needed in order to advance, so she was sent home.

In the words of Mutahi Kagwe, our Health Cabinet Secretary when warning Kenyans to be cautious about COVID-19, "If we continue to behave normally, this disease will treat us abnormally.” …

We have had to redefine how we do things here. Closing church tops the list of all frustrations, many felt that it was lack of faith. Others wondered why God would not help in such a situation and even President Magufuli of Tanzania said that the virus is satanic and therefore cannot thrive in churches. A very controversial statement that lacked consideration of every insight brought forth to bring down the contracting of the virus. But as an African who knows that Africans are notoriously religious I can understand his efforts to cling to what he knows. But yet we have to keep the social distance if we are going to win this battle, things have changed and we cannot continue to do things normally.

June 2020 will be a big leap forward in our use of telehealth for Ubuntu health programs. We will not only use it to access patient records to keep our kids on the neurological medications that are vital to their progress, but we will host daily telehealth video clinics between patients and healthcare workers in Kenya and our team of pediatric neurologists here in the US. There is very little sub-specialty medical care available in Kenya (there are less than a handful of pediatric neurologists in the entire country), so their support and input is crucial to our treatment of new patients and, for example, patients with breakthrough seizures.

We are so blessed to have such an amazing group of Mums in our community. From our Maker Mums to the Heal Team to our Global Tribe, we are very thankful to have them in our lives. We asked a few of our rock star Mums from our Tribe to think back on lessons their Mothers taught them and how they are staying connected as a family during COVID_19.