The new arrivals generally fall into two groups. Many are Internationally Educated Nurses (IENs) who have been recruited for two-year contracts in local long-term care homes. These nurses are well educated, many with Bachelor of Science in Nursing degrees, and bring valuable experience in areas such as labour and delivery, intensive care, emergency room and cardiac catheterization labs. Here in Perth, they’re working as personal support workers while they seek to obtain their Ontario Nursing Registration qualifications.

Almost all are from India, the Philippines and Nigeria and are here alone, although a very small number have able to send for their spouses and children. According to current regulations, it may well be over a year before they can even apply be joined by their families. All of them have young children and understandably are heartbroken by this news.

Most of the other newcomers are refugee claimants, primarily from Ghana. Having initially arrived in Montreal, they quickly learned that without speaking French, there were no employment opportunities for them there while their refugee applications were being reviewed. Somehow word came to them that Perth is a small, quiet welcoming community where they could find work. Over last summer, it is estimated that about 40 Ghanains arrived in Perth. As well as supporting themselves here in Canada, the majority of these newcomers are also trying to send money home to their families in Ghana. Unfortunately, they were advised abroad to come to Canada alone to apply as refugees and that they’d be able to send for their families once the process was started. Sadly, that’s not the case, and they now anticipate being here without their spouses possibly for several years while the refugee application process grinds on.

When I became aware of this situation shortly after my diaconal ordination in May, I questioned what could be done to help all these new folks adjust to life in Canada. My research led to Linda Alexander, the recruitment and settlement officer for Lanark and Renfrew counties. We put our heads together and quickly put out a call to church and community members, local service providers and the newcomers themselves with a goal of creating a coordinated response to support and assist these newest members of our community. Out of this meeting, a grassroots organization called Open Arms Perth was formed!

One of the first pressing needs identified was that fall would soon be turning into winter, and most of the newcomers, of course, had never experienced snow. An information session on winter preparedness was created and very well attended.

Calls were put out for donations of gently used coats, hats and mitts, which then enabled Open Arms Perth to host winter clothing distributions — events, which parishioners from St. James helped with greatly. Rather than ask for donations of used boots, an invitation was sent to local churches for donations of money for the purchase of vouchers from Marks’ Work Wearhouse to help with buying new winter boots. St. James was the first church to answer that call, which consequently allowed every newcomer in need to buy new boots.

Other calls were well responded to for donations of furniture, household items and bedding. Again, parishioners at St. James were particularly generous in responding, donating bedding which also included many new, handmade quilts. As one of our donors said: ”These people deserve to receive new things too!”

In December, space at St. James was made available for the nurses to hold a special celebration. These are very hardworking people, and it meant so much for them to have a space to relax together and celebrate the Christmas season with their own foods and music.

The past months have been a time of real blessing for all involved in Open Arms — for newcomers, volunteers and donors alike. Best of all, and most touching to experience, are the new personal relationships being formed as we warmly welcome our brothers and sisters in Christ to Canada. For many their journeys have been really difficult, and we’ve been grateful to be able to help them along in some small way.

Related article:

The Future Fund launches — first application deadline is March 15

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 Working directly with EHALE (Association for Community Health), one of its partners in Mozambique, PWRDF can now provide eight more Solar Suitcases to rural clinics throughout that country. 

So what is a Solar Suitcase? It’s exactly what it sounds like—a completely portable solar light system in an easily transported suitcase. The creation, delivery and installation of each suitcase costs $5,800 CAD. The suitcase is bright yellow in colour, like the sun whose rays it captures and was created for use in free-standing clinics.

 How does it work? Solar panels are installed on the roofs of rural clinics, while the suitcase itself is installed on a wall inside the clinic. The “door” to the suitcase opens sideways, much like a bathroom medicine cabinet. Inside the basic kit are LED lights for medical use, a universal cell phone charger, another charger for the batteries used in devices, and outlets for plugging in 12-volt powered equipment. The kit comes with either 40 or 80 watts of solar panels, a solar-power storage battery, and an expansion option to add capacity. Most excitingly—it also comes with a portable fetal heart monitor! 

How did these suitcases come to be? Almost 25 years ago, Dr. Laura Stachel was in northern Nigeria studying maternal and child health. She quickly realized that limited access to electricity often led to major problems; both mothers and their babies were dying due to the lack of light during childbirth. She told her husband Hal Aronson, a solar energy educator, about the situation, and in response, he designed a solar power system for the hospital where his wife was working. However, while Stachel and her colleagues were waiting for the full installation, they relied on a small suitcase-sized prototype. With it they charged communications devices and surgical LED headlamps to use during deliveries, some by Caesarean section. And that’s how the safe birthing of babies, led to the birth of WE CARE Solar Suitcases.

In addition to using the equipment in the solar suitcases to reduce maternal and child deaths, positive experiences at the clinics often encourage mothers to access other healthcare services. Care that can last for a lifetime often starts with a good experience at delivery. It’s a great encouragement to the mother and her husband to visit the clinic for post-natal checkups where they can access a range of other services such as nutrition monitoring, vaccines for a range of diseases, and hygiene and sanitation advice that is particularly important where cholera is present.

Diocesan supporters and participants in this incredible PWRDF project can be proud and happy, knowing our involvement is making a real concrete difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Mozambique. 

To learn more about how the suitcases work, check out this YouTube link. 

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 My translator spoke for me with a local woman who explained that no information would be available publicly — word would be spread directly, privately — mujere a mujere, woman to woman. Apparently, it’s just too risky to advertise such events. Sometimes rabble rousers are hired to attend public gatherings in order to wreck havoc (or worse), and then local organizers can be blamed and held to account for anything that goes wrong.

It turned out that there would be a gathering quite close to my hotel. I bundled up and headed out, no idea of what I might find. Nearby, Peace Square was about three quarters filled with people, mostly women, a few men and children. Most of the families appeared to be Indigenous people, their textiles and crafts neatly laid out on blankets,  around the perimeter of the Square. As they were every day, they were focused on the task at hand — selling their goods. 

I edged my way closer into the centre of things, a foreigner if anyone was to look closely at me, but no one seemed to care about that. I was a woman, I was welcome no matter my skin colour. There was a bonfire off to one side, with lots of chanting and yelling going on. A strong feeling of angst was tangible in the early evening air, blending in with the billows of dark smoke. I mingled in the crowd, feeling safe but troubled by the meaning of the nearby fire. I asked around a bit and eventually found someone who spoke English. She explained the bonfire was being used to burn an effigy of AMLO— Andrés Manuel López Obrador — President of Mexico. Elected democratically in 2018, this supposedly progressive president, commonly known as AMLO, had initially brought great hope for change to the people of Mexico. Mexicans had been jarred recently by several barbaric murders, including the slaying and skinning of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla, and the killing of Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Antón, a 7-year-old who’d been abducted from her school. There’d been an initial belief that AMLO would take action to address the growing rate of femicide (women killed based on their gender) within Mexico.  But people’s hopes had been dashed yet again, amid increasing frustration with his lack of attention to the issue.  I chatted with a number of young female activists in the crowd as I moved about, encountering in them all a disturbing mix of anger and despair. Dressed in purple, the colour of International Women’s Day, many waved banners declaring “We are the voice of those who are no longer with us.” 

As darkness fell, women gathered around the huge wooden cross which stands permanently in the centre of Peace Square. It was draped with a banner proclaiming “Fight today so we don’t die tomorrow.” There were women who stood alone, lost in their own thoughts.  Others were crying on each other’s shoulders, while many simply huddled in small groups, standing together in the solidarity of their pain and loss.  Most held candles high in the night air, filling the sky with an eerie glow. 

It was all a very disturbing experience for me—unlike anything I’d ever participated in before. I wasn’t even sure I could honestly say that I’d even truly “participated.” 

But a year later, I am writing this story to share what I saw and learned from the women at the 2020 International Women’s Day in San Cristobal de Casas, Mexico. It’s a very small, almost invisible part – but for me, it’s yet another strong connection to the women of Mexico. Now I can hope that their message ripples outward from here.

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It’s been almost a year now since I visited with the midwives in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico. Many of these women had at one time been supported in a project, partnered with PWRDF, and as a retired nurse in the field of maternal-child health, I was very fortunate have the opportunity to be welcomed into their tiny isolated community.

My life was profoundly changed after meeting these women and memories have been flooding back while I’ve been going through my photos. COVID-19 still seemed very far away early last March 2020, just a little blip on the international news when I was visiting Jijotol, north of San Cristobal, the state capital city.  I remember so clearly though the feeling in the pit of my stomach when one young man expressed his anxiety that I might actually be bringing this strange new germ into their community. His home had no running water, but Internet he did have, and he was following the news carefully. My thoughts immediately swept back to the ways Western viruses had previously decimated Indigenous people in his homeland. No wonder he was worried!

 One of the special photos I treasure is of a young mother, carrying a heavy bundle of firewood on her back, a very young baby strapped in a sling on her chest and a toddler with a terrible face rash clinging to her side. If she was the same age as the other young mothers I met there, I guessed she’d probably be about 16, maybe 17 years old.  Like the others, she looked much older though, life there is very hard on women.  As soon as I met her, I wondered what I could possibly do about the rash on the little boy’s face. I was pretty sure it was scabies, and probably all over the rest of his body too, just covered up with his ragged clothes. I usually carry a small cake of hotel soap in my purse when I travel, so I dug it out. Then I remembered I had some Polysporin in the travel first-aid kit in my suitcase!  Through the translator, I explained how to apply the ointment after washing with the soap. This young mother was so thankful, so very grateful that I felt embarrassed. It was such a small thing to give. Yes, “it was better than nothing,” but I felt really inadequate. Really, really inadequate.

When I asked if I could take a picture of she and her children, her face lit up with a shy and radiant smile and she nodded yes! I reached for my camera and that’s when I noticed her feet’. It was Lent and suddenly our Anglican celebrations of Maundy Thursday popped into my mind. In the flash of a few seconds, I thought of the clean and prepared feet that are washed in our symbolic liturgies. I thought of the experiences I’d had of washing the feet of many, many patients over my years as nurse. Then I wondered what it would be like to wash her feet.  They were like nothing the feet I’d seen before. Her young teenage skin was tough, cracked and filled with ground-in dirt, her toes already misshapen, the nails yellowed, torn and broken. 

As I look back now, I think of the feet that Jesus washed in the Gospels. They’d probably have been more like this young woman’s feet than the clean feet some of us present on Maundy Thursday. I’m thinking of his command to wash one another’s feet, to serve one another in the ways that he showed us.  A year has passed, and the question still burns in my heart. Whose feet are easy to wash and whose feet are much harder? Whose journey am I willing to share? 

Washing the feet of another person can take many forms. When done in love, it can give us an intimate glimpse into that person’s life, perhaps even allowing us to see and understand more fully the difficult road they walk. Jesus is always asking us to open our eyes wide, to reach out to others with the same compassion that he shows to us. He invites us to watch carefully for ways that we can walk alongside each other, to generously love and serve each other.

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