Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
When The Jakarta Post reported a baby was being held at a clinic in Tangerang early last year because of her parents' inability to pay delivery fees, she was the first reader who called up and offered to help the family.
Katherine Bramhall, who at that time was working as a midwife in Ubud, Bali, raised some US$500 from several American donors for the baby's parents. The money was more than enough to pay the birth clinic bill and send the parents home with their newborn.
At the time, the American was freshly graduated from midwifery school in Maine and was serving out a month-long apprenticeship at Yayasan Bumi Sehat, a free clinic founded by American midwife Robin Lin. She helped with birth deliveries, and also visited a prison in Ubud to help train staff to manage trauma in birth.
Bramhill said she was so moved by her experience that she decided to forge a lasting relationship with Lim's clinics in Ubud.
"My goal is to get sustainable programs in place so they know they will have a constant supply of things like prenatal vitamins and baby blankets," she said.
In September she returned to Ubud, bringing with her a shipment of prenatal vitamins donated by the Brattleboro-based New Chapter Inc.
Some 1,000 bottles of vitamins and 1,400 packets of a nutrient-rich drink called Berry Green were part of an estimated $70,000 in cash contributions, donated medical equipment and supplies given to Yayasan Bumi Sehat clinics in Bali, Ubud, and Aceh.
With the help of two Vermont bloggers and the La Leche League in Boston, where she once worked as a holistic health practitioner, she also collected more than 400 receiving blankets for newborns in Bali.
"It may seem like nothing to you and me, but a clean, warm blanket is a big deal to poor people who have nothing in Ubud," she said.
Seeing the families together was rewarding, she said, but also made her long for her own.
"I was at the point where I ached for my family and my people. I was there by myself, so I lived inside my head all day and all night because I couldn't do without the smell of my own children."
Katherine grew up in farm country in upstate New York, where she spent much of her youth outside, riding horses, walking, skiing and gardening. She said living close to nature made her self-sufficient and strong in body, mind and spirit.
When she was 15, she volunteered at a hospital for the summer, and a life of caring for people was begun. She married and raised two children in Boston, Massachusetts, and today works at Full Spectrum Midwifery in Burlington, Vermont.
She said her experience in Indonesia was an eye-opener, as she came to see it as poverty-stricken and with maternal mortality rates off the charts.
"It's like a whole different world. I couldn't have imagined it," she said, adding that she was startled by the living conditions.
She was also stunned by how little headway had been made on rebuilding after a tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of Indonesians in and around Aceh in December 2004. Roads were still wiped out, bridges had not been repaired and utility poles were only now being reset.
"You just take for granted that two years is enough time to put things back together, but sadly it's not. The tsunami is only over in the world's eyes. There's still nothing there," she said.
She said New Chapter Inc. expressed interest in becoming the sole supplier of prenatal vitamins for the Yayasan clinics, and word of the continuing blanket initiative and her other fund-raising efforts was spreading fast.
"What blows me away is how many people call up and say, 'I heard what you're doing. How can I help?'"
One anonymous Vermont donor wrote a check for a new clothes dryer that will replace the one that recently broke down at the Bali clinic.
Other donations included four Doppler baby heart monitors.
If it weren't for the cold showers, hungry-for-money customs officers at Ngurah Ray International Airport, and the incessantly barking dogs, Bramhill said she would have no complaints about her trips to the country.
She was already planning a return trip to Bali, this time accompanied by two student midwives, for another month of volunteering.
"I'm not stopping," she said. "My heart is there."
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