The Shirts Off Our Backs Sewing Bee

At last night's Operation Brief (where we discuss all of the activities we've done and discuss upcoming plans) we were told about a clinic up in the mountains where it actually gets pretty cold. The doctor up there said that many babies get sick and eventually die because they don't have baby blankets and caps to keep them warm. The people are so poor they cannot afford material to make them. So, Jan Kline, a nurse with Project Hope, and I put our heads together to see what we could come up with. We cannot use government supplies without going through the proper authorization, and we don't have time for that process before we leave, so we tried to think of what we could do with what we have on hand until we could find a better solution. We found out that we could use items that were going to be thrown away, so we wondered if there were any old blankets, towels etc. that might be around. The laundry happened to have some old towels they were just going to incinerate so we asked if we could use them. They're not very pretty, they're a worn out brown, but would definitely keep a baby warm. So, we cut some triangles and took a sewing repair kit, the kind you would keep in your purse, and sewed them into the corners of the towels to make some hoodie type bath blankets. We called them "Mercy Wraps". Then I cut the sleeve off of my "I Love Nursing" t-shirt, put a basting stitch through one end, pulled it up, stitched it together and made a little baby cap. Looked kind of funky but serviceable. Jan came up with the idea of going down to the pediatrics ward to try it on one of the babies. Fit great. Well, things took off from there. We got permission from the Commodore to announce at the Ops brief that tomorrow night we wanted to have a "sewing bee" to make some of these up to take to the clinic until we could get some proper ones acquired, it takes a long time to get things shipped here sometimes. So Jan went off to make the powerpoint and I stayed in the ward room to finish sewing our prototypes by hand. As I was sitting there a couple about my age came in and sat down and we were sort of watching the television. We started talking and it turned out to be a gentleman and his wife who work here, they were waiting to take a boat back to shore after touring the ship. When he found out what we were doing he offered to transport the caps and "blankets" to the clinics for us. So, there we had supply and transportation taken care of, all we needed now was some buy-in from the staff. The ops brief went well and the Commodore said to make a special announcement tomorrow for folks to bring a t-shirt and help sew these things. I told the surgeons to "show their stuff!" Then the Commodore said "Suppo (the supply guy) we will have ice cream for those who sew won't we?" Great! Then I had a pharmacist tell me she has a sewing machine, and maybe some extra fleece for blankets, so that will make it even better.
Jan and I are going to try and visit a couple of orphanages that this gentleman knew about. He said the nuns there would be so grateful for anything, these people are probably the most impoverished in SE Asia. Hopefully we can help set something up to help them long after we leave. They really need it.
Now if I can only find some thread around here!