April 25, 2026
It Takes a Village
Ever wondered what it takes to keep a busy baby home in Africa running day in and day out? We’d love for you to meet our amazing staff at Neema Village and step into a behind-the-scenes look at life on campus.
(Grab a big cup of coffee—this is a longer one—but stick with us… it’s worth it!)
Visitors are always struck by the beauty and peace of Neema and it takes a lot of help to keep it that way. Yes, with 70 babies give or take each month, it is peaceful! I have heard visitors say as they look out over the campus, “I feel like I am in heaven!”
Meet our Director of Human Resources, Angel Macha. Angel keeps our 104 staff members working, hiring and firing, getting the sick days covered and listening to the concerns of our busy Tanzanian staff. If you didn’t know, Tanzanians are the only ones paid at Neema Village.
Our largest group of staff is of course our wonderful nannies. They are the mamas to the babies changing diapers, bathing, feeding their bottles, checking for sickness or problems with each baby.
With three shifts of nannies for 24 hour care of the babies, the nannies also do a lot of loving, hugging, kissing and rocking. When adoptive parents cannot be found for a baby, our nannies will often step up to foster the babies who have no home.
They sing, dance and do most anything to entertain the babies in their care.
Everest is our head farmer, with six helpers he manages our large vegetable garden. We were buying 20 or more watermelons a week, so growing our own watermelons is a big money saver for us. Everest has a degree in farming and we hired him fresh out of college.
He is always willing to try anything, even asparagus! We tell him if we buy it in the market then he should be growing it.
Healthy food makes healthy babies and staff.
Did you know there are over 1,000 varieties of bananas. We grow a number of different kinds at Neema including cooking bananas, little sugar bananas and these sweet red bananas. Babies love bananas.
Feeding the 5,000!
Some days I’m sure it feels that way to Ephram our head cook at Neema Village. We feed between two to three hundred meals every day. On Sundays we feed 5,000!!
Its bananas in the large pot in case you didn’t get it.
Neema hosts lots of special events, conferences, AA meetings, women’s groups and feeding Sunday church groups often with over 300 attending. It takes a lot of food to feed everyone and Gertrude is the best!
With close to 300 volunteers a year coming to hold babies it takes two full time cooks to keep them fed in the Pape Volunteer house. From African curry to morning biscuits that melt in your mouth, Ritha and Nuru are our famous cooks for the volunteers. Many people have asked them to write a cook book.
Keeping Neema beautiful is not only for beauty, but because we are on the side of a mountain. We have long retaining walls and grass and hedges that help keep the top soil from washing down the hill in the monsoon rains. With two helpers, Wilfred is our head gardener, planting colorful flowers, fruit trees and keeping the grass alive.
He also takes care of our 20+ orange trees, 150 coffee plants, and lots of fruit trees like mangoes, papaya, and tangerines. The Passion Fruit juice at the breakfast table is fabulous.
Just a few months ago, this little apple tree was just a few, dried twigs and we thought we would have cut it down. Now look at those apples!
Mama Heavenlight helps with the gardens. She spends most of her work day bending over so this is a rare glimpse of her face.
Ema is our contractor and takes care of the buildings on campus. Whither we are building a new building or painting the old ones that get weathered in the hot African sun Ema keeps Neema’s buildings looking beautiful
In the maintenance shop on campus Baraka keeps our 17 cars, trucks, vans, bus and occasional bycicle running when they break down on our rocky dusty roads. He also manages our large welding shop.
Helping men find jobs has become a big concern for us. African men who don’t have jobs lose their self respect and often leave their families. For a few years we have had an apprentisship program at Neema teaching one man at a time how to weld.
When they finish the program we buy them a welding machine, a helmet, gloves and rods.
Gadi is Baraka’s right hand man and helps with the apprentiship training.
A whole lotta moppin going on!
A baby home is messy in case you didn’t know! Between spilled milk, poopy on the floor, spit ups and baby food throwers it takes a lot to keep Neema’s floors clean enough for the babies to crawl around on.
Dr. Anold is our vet caring for our 15 big Holstein milkers, the new baby calves, the 150 laying hens, a pig named Kevin Bacon and150 broiler chicks which we slaughter every 6 weeks for meat. He designed and built a small aquaponics room with shelves and large pans of water for growing healthy greens for the cows and chickens. He takes care of our biogas system using cow pooh for cooking.
Dr Anold has a phenomenal voice and when he leads singing at church can sing Aretha Franklin under the table!
Milking starts at 6:30 every morning and goes again at 6:30 in the evening. Our original Holstein cows were shipped in from Norway and then trucked in to Arusha. They give so much milk at times we are able to share milk with the orphange down the road. We also have one jersey cow who gives milk with lots of butter fat and we make our own butter.
We love to tell folks the cows are just big babies, they came with cow mattresses and we grind their food so they don’t have to work so hard to chew! Scratch their ears and they will follow you all around the yard!
Trying to cut down on our meals served with expensive beef, Kim decided growing our own tilapia would be cheaper. Most Tanzanian do not eat a lot of beef in their homes so we think our staff will really enjoy the fish.
Anywhere from 80 to 120 eggs a day is enough to feed our large staff, volunteers and the big babies.
Talk about Job Security! With 70+ babies in the house this job never ends, day or night, our washer ladies are washing, drying and folding baby clothes, diapers, sheets, blankets, towels, etc. You can hear Mama Beni singing about her love for Jesus as she folds clothes most any time of the day.
Soccer has become a big part of Neema’s outreach program. We bring young people to Christ almost every week through this crazy soccer progrm. Plus our soccer games are just fun to watch. High energy Kelele, Maria’s nephew, is our head coach. We have games almost every day and managing the field, equipment, scheduling matches and some tutoring has become a full time job for Kelele.
Our Senior staff keeps Neema running smoothly every day. Priscilla has been our Office Manager since we were in the rent house downtown. She keeps totals on what we are spending in each area; baby care, MAP programs, building, water well drilling etc., and makes sure the money has receipts for every purchase.
Mama Musa, our very first employee, is now our government liason. She keeps us up to date on the ever changing government requirements and laws. She meets with government officials on Neema’s behalf. She attends meetings and also personally knows most of the commissioners and officials in town which is a big help when we need advise or help.
Our fun-loving purchaser, Cliff, goes to town almost daily getting good deals on products like diapers, soaps and medicines that we need to keep Neema running. Prices seem to double when we wazungu try to buy things. Ashley and Cliff fell in love while teaching bible classes to our large groups of kids and late night pick ups of volunteers from the airport. Ashley keeps him in line or is that visa versa?
Our water well crew does an important job for Neema, bringing water out to dry and dusty Maasai villages. A water well changes the life of the village, the mothers, the babies as well as the food they eat. When we bring them water to drink then we are invited to tell them about the Water of Life.
Ester is Maasai and she is just what we need to run our large Save The Mothers midwifery program. She knows the Maasai villages and keeps twelve different traditional birthers coming every month to Neema for a week of safe birthing training. She keeps lists of the women who have gone through the programs and once a month goes out to the villages to check on them.
Dr. Teddy was an eight year veteran pediatrician and our favorite doctor at a large local hospital when we hired her to come work at Neema. Kim compared what we were spending taking babies back and forth to the hospital almost daily, keeping preemies in NICU units for weeks on end and she realized we would actually save money by hiring our own doctor.
So we hired two! Dr. Sarun is Maasai and we treat a lot of Maasai mothers and babies who speak only Maasai. Dr. Sarun checks each MAP mom and her baby and you can see him as he walks around the campus to the different buildings, checking on the sick. He goes out on medical mission trips with Preacher Paul and is a good Bible scholar translating scripture and occasionally preaching himself. Ester is our nurse in training and we are sending her to nursing school.
Napendaela is Neema’s director of the Rehabilitation Day Care for special needs babies on campus. She loves each baby and tracks their progress each month. The day care starts out with Napy’s bible class every week morning. There are 7 to 8 women who help with the daily training, helping each baby to learn to walk and talk and reach their greatest potential. Napendaela’s beautiful name means “I Love God!”
Grace Maasa directs our large women’s programs including MAP, (Mothers Against Poverty). She teaches Bible classes and conducts the group therapy meetings for women who have been abused and thrown out. She organizes all the conferences that meet in the Preslar Mothering Center. Grace has a university degree in Bible as well as a Social Work degree. Well respected by everyone, Grace is just what we need for this huge and important work at Neema Village. Almost 200 women have gone through the life changing MAP program.
Pastor Paul serves as the minister at Neema Village, faithfully pouring into both our staff and the surrounding community. His days are spent preparing sermons, counseling, and visiting those who are hurting or in need. He also finds time to play a little soccer each week.
Paul coordinates our Men’s Conferences and leads Bible studies using the “Jesus Films,” which he takes out to Maasailand several times each month. Over the past two years, evangelism efforts have grown significantly, keeping him very busy as more people come to hear the Gospel.
As the number of new believers continues to increase, we are praying for just the right person to come alongside Pastor Paul—someone who can help disciple those who have made the decision to follow Christ and have been baptized.
Keeping volunteers going in the right direction is a huge job. Vivacious, bouncy and huggy Caroline who was our music teacher has now moved to Volunteer Coordinator. We have nearly 300 volunteers each year. Making sure we don’t forget one at the airport and making sure they get to see everything they want to see on their once in a lifetime safari to Neema Village is just a part of the huge job of taking care of our volunteers.
Heavenlight joined Neema Village in 2022. Born into a Muslim family, she began searching for something more at the age of 16—and she found Jesus. Though she was not supported by much of her family, she made the courageous decision to follow Him. Today, Heavenlight boldly shares who God is and what He has done in her life.
She began her work at Neema Village as the Volunteer Coordinator—the first Tanzanian to hold this position—and she did an incredible job. Heavenlight is now pursuing a degree in counseling while serving as the assistant to the MAP Director, where she counsels our young mamas and helps guide them toward a hopeful future.
When Max came to Neema Village, Heavenlight instantly fell in love with him and stepped into the role of his mama. She has since adopted him—and what a blessed little boy he is.
Help! I’m scared to end this blog in case I have left out someone! And we definetly would not want to forget our guards who keep the babies, the property, the staff, volunteers and everyone safe.
All our workers are important and hopefully they know how much we love and appreciate them.
But without YOU, our supporters, we would have no staff or babies or cars to repair or food to cook or floors to mop! You are the glue that holds us together. We know that God is empowering you to be good stewards. Thank You to everyone who keeps this incredible mission working, saving babies and women in Tanzania.
Kelle, Kim and Dorris