Anna Dombkins

And that's one of the realities we came to understand about Tanzania and why so many babies are orphaned is because formula milk is available, but it's so expensive that it's inaccessible.

And it's the equivalent of us walking into Woolies and one tin is $1,100.

That's the equivalent in terms of cost of living for local people.

So it's there, but you can't access it.

And so for women who die in childbirth, their baby then doesn't have a breastfeeding mother.

And so for so many babies who are abandoned, it's not because they're not wanted.

It's because they have no way to keep them.

And hospitals in Tanzania don't provide food, including formula for babies.

So there's no way to access nutrition for a baby who doesn't have a breastfeeding mother.

So for us, our babies were one or nearly one and so they could drink cow's milk, which was great, but we would get nine litres delivered on the back of a motorcycle every day and we'd pour it into big pots and there was dirt and leaves in there and we'd boil it on the stove to pasteurise it ourselves and then push it through a sieve and it was a whole process.

Just surviving the day was a whole process.

A whole process.

Yeah, they thought we were crazy.

And it was actually amazing watching them watch us live.

It's very close living and we became aware they could hear every conversation we were having, which was amazing in its own way.

But they'd actually never seen a dad be involved in the care of children.

And that was one of the things that really surprised them was watching Mark.

just parent and you know wipe faces and feed children and and do things to provide care for them in their culture men don't do that um it's all the women's job and so they just we'd watch them just stare into our window as if we were crazy but um yeah that was it was actually really lovely to share with them um a model of family where men and women work together and share the responsibilities of parenting and the joys of parenting

Yeah, they'd never left Mwanza where they live and so we put them on a bus.

We put a lot of thought into how to get them from here to there and we'd organised for them to have a phone but it got stolen and they got on a bus but then the bus never arrived and it was just this...