大象传媒

Roy Jenkins' guest for the first of a two part edition of All Things Considered is the single mother of three adopted children, who has brought up more than fifty others. She has done it in one of the poorest countries on earth, Burundi - politically unstable, with persistent violence, a refugee crisis, and the legacy of a civil war which took 300,000 lives.

A trained midwife, Chrissie Chapman was living in Dinas Powys, in the Vale of Glamorgan, when she became convinced that she should travel to the small East African state on a short-term mission to open a maternity clinic and dispensary. That was 28 years ago. She went on to set up a centre for abandoned babies and traumatised children, and later a schools complex. And her own family grew along the way. She's brought many children into the world and also seen many dying along the way through disease and malnutrition.

And she has been close to death herself - given just months to live in her early twenties, and all too familiar with deadly violence in her adopted country. In all this she's convinced that she's been sustained by divine miracles (and on one occasion by a squadron of angels).

This programme was first broadcast in June 2018