Hope for Life; PCC; Buduburam; etc.

what's next

2011-11-29T22:06:00.012Z

Three months ago I was waiting for our SMA Regional Superior (a.k.a. “my boss”) in Ghana to come pick me up from Bethany House. I was on my way to the airport and leaving the home I’d had for the past 7 ½ years. He was a half hour late, which was fine since I’d told him I wanted to leave an hour earlier than I thought was really necessary. I thought it would give us a little more time to relax at the airport. So, I called him to see how far he was and learned that with all the road construction going on in Accra he was somewhere . . . uh, somewhere not close, down some wrong roads, etc. etc. Finding Bethany House was hard enough without the road construction, but now that the road configurations were changing daily, it was next to impossible to find the house for people who don’t make the daily trip into the part of Accra where I was located. Next step – get a taxi ASAP that would be willing to face the rush hour traffic (which daily goes from roughly 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.) to take me across the city to the airport (which could be a 30-minute trip at 3:00 a.m. when there is no traffic and up to a 3-hour trip during rush hour).

These were the final days of the summer holidays, and when the taxi reached the airport we found it was jammed worse than I’d ever seen throughout 15 years of going to/from Kotoka International. Once inside the airport there was a 5 minute period when I couldn’t move in any direction – I’m talking walking movement – people were just jammed in there, standing room only, no moving space allowed. Wow. But – finally, with a little sweat involved (not unusual), all worked out and there was still time (according to me and not to the airline people) for me to rush down to the Aerostar for a quick final Star (who knew it now comes in cans!? as though I need another reason to go back) and kebab (a mouth water skewer of meat) with my boss and other friends who’d come to see me off, and then rush back into the airport to be told by airport personnel that I needed to get to the gate “NOW!”. I got through customs and security and to the gate to find most of the people had already boarded. But . . . I was on time, so no problems, not even any threats to off-load my luggage blasting over the airport intercom.

The last couple of times when I’d returned to the U.S. for a break I started off my return with a camping trip to the Boundary Waters (BWCA). It was a beautiful, in-between time – not my daily life in Ghana, and not yet my life in the US. It gave me a peaceful, reflective period – a chance to adjust my thoughts, process my feelings, and solidify for me who I am before I get caught up in the next step of my life. But this time, winter weather might have already been threatening the BWCA area and my going from the tropics straight into winter camping . . . well, enough said. I like winter camping, but . . .

SMA was able to work out cheap tickets so that while on the way to the US I could have a little layover in Europe to visit friends and former colleagues. It served the same purpose as the BWCA – an in-between-Ghana-and-the-US step. It was also a chance to see again some good people I care about and who care about me – former SMA colleagues, the founder of Hope for Life and also the founder of PCC, and friends who had volunteered at projects where I’d been. A few hi-lites: beaches around Rome (sunnier and warmer than they were in Ghana at the time I’d left); beaches in Holland (all kinds of weather); Wadlopen (the previous link describes what this is and this link has pictures of it - but not pictures of me and my friends); Eisinga Planetarium, the world’s oldest functioning planetarium (this was a side-trip while on the way to northern Netherlands for the Wadlopen); Trappist Monastery (um, beer); frescoes in Lyon; Lake Martignano; - - and above all, lots of time with people who I feel make up this huge extended family I have and who let me be part of their day-to-day lives, who took time off to be with me while we: rode bikes to the beach; walked; had a picnic in the park; shared cups/bottles of coffee/beer/wine (any time of the day); sat in the sun or near the fire; listened to (and sometimes sang) old and new favorite songs; read books side-by-side; and talked and processed our lives.

In response to my last blog, someone asked me: What’s next? Where will I be? What will I do? Will I go back? (“Enquiring minds want to know.” – or so I was assured.)

What’s next has already started. I’m still with SMA and have a commitment for another two years. It’s different this time – my home will be in the US at the SMA formation house outside of Washington D.C. We’ll find out how best I can fit into what makes it possible for the SMA lay missionaries to stay in Africa and do what we do. I’ll be part of what has made it possible for me to stay in Africa with SMA for 13 years.

What’s next is maintaining and building the connections and friendships I have with people in W. Africa who have been and still are important to me and my life. There are some good people for whom I’d like to continue trying to help reach their goals and dreams of building up their lives and their communities. I still have stories that people have shared with me and that I still haven’t written about.

What’s next is being geographically closer and more accessible to family and friends here in the US. What’s next is hopefully taking some language lessons, some violin lessons, maybe some other lessons. What’s next is starting to resume a few other pastimes I love.

What’s next is trying to maintain feelings of passion and intensity towards life and what I’m doing in life. I’ve always been blessed to be doing things that I care about and want to do. I’ve been back in the States and with SMA near DC for about 1 ½ months. I sometimes have to remind myself that I still care about what I’m doing even though I’m not in Africa, and I care about the people who are around me and the people in Africa for whom I’m doing it. I recently realized that the main difference in what I’m doing now (as well as other times in the past when I’ve returned to the US) and what I did in Africa is the setting where I’m doing it (it’s not really as simple as that – the word “setting” is broad).

This shouldn’t be such a grand, shocking realization, but when I thought of what it meant – that I’m often doing some tasks here in the US that are similar to what I did at times while in Africa (some office work, paperwork, computer work, “administration”) – it changed things. I realized that what makes me feel so alive while in Africa isn’t just the work that I care about, but it’s how intense life is while I’m living there – just day to day stuff (the “setting”) is more intense. I care very much about the work I’m doing and the people I’m with wherever I am (most of the time, anyway). Otherwise, I wouldn’t choose to do that work, be in that place or be with those people. It’s the intensity of the moment-to-moment that gives me the feelings of passion about life while in Africa. And it’s probably what I miss when I’m not there and what keeps taking me back. I can live and work here in the States, and I can care about what I’m doing while here. I want to and hope that I can find that intensity as well. Or that I can be satisfied without it. Facing this challenge is probably the biggest “what’s next” for me.

2011-10-13T01:11:00.016Z

I’m usually a little behind in updating the blog. Occasionally I’m writing about something that just happened or that’s on my mind at that moment. Sometimes the story’s something ongoing – usually if it’s an individual’s story. Sometimes it’s something that took place in the past few weeks. And sometimes, like this update, it’s about something from 2 months ago, or that took place 6 months to a year or more ago – maybe a particular event, maybe an ongoing struggle I’m dealing with in my thoughts, experiences, feelings.

Someone recently (in the last 6 months to a year ago) pointed out that I’m writing a lot about the camp and less about the work in Accra. Hmmm. That person was correct. I have a couple more updates about Hope for Life, but that’s not what this one is about. I think I got stuck on the camp stories because there’s a greater feeling of . . . um, I’m not sure: aloneness; abandonment; manipulation; tragedy; greed; corruption; courage; love; frustration; selflessness; selfishness; anger; dependency; . . . oh, I could continue the list if my vocabulary was expansive enough or if I had a thesaurus next to me and if I hadn’t already digressed even before beginning what I wanted to write about. Anyway, the Liberian civil war has brought out the majesty and dignity and selflessness in some people . . . and the idiocy, greed and depravity in others (and, for all of this, I’m not just referring to Liberians, but the larger community of peacekeepers, relief agencies, missionaries, etc).

Anyway . . blah blah blee blee . . I don’t want to get all preachy or political in this. I try to save that for one-on-ones with people who are interested.

Last year, at the end of July, we had some money in the Harmony coffers and did a beach trip with the kids (a reminder: Harmony is a center for people on the camp with disabilities and it has an afternoon program for kids with disabilities. This program also welcomes siblings, friends, neighbor children, etc. of the kids with disabilities). We had wanted to do more outings because that’s part of a therapeutic process (doing a variety of activities etc. etc. etc.) and because, well, it was just plain fun for all of us - - children and staff and parents, to be out of the daily routine in a fun, playful and beautiful way.

But, inflation and all that goes with the economic problems around the world prevented us from doing any more outings. Sad, but what to do? Things needed to be done with the money that was donated so that the afternoon program would continue. Outings seem like they should somehow be a priority (in my mind, at least, since they seem to be providing the greatest growth potential for the kids, the greatest healing and feelings of togetherness and community for the adults with the kids), but, when ongoing running costs (which are extremely minimal) are barely being met, then we needed to make the decision to keep meeting those costs and let the “extra-curricular” activities kind of slip away. Finally, my departure was drawing nearer and nearer and we really wanted to do another outing. Then my 3rd quarter allotment and donations came in and there was enough in the donations that we could work out another beach trip (thanks to all who helped with that).

The organization, the togetherness, the cooperation, the sacrifices that took place to make this beach trip possible made it all worthwhile. Wonderful people and a great day for all of us.

I also had some good friends who were visiting and joined for the beach trip – a couple of them were life guards, so, an added bonus for all of us. This trip took place at the beginning of August and they’re still talking about this being a special memory they have of their 2nd last day in Ghana.

I look at the pictures now that I’ve gone from Ghana, gone from Harmony – and, of course, I feel for it. I miss the good people I was working with, I miss (and, to be honest, am relieved not to be responsible for . . .) some of the struggles, and I miss the beauty I saw in so many of the people I was with there. I miss my friends, but life will go on . . .

"Grandpa" is the teacher in the afternoon program

Me and Thomas, who I've written about in the past

Elizabeth, wearing the perfect t-shirt for her, "Powerful", and yet, so humble and simple. A fabulous woman who made this beautiful day possible

getting my head on straight

2011-09-02T12:59:00.010Z

In 2005 or 6, Steve decided to “take the lead” back to Liberia, leaving his wife and kids in Buduburam while he went to check everything out. Things were supposed to be calmer, people were trickling back home, and Steve wanted to take his family back – but he wanted to see for himself how it was, set things up, get life going a bit before bringing everyone. He traveled overland, passing through Cote d’Ivoire and then in a small vehicle – 4 passengers and a driver – crossed into Liberia. Soon after passing the border their car broke down, and within minutes they were attacked. Steve ended up in the hospital, having received more blows with a cutlass (machete) than his fellow travelers. He had received deep cuts up and down his back and around his upper thighs, which have healed over time, but the doctors were unable to save one of his legs. After a couple of months in the hospital he returned to Ghana, where, through my involvement with Harmony over the past couple of years, I’ve come to know him. He’s too old to receive any assistance from Liliane Fonds (they have a cut-off age of 25 years), and he’s been struggling to keep his two daughters in school, get a leg that fits properly and doesn’t give him boils and blisters when he puts it on, and make sure there’s food in the pot and a roof for his family to sleep under. From time to time I’ve helped him out a bit with the leg troubles, thanks to donations I’ve been receiving.

But now the end of my time in Ghana has come and I’ve been wondering what to do for him so that he can meet his and his family’s needs in a more independent manner. Recently when I visited the camp Steve met with me and expressed exactly the same concern. I asked him what suggestions he had – and was impressed, but not surprised, that he was ready with a great idea in mind. He had recently completed the baking course that the Harmony Center offers. He had an oven and gas, but he needed assistance to get the initial stock of supplies so he could start his home-baking business. I advised him to put together a list of what was needed and how much it cost, and "we’d see what to do."

Around the same time, Henry also talked to me about helping him get an oven for his baking business. He was planning to soon return to Liberia and wanted to take the oven back with him and set up a baking business in his homeland. Henry has almost always been at the Harmony Center over the past couple of years – in the back room where the baking and cooking classes take place. He’s the one who’s been responsible for the fabulous aromas that are usually filling that small lime-green building. Sometimes they’re sweet smells, sometimes savory – every time they make my stomach rumble. Usually, Henry has brought me a sample – sometimes to eat on the spot, sometimes to take with me – corn bread, meat pies, donuts, spring rolls . . . (ooooh – lunch is still an hour, at least, away for me . . . time to move on from the food topic). I thought Henry was the teacher; he always was there, knew what was going on, seemed to be advising the people, and had a kind of authoritative presence. But recently, I found out from Elizabeth that Henry was one of the students, not the teacher. However, he knew it all, she said, could easily teach the class, and often takes over for the teacher when she can’t make it. I asked Henry to find out how much the oven would cost, and, in the manner that I’ve learned over the years, didn’t make any promises, but said the usual, “and we’ll see what to do.”

Joe is someone I don’t think I’ve written about – he’s a relatively new SMA Lay Missionary from the US who’s taking over my work in the camp and also some of the work I do in Winneba. He recently helped a young woman who’d completed the baking course to get her starting supplies (just as Steve was asking me to do). Joe was telling me how it’s a loan and she’s going to pay it back over time. It would go into something like a revolving fund so that a future graduate could benefit in the same way. And I thought, of course, that’s exactly what our role should be about. It’s not about giving financial assistance, but giving a sense of pride in earning what was received, giving a sense that the person on the receiving end has the power and dignity to get her life into her control, that she can do it on her own, that she is not dependent upon the rebels or the UN or the missionaries to run her life for her, but that she has the power and ability to run her life herself – that she has earned that right and is not dependent upon someone who was generous and has made a donation of food, money, or clothes. She was given a loan, and she could and would pay it back because she wanted to and deserved the opportunity to show that she now had control of her life – not the UN, not the rebels, not the missionaries.

I know this way of doing things and the value of building people up on the inside – it’s what the project Hope for Life in Accra is all about, it’s one of the basic principles of my education, and it’s also a significant part of our training in the US to be lay missionaries (Training for Transformation) and yet, sometimes it would slip my mind. I’d think, hmm, I received a donation to help someone out, so I would help someone out by paying their education, helping with medical bills, topping up the money lacking for rent or for rebuilding a shop that had been torn down years ago, etc. (It’s easier to just go about giving the money/whatever and not worry about setting up some system of earning that assistance – and sometimes I’d forget - or be lazy or too tired to want to deal with working out some form of earning the assistance - and just take this easy route.) But by following this route, I was neglecting the most important part of the assistance being offered – the part about building up a person’s self-esteem, dignity and feelings of control in her life. I would get caught up in all that was going on in my life and forget to take a breath and a step back before taking the step forward. I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by people (like Joe) who give me those reminders, often (as with Joe) without even realizing that they’re giving me a much needed shaking to get my head back on right.

So, as usual with people I’m involved with on the camp, I turned to my beautiful friend and advisor Elizabeth. I talked to her about Steve and Henry and how they’ve asked me to help them. I asked her thoughts about giving the assistance to Steve as Joe had done for the other woman. Steve could pay it back to Harmony over time, and then after the next baking course the person who did the best and had the most need could then also get set up. She liked the idea and when Steve came by we worked out the details, and he had no complaints about the plan.

Some of the assistance Harmony has been receiving has recently been cut, so after the current baking class finishes, they can no longer afford a baking teacher. I suggested that maybe Henry could be assisted with his oven and in exchange repay a part of it with cash that would go into that fund for future graduates, and the balance he would pay it back in kind by becoming the baking teacher for the next class and not receiving any monthly pay – with the understanding that the oven was his pay. Elizabeth was happy with the idea, but Henry wanted time to think about it. It would delay his planned return to Liberia. I respected his disappointment and request for time to think it through. And after a week, he agreed.

All of this happened just as I was receiving some donations sent with the 3rd quarter living allowance. As always, it seems timing works out perfectly – a need comes along, and as we figure things out here, a donation comes along to make it possible. I had told Steve and Henry “we’ll see what to do.” And we did, thanks to the people who surround me – people who sent donations at the right time, people who shook me up and helped me get my head back on straight, and people who want to build up their lives, not just sit back and receive another handout.

Steve, me and Elizabeth in front of one of the Harmony ovens

Henry with one of the Harmony ovens

Birthday Week.

2011-06-22T21:17:00.004Z

Just a quick update about a few people I’ve written about in the past.

On Wednesday (22 June) I went to the camp. I already knew it was Elizabeth’s birthday and we had planned to celebrate in some way together whenever I got to the camp. I hadn’t expected it to be on her birthday, though, but when on Monday I was able to also take care of what was scheduled for Wednesday, I decided it was a good chance for me to go to the camp for this special woman on her day.

I’ve described the Harmony Center in the past – it works with people with disabilities and their families, offering a few classes and other trainings, including things like tie/dye, batik, baking, sewing, catering, and some others. In the afternoon they have a program for the children with disabilities where they get some basic classroom training, as well as art classes and drumming and culture dancing lessons. It’s a wonderful organization and has been a great group of people I look forward to going to be a part of every week or two.

Every time I go to Harmony, Henry seems to be baking something – and the place smells delicious. I don’t know if he’s the baking instructor (for some reason I’ve never asked) or if he just should be the baking instructor. He often sends me home with meat pies, corn bread, short bread, etc.

Henry is the guy on the left, I think the only guy in the photo, in fact

This time, Joe (a new SMA lay person who is working on the camp) and I took Elizabeth out for lunch (potato greens! my favorite!), and Elizabeth and I shared a box of Don Garcia (Don Garcia is a boxed wine that doesn't have a link to any website. Hmm, there must have been a 5 in the clock. And hmmm, is that an inside joke or is it clear what that means?). When we got back to Harmony, Henry had finished baking and intricately decorating a beautiful cake for Elizabeth, saying “Happy B-Day Madam”. David, one of Elizabeth’s co-workers (along with Thomas, who was away at a training), gave a very moving speech.

group shot - Henry is in the yellow shirt; David in the white shirt; Elizabeth is between them

He talked of how much they admire and respect Elizabeth, about how she always has time for everyone, how she goes out of her way to sit down with people, listen to their troubles, offer comfort and advice. Doing so much for everyone around her and getting so little in return. Very sincere, and very touching.

Elizabeth having me help cut the cake after the talk and presentation

I was going to go afterwards, but Elizabeth asked me to wait a bit. She suggested I go watch Joe doing some physical therapy with the kids in the afternoon program, and then whispered that Henry was also decorating a cake for me. Wow – that’s exactly what Henry was doing (it had been my birthday on Tuesday).

The cake was beautiful and as intricate as Elizabeth’s. When Henry finished, they carefully wrapped it and someone even carried it to the trotro for me. And then I took over. Oops. It was still beautiful when, after 3 crowded trotros and a 15-minute walk on a muddy road, I got it home, but it was a little less intricate – more a blending of design and colours – but still beautiful, and still delicious. It got shared with everyone in the house – and I’m happy to see that there’s still half of it in the refrigerator that I’ll be able to take a chunk of with some coffee in the morning.

And now Friday is going to be Alice’s birthday. I have to go to Cape Coast School for the Deaf, so am not sure I’ll be back in time to celebrate with her. She’s at the house at the moment, we just did her final review for the eye surgery she had a few months ago – all is fine. She’ll soon be going back to Madina (a part of Accra on the far opposite side of the city from where Bethany House is located – it can take 2 – 4 hours to drive there, depending upon traffic), and with the help of donations we’ve received, start working on her kiosk. I’m too excited for her – and hopeful that this kiosk will be a way for her to get back on her feet, eat regularly, stay healthy and happy, and feel she has the dignity in her life that she deserves.

Alice

2011-05-16T20:01:00.014Z

This is another blog requesting assistance. But, first, maybe I should give a quick update about some other people for whom I’ve made requests in the past year or so. Benedict, the guy who’s been helping SMA lay missionaries around their houses for about 10 years now, hasn’t yet received any assistance towards his goal of education. Thomas, the guy who works with Elizabeth, was able to receive some donations that have made it possible for him to pay his exam fees for round 1 of the exams in September, and he had enough left over to take some preparatory classes. Elizabeth was able to get enough for her rent and is still actively in charge of Harmony. Jackson was able to receive what was needed to pay the rent for the hostel he needed while he attends school. So, thanks to everyone who has made these things possible - - - - and now . . .

Alice is one of the original Hope for Life members.

She’s blind, has a quick wit, likes to pick an argument when given a chance (all in a way to challenge, encourage a conversation, or maybe annoy me if she knows I’m tired). She’s like a sister to me. Years ago when I was living in Accra and also with HFL I got to know Alice. She came by the house a lot, stayed often, helped out, talked, told stories, laughed and was a strong part of life there. At some point in the 25-year history of HFL, Alice was president of the organization. She’s also been a branch coordinator (the head of the “branch” of Hope for Life in the part of Accra where she lives). A beautiful woman.

When HFL started in 1986, Alice was the one who wove the chairs that we still use around the dining table today (the chair seats and backs are woven with some kind of grass or something). She also wove doormats that we took to bazaars to sell with other HFL products. In addition, she had a small stationery shop on the side of the road, a wooden shack where she sold basic school supplies. She was managing to live her life.

At that time, on Sundays, the other SMA lay missionary and I took whoever was in the house to the beach. It was one of the highlights of my life here in Accra during those years – going to the beach (and the other favorite time was sitting for dinner together with everyone in the house: eating, talking, laughing, joking, singing songs – sometimes sharing a box or two of wine, depending upon how much help I needed to swallow the meal that night, which was usually delicious, but at times needed some assistance). The first time we went with Alice to the beach I held her hand and we went into the water. She had grown up on the coast, but this was her first time to ever enter the sea. Every time a wave came she’d laugh, turn her head, and eventually tell me to stop. She was convinced I was the one pushing water onto her. Even when I held both her hands, explained and embellished my limited knowledge of waves, she still was convinced that somehow I was the one making her head go under the water. It’s one of my best beach memories.

Somewhere around 2001, the landlord of the land where she had her shop decided that he wanted that parcel of land back for his own use. Without giving Alice warning, he sent people to start destroying her shop early one morning. She didn’t even have a chance to remove her supplies. All was destroyed. She had nowhere to turn, and since has been unable to rebuild her business. At this time, she sells a few different candies just outside of the room where she lives. When it rains, her room floods, her clothes and Braille books get ruined and it takes her awhile to get things organized again.

She’s struggling. Last year while she was staying at the house she told me that she has a lot of pain in her eyes and even has trouble sleeping due to the pain. In November we went to an eye doctor who recommended outpatient surgery, scraping the growths from her eyes, and removing the pain – it would be free if she had insurance, but would cost around $300 (if I remember well) without insurance. Her insurance had expired (uggh), so we decided to wait until it could be renewed. He also explained to her that this surgery would only take away the pain; it wouldn’t restore any sight.

I invited her to come stay at Bethany House for the Christmas celebration. When she arrived, she quietly told me how grateful she was – she hadn’t known how she would have enough food to make it to the end of that week and that she doesn’t always have food during a day.

It breaks my heart – she’s intelligent, compassionate, and wants to work to take care of her life. She’s like a sister to me – we tease, joke, poke, tickle, give each other hard times, throw water on each other, etc. And we all had a great Christmas – with Alice and me washing the dishes following each meal for the two-day celebration. After Christmas, we arranged for a good friend of ours to help her renew her insurance. She didn’t have the money, but I’d received some donations. When the insurance finally came, we arranged for the surgery.

She came and stayed at the house prior to the surgery, and when the day came I joined her to the Save the Nation's Sight clinic (a wonderful place - Dr. Baah has been helpful with Blahmacee (another Blahmacee link here) and Alice, considering the limited resources available for the work, etc. - he and his wife are amazing to me). Following the surgery, we were given ointment, drops and painkillers, and came back to the house where she spent the night sick to her stomach, vomiting, and in pain. I thought of my mom, and went down the street to get some coke, some sprite and some cream crackers (closest thing to Saltines here), also some Digestives for the next morning, and a Malta. She was able to keep down the coke and the crackers – and, as a result, take the pain killer.

I’ll leave out the removal of her bandage and the time spent recovering and doing follow-up visits – other than the first follow-up visit. It was a different doctor who examined Alice when we went for the follow-up. When she’d finished the exam, Alice asked her if there wasn’t some surgery they could do to give her some sight back, just enough sight to differentiate light or dark, or maybe distinguish colors. The doctor didn’t respond, and after about 10 seconds looked at me and just shook her head. I answered for her, reminding Alice what the other doctor had explained, that she couldn’t get her sight back, that there was nothing they could do.

I’ve never had to deliver news like that before – when someone I cared about from the camp was dying years ago I was told not to tell her. This was different – Alice asked, she was hopeful, in spite of having heard the answer in the past. There’ll probably be a time in the future, another eye doctor somewhere, and she’ll ask again. I suppose it’s not easy to just give up that kind of hope, that there will be some kind of miracle, that something may change, that another doctor may have different skills, machines, knowledge, abilities, magic, whatever.

After a couple of months in the house, during which time Alice helped wash window louvers, walls, dishes – whatever she was asked to do – she returned home. Only one eye had been operated upon, and we have one more visit to make at the clinic, during which the doctor will discuss an artificial eye or something and Alice can decide if she needs surgery on her other eye.

Alice and I have had time to talk about how to improve her situation. The first priority was to get rid of the pain. That one we can check off the list. The second was to start her business again. We talked about this a few months before Christmas. I told her to figure out what was needed – and finally, she did. She gave me a list a builder had prepared with details of what’s needed to build her kiosk/shop again. I promised I would write a blog about her. It’s taken time – as usual, a lot’s been going on, blah blah blah. But, time is also running out for me – so while I put off major paperwork/report I need to do for another donor organization, I am updating the blog about this beautiful woman, and asking for yet more assistance. She needs $550.00 to rebuild the kiosk, and another $500.00 to get some basic school supplies that she’ll be able to use to start and then build up her business.

OK, following are two very similar photos, but neither one was fair to both me and Alice - one I look stupid, and one isn't the most flattering of Alice - so I had to include the two

hmmm, looking at them again, I suspect neither one is flattering to steve. Anyway, I've never been accused of being photogenic

I know that some people have done a lot to help me and the people I work with over the years – and, trust me, there will be a few more requests in the years ahead, probably even in the months ahead. But this is the request of the moment: Can we continue to build up Alice’s life again – give her some control and some of her dignity back. If it’s possible, then, as usual, the donations go this way:

SMA
C/O Theresa Hicks
256 North Manor Circle
Takoma Park, MD 20912

And a brief note should be included specifying that it’s for Steve’s work with Alice. (With other people who have been helped, it’s not always one donor who comes up with the full amount, but someone donating something here, someone else donating something there, and it all adds up to help make something possible for someone.)

Thomas

2011-03-24T16:24:00.015Z

It seems like every time I go to the camp (and even when I’m not on the camp) someone comes up to me and asks for assistance with education, with training, with housing, etc. etc. – and these days I usually tell them straightforward that there’s nothing I can do – I don’t want to offer false hope and I really don’t have the time to try for all. However, there have been 3 individuals for whom I know the stories and, more importantly. I’ve known them over the years, I’ve witnessed their seriousness and their dedication to others. It’s this selflessness I’ve seen in all three, this concern and compassion that each of them has shown that has pushed me to consider what I didn’t want to get involved with again when I came back to the coast 1½ years ago – finding supporters/sponsors to help them realize their dreams and move onto their goals. Last year I shared Benedict’s story, now I’m sharing the story of Thomas. I think that first I’ll start with his story as he wrote it, then I’ll add my experiences and thoughts about him after that:

the photo is of Thomas with Elizabeth (she's in a lot of photos of things I write about these days, it seems)

Thomas F. Mundu –

Dear Sir/Madam:
REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE
I left Liberia since 1996 April 6, after the brutal killing of my parents. My father served as judge under the late president Samuel K. Doe and he was killed by the Charles Taylor rebels. My mother and I felt into an ambush where she was killed and my aunt managed to escape with me into exile, Ghana. Unfortunately for me and my aunt, we were involved in a tragic motor accident on Nov.4, 2003 where my aunt died on the spot and my left leg broke three times and my right hand fractured.
Since then I have no one in Liberia. It was friends and pastors who took care of me during my stay in the hospital at the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital. After all the treatment, I encountered a snake bite in the bush where all refugees attend to nature.
It was only by the grace of God that I survived and I have no means of continuing my life to return to Liberia. I might be killed by those people who killed my father.
Some more details:

After I survived the tragic accident, I was sponsored by Sis.Johanna, a Dutch national, to study Ports and Shipping Management at Principal's College, Achimota, Accra (under Cambridge International College, UK) from where I obtained an Advanced Diploma.

Furthermore, I was trained by the Ghana Ports And Harbours Authority (GPHA) Golden Jubilee Terminal,(GJT), Tema Port for three months. As a result of the training, I was considered the first highest. After the training, I managed to purchase the Regional Maritime University Admission form to be sponsored by UN, but unfortunately for me, I was not accepted by both UN and the university.

After all these disappointments, I decided to go back home even though my parents were all killed during the war. Now going back home is a complete threat for me. Those who killed my father, who served as a judge under the late President Samuel K. Doe, are still in the government holding key positions.

My life now is being controlled by God through the assistance of friends. I have no source of income, nobody to even depend on if I should go back to Liberia. The issue of going to Liberia is mentioned out of frustration. Presently, I serve as a volunteer Secretary to the Harmony Disability Centre, an organization which I am a member of.

I still want a sponsor to further my studies at any other institution which will enable me to return home with head knowledge rather then none. Feeding is also one of the daily problem that I face.
God bless.
Respectfully Yours,

Thomas F. Mundu
*************************

I’ve known Thomas since the end of 2005 when Johanna (the Dutch SMA lay missionary he mentions in his letter) became involved with him and started to find ways to help him work towards a better future. I wasn’t too involved with him at that time – Johanna was helping him with the education he was receiving. I left the camp in 2007, and when I returned in October, 2009, I was surprised to find Thomas active with the Harmony Center. I hadn’t stayed in contact with him after I left the camp at the end of 2007, and I knew many people had returned to Liberia. To be honest - I never thought of him after that since I didn’t have a strong, direct connection with him during my time on the camp.

When I returned to the coast I was asked to be involved with the Harmony Center, an organization with which many of the people with disabilities on the camp are connected. A couple of SMA lay missionaries had been working with Harmony since I left the camp, and at the time I returned to the coast a year and a half ago, the French lay missionary who was working with Harmony was preparing to return to France, so I was asked to continue. When I first went to Harmony, I was surprised to find Thomas volunteering as secretary/general-office-help there.

I always had the impression that he was a gentle, kind, intelligent and simple-living person. So, I was happy to see that he’s been putting all those qualities into action by volunteering with Harmony. About a month after I became involved with Harmony, he came to me to talk about continuing his education. I did what I have done in the past and asked him to please write a little about himself and his goals and then allow me to share that information to help in the search for a sponsor. He prepared the two letters (which I combined into one) that are above. He also, in spite of his letter above stating that he wants to further his studies “at any other institution”, has completed them (thanks to previous donations I’ve received in the past 1½ years). At this time, though, to fully complete and receive his Bachelor’s degree for the studies he’s done, he needs to take a series of 3 exams. Each exam costs, $800 – with the first exam scheduled to take place in June. (Yowzers! Time is flying and I’ve delayed too long in sharing this story.) Upon successfully completing the exams he’ll have a Bsc (bachelor’s degree) in Shipping and Transport Management from Cambridge University in the UK. So, the first exam is in June, the next one in September, and the final one in December. What I’m hoping for at this time is help for Thomas to take that first exam in June. We’ll deal with the other ones afterwards. If anyone is able to contribute towards this first exam, it would be the usual procedure – please send a check or whatever to:

SMA
C/O Theresa Hicks
256 North Manor Circle
Takoma Park, MD 20912
USA

Include a note for Theresa, saying that the donation is to be put towards Steve's work with Thomas.

I had never heard his full story before, but I knew that he struggled to live on the camp – he’s alone and, because of the accident, limps and is limited in some of his activities. I’ve been impressed by his dedication to work for the people with disabilities on the camp, in spite of having almost no compensation for the time and effort he’s putting into his role at Harmony. Because I’ve known him these years and have seen his struggles and his seriousness and dedication – even selflessness – in spite of these struggles, he’s one of 3 people, out of the many who have asked about education, to whom I’ve told I’ll give it a try and see what I can do. (So far, I’ve only tried with one of the other 2 – Benedict – but no success there, yet. I’m doing it step-by-step – there always seems so much to write about, so little time to write, and so much uncertainty about how best I should prioritize what/who I write about. I’ve known Benedict better and longer, so I started with him. Now, there’s a bit of a time crunch, and I’ve been working closely with Thomas for the past 1½ years (he’s also the one who helped me a lot with getting Blamasee ready for school), so, he’s the current priority).

3.5 of 3 (or maybe 4) -part camp series

2011-03-19T13:35:00.012Z

So, the first term ended. Christmas came and went. While the students were back on the camp during their holidays we were able to get around and see each of them and their families, and make sure all was going well towards preparing for the 2nd term. We visited another former student of the Buduburam School for the Deaf. He had already been attending the Cape Coast school, but for the past term was refusing to go back – he preferred to stay on the camp and play pool (billiards) with his friends. We couldn’t change his mind.

Blamasee and I went to the eye doctor a couple of times. A couple of years after having his hearing severely damaged from a beating he also got kicked in the face while playing football and has had vision problems ever since. I’ll do a separate blog entry about just him one day in the future – it’ll be a fundraising effort. He’s a smart guy, a hard worker, stubborn and a pain in the neck at times (but who isn’t? most of us have our moments). And he’s also getting to the cut-off point for assistance received through Liliane Fonds.

I was also in contact with Marvelous’ father. He and his wife are no longer together – and that was the main problem for why Marvelous wasn’t attending school. The father seriously wanted Marvelous to get into school – but it was too late. The names of the students for the 2nd term had been sent in, and it wasn't clear if it would be possible for an exception to be made. The father was on it, though, and I believed that he’d be successful. Once in awhile I’d call and find out that they’d been to the school, talked with Mr. K (the sort-of Admissions Officer/former headmaster). I was encouraged and was sure that Marvelous would be joining the other kids for the 2nd term at school.

Mary was another story – I had a hard time finding her house on my own, so I went with Blamasee, and, as usual, the mother wasn’t at home. We left a message that she should try to find her way to Elizabeth at the Harmony Center – but, we’ve not heard from her since.

Rachel – well, she was too old for the funders I had, the family didn’t put in any effort of their own – not even to attend the meeting that was scheduled last August – and she was learning sewing on the camp - - - so, I let it drop.

Aaron – he and his sister still weren’t back. I’m not happy with the sister for lying to me. And now with the troubles in Cote d’Ivoire, I’m only hoping that they’re safe.

For Blamasee – one of the ones who was most serious about wanting to go to school – someone was helping me to figure out which supplies Blamasee had, what was still needed, and to use donations to acquire those things. And on his own, Blamasee found some work and used the money to purchase his own school uniforms! I was very encouraged by this.

The day scheduled for the students to go back to school I borrowed the truck I used to use while on the camp. Marie Mah was sick and her sister said she’d go back the following week. Hovee’s brother would take Hovee the following week. Marvelous’ father was still working on getting Marvelous into the school. Blessing and her mom showed up. And – happily – Blamasee was also there, early and ready to go.

Steve, Blamasee, Blessing and Blessing's Mom

Hard to explain the feelings associated with seeing Blamasee there.

In 2004, when I was just beginning with the school for the deaf on the camp, Blamasee was fighting attending the school – he didn’t want to accept that he couldn’t hear well enough for the other schools. He denied the need. Over time, he started attending the school for the deaf more and more regularly – and eventually became one of the better students. He’s now become the leader, in a way, of the deaf kids who are on the camp. They all look up to him, follow him, listen to him. He’s the one with whom I’ve spent the most time over the past year. He also is the one who can give attitude. When he stayed at the Bethany House the night before going to the eye doctor he refused to stay in the rooms where the Hope for Life members stay – even though no one was there at the time (although, it shouldn’t have mattered even if he had to share the room with a Hope for Life member). He refused to use the showers that the HFL members use in the main part of the house. (I didn’t learn all this until afterwards – and then I let him know what I thought about that - - - he and I have moved on.) He’s also the one I’ve seen mature the most. I’m very proud of him.

Blahmasee having his House Mother and Mr. K inspect his supplies

A week or two after school started, I was waiting for someone at the transport station close to where I live – which is also close to where Marvelous’ mother lives. I’ve only met her a couple of times, so didn’t immediately recognize the woman who was greeting me. She doesn’t speak much English, but I was able to understand enough to know who she was and that Marvelous was now staying with her again, and not the father - - and not in school. Hoy. I was disappointed – I had really believed that he’d be in school. What to do? I planned to call the father soon – but still haven’t gotten around to it.

This past weekend, roughly 2 months into the 2nd term of school, along with Elizabeth and Joe (an SMA lay missionary who’s recently arrived and will be taking over some of my work, as well as working on the camp as a nurse), I went down to the school for the deaf in Cape Coast. Marie Mah’s sister and Blessing’s mom both sent supplies for their kids, and we also brought some supplies for Blamasee. I couldn’t contact Hovee’s brother until too late for him to get anything to me.

It was wonderful – as usual, Marie Mah came running and jumped into my arms – almost knocking me over. Before long, we were surrounded by all four of the kids we came to see. And suddenly, from around the corner of one building, Marvelous came walking – with his usual big smile on his face. Amazing. And before I knew it, there were 3 other former students from the camp – Ghanaians whose families, on their own, had taken the initiative and responsibility for the registration process and entered their children at the school. It was kind of amazing to see everyone again – this small group (8 or 9 “kids”) of former students that I’d seen every day in the past – now together at Cape Coast. Nice.

hmmm, can't remember all the names, but 3rd from left is Hovee, behind him, with his fingers up, is Marvelous. The white guy is Joe and next to him is Ofori. Then Blamasee, me, Blessing and Marie Mah

We went to visit the Headmistress, who was out, and then to Mr. K – he seems to be the kids’ favorite.

I can't remember the girl on the left or the guy behind her, but after that is: Marie Mah, me, Hovee, Mr. K, Blamasee, Blessing, and Elizabeth

He took a lot of time to tell us how each of them was doing. After over an hour he was called to meet someone who was looking for the school, and we were taken to meet the housemothers. Blahmasee showed us his dorm room, the bed (which at the moment also had Marvelous’ mattress – since Marvelous arrived late, there were no beds available, so at night his mattress goes on the floor). And he showed us the bag where he stores his clothes – and which is in tatters (I need to remember to find him another one).

Again, the boy and girl whose names I can't remember, Hovee, Marvelous, Elizabeth, Blamasee, Ofori, me, Blessing and Marie Mah

The rest of the day:

Finally, we had to go – I was hungry and there’s a little place next to the Cape Coast Castle. We ate there, and I stayed to read and have another beer while Joe and Elizabeth took a good, but depressing tour, of the “castle”.

Elizabeth at the "Castle"

On the way home, a stop at one of my favorite places for a peaceful feeling and a view, Weda Lodge (I just call it “The House on the Hill” - and there are no websites to link to so you can see this wonderful place).

me and Elizabeth at one of Weda Lodge's vantage points

**********

End of the camp series (although, I’ll still be writing about the camp, of course – just that the series I started forever ago is kind of old news) – I’m not going to do the fourth part that I had thought would be connected to this series which started I don’t even remember how long ago. I’ve taken too long to get this far so the momentum has been lost -– I had all these thoughts I wanted to write about, things that had happened, people, etc. I wrote about the people and so on – but the thoughts can wait for another time – maybe.

3rd of 3 (or maybe 4?) -part camp series

2011-03-13T16:46:00.009Z

I left Buduburam in 2007, and about a year later, Buduburam School for the Deaf closed. Many of the teachers were returning to Liberia, as were many of the students; the school had a break-in and some of the resources were stolen (the TV and DVD player along with some of the DVDs in sign language – uggh, sad); for different reasons, some legitimate and some suspicious, the school was closed down. When I was moved to Accra at the end of 2009, I was asked to follow up with the deaf children who were still on the camp. There were 6 deaf children that could be found on the camp – and that included one “new” 5-year-old girl, a Ghanaian whose family was now living on the camp. Two former Ghanaian students, who were still interested in school, were able to be located in Kasoa (the nearby town where they lived). From time-to-time, Blamasee (one of the former students) and I made rounds to visit the families and the former students.

Marie Mah, a little girl who’d give me these big hugs every time she saw me and would sign to people that she and I were going to get married one day, has grown to be a young woman (well, not a woman, she's still a sweet little girl, just now in a young woman's body) over the past 3 years; Rachel, probably the oldest of the students (she’d been in her mid-20’s when she began school in 2006) was still around; Aaron was a student about Blamasee’s age, who’d begun attending school after I left the camp; Blessing was also a “new” student – she’s probably the least educated of all the former students, and probably knows the fewest signs; Mary is the 5-year-old “new” girl, and the one who’s mother is the hardest to find at home; Hovee is one of the Ghanaian students who came from the near-by town of Kasoa – also one of the brightest students we had; and Marvelous, also from Kasoa area, was always the biggest comedian of the group. All the students were in their teens (with Blessing at the youngest end and Blamasee and Aaron at the older end), except for Rachel – late 20’s – and Mary.

In May last year we went to the audiology department to get updated check-ups on the 8 “children”. Then, early in June last year, we arranged for the 8 students and one family member for each to head to Cape Coast School for the Deaf to begin the registration process. We found out the list of things needed, the time-frame, and filled out some forms for basic information on the kids. In July, a teacher for the deaf [P-Mommy (possibly spelled P-Mamie – at least that’s how I always spelled it in my mind since I never had to spell it anywhere else), who can also go by “P”, and whose real name is Phyllis - and I met back in 2004 when she was volunteering on the camp during the break between school years where she taught in California. We’ve kept in touch since then – mostly through these blog updates] came to Ghana to volunteer in whatever way I could best use her. The timing was perfect – school was to start at the end of August/early September, a lot of other things were going on, and following-up to see how far the families were doing in gathering the long list of supplies needed and trying to judge what was really possible for the families to do and what was actually needed was very time-consuming and not the most enjoyable task. P took over making rounds with Blamasee once or twice a week, she prepared check-lists, made notes of the visits, encouraged the kids and their families, shared her observation of family situations and motivations and did as much to prepare the kids and their families as was possible.

P left in August and I was also going on a small leave in early September – so, I planned one last meeting for the 8 students and families who were preparing for Cape Coast School for the Deaf. I made it clear that this was our last chance to meet. We had to meet at 8:30 because by 10:30 I needed to leave. One mother was there early. Wow. Yet, by 10:30, we hadn’t started the meeting – only 5 students and parents were there – and 1 had only just arrived. I explained the purpose of the meeting – for them to meet each other, offer advice, work things out like transport, etc. because I wouldn’t be around to help out any more. I told them that after I got back to the camp in the early afternoon (I was taking several of the kids with disabilities to the orthopedist who was making his bi-monthly visit to a nearby town) I would come around and see how things went and what was decided. As I drove off to the meeting place for the kids with disabilities, another one of the fathers for one of the deaf students called that he was almost there. So – they ended up with 6 parents at the meeting. No problem – when I got back to the camp I made rounds to the 6 who live on the camp and called the 2 from the nearby town. I knew the long list of supplies needed was expensive, and a donor organization made it possible to assist a bit with some of the expenses. Thanks to P, I had an idea of about how much might be needed to assist the parents. For the two families that didn’t show up for the meeting – there was no good excuse, so that was the end of my efforts with them at this time. Sorry for the students, but at the same time, I realized I couldn’t keep pushing or putting in more effort than the families or the students were doing.

As I went around and visited the families, all was fine until the last family. The first 2 were grateful for the bit of assistance being offered and made promises that they’d be able to do the rest. Blamasee is pretty much on his own, so I made arrangements with someone else to help out. And then the 4th family – the family that seemed to me to have the most family members around to help out and also seemed to always be doing well enough – started to complain, saying they didn’t know if they could do any of it, saying it wasn’t enough money to help them, and getting more and more attitude. I wasn’t in the mood – end of a long day that had actually been going well until then – but, I had missed lunch and it’s not a good time to give attitude when it’s 4 in the afternoon of a long day and Steve hasn’t eaten since early morning. They were told that if they can’t help to get their family member to school to just let me know – the assistance being offered wasn’t given with their name on it, and there were others who could use it. Anyway – I was getting my own attitude, and getting pissed off – they grudgingly made promises that they’d get their student ready for school and make sure he was enrolled.

I stormed off, finished the day, and didn’t go back to the camp for another month.

********

When I next came to the camp, a month later, it turned out that of the 8 students we started with, only 3 actually made it to school. I was happy for those three and very proud of their families. I knew it wasn’t easy for the families, but they did it. It was really kind of amazing. As for Blamasee, he was the first of the deaf students I met when I came back on the camp a year before and he’d been making all the rounds with me. His family doesn’t offer much support to him, and he struggles to get by with doing small jobs here and there – he’s a hard worker, but, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into now, he doesn’t keep his small jobs for very long. I know his family isn’t supportive, and I know he could do something on his own to meet some of his needs, but he didn’t come up with any of the supplies needed – and the money left to help him out wasn’t enough to pick up the entire tab. Sorry for Blamasee – he watched his friends go to school while he, the guy who was always asking about school and who very much wanted to go ever since the school for the deaf on the camp closed, couldn’t go.

As for Aaron, the student from the family with attitude – he also didn’t go. And it turns out that for some reason, his sister took him to Ivory Coast for something. Mary, the youngest, didn’t go; and Rachel, the oldest, also didn’t go. Marvelous also didn’t go – there are some family problems there, so, for whatever reason, it didn’t work out.

What I found when I returned to the camp came with mixed feelings – excited and happy and very proud of the families of Marie Mah, Blessing, and Hovee - - and angry, annoyed, pissed off and out of patience with the others. By chance I ran into Mary and her mom in the market that day – and the mother started making her excuses – “no money”. Meanwhile, my thoughts were, “sorry – but I also saw no effort. Every time when we gave a message about the day/time we’d come by, you were out. You’re the one with the largest extended family here, and there’s been the least follow-through.” I’m sorry for Mary, though, and may still try to do some follow-up with them in the future. But at that moment – too late.

For the next couple of months I continued to see Blamasee from time to time. He'd continue to go around the camp with me, visiting some of the families. He still wanted to get to school, and I began trying to figure out how much support to give him. A couple of months into the school term it seemed like a good idea to go with Elizabeth Dede and Blamasee to visit the 3 who did get to Cape Coast. It was a chance not just to see how they were doing, but to encourage and push Blamasee to really put in effort for himself, to work towards earning some of the supplies he needed to get to school the following term.

me with Marie Mah and Blamasee

It was great to see them in their uniforms, excited and happy to be there, and it was a nice reunion for them with Blamasee. It was also good timing – we arrived at the school just before the headmistress was heading out to send the list of students’ names to the government for the following term – and she was able to add Blamasee’s name to the list just in time.

Elizabeth with Marie Mah, Hovee and Blamasee

me with Marie and Blessing, who was sick the day of our visit

I also called Marvelous’ dad to find out what happened – and, like I said, some family problems. He brought Marvelous to the Harmony Center on the camp one day so we could meet and see what to do. I gave him the contact information for the school for the deaf in Cape Coast and he immediately called the guy who does the intakes and arranged for a visit. The father put in a lot of effort that day, coming to the camp from Kasoa, finding his way through the camp to the Harmony office, making the calls and arrangements. I was impressed and had hopes that Marvelous might be ready to enter school by the following term – it wasn’t certain, though, since they’d delayed and Marvelous’ name was not on the list that Blamasee’s name made it on at the last minute. Now, though, it was up to the father to work it out.

Christmas at Bethany

2011-01-25T16:19:00.006Z

Christmas at Bethany House – this year felt almost like a “traditional” Christmas (minus the snow and cold and turkey and Christmas tree and carols and eggnog and. . . ). The feeling was . . . traditional. Several of the Hope for Life members were staying at the house. There was also a Hope for Life visitor from our branch in Tamale (a city, the 3rd largest in Ghana, in the northern part of Ghana – there’s a HFL branch there, but it’s mostly an independent branch that we try to visit once every year or two), another visitor from Benin/Nigeria (he’s Nigerian, but has lived and worked in Benin for several years and considers himself Beninois), and a few Liberians around. A wonderful mix of people helping to cook, have fun, mix drinks, choose movies, etc.

About a week before Christmas I delegated (one of the skills I’m very happy to possess and to be developing more and more as time goes on) the responsibilities of planning some kind of special menu for Christmas (and it turns out that was understood to include Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, which is also a big holiday here – I think possibly even bigger than Christmas). I also delegated the responsibility of planning some fun games/activities for everyone. And happily, a donation was available to help with the extra food and drink. Everyone did a great job planning it out and doing the marketing, and then throughout the day(s), helping with the preparation in the kitchen – food from the north, food from the south, Liberian food, Benin food, and Nigerian food.

Turns out the activities planned never took place, though. Someone had lent a DVD player to the house, and it seemed that a movie was always on and different people were watching at different times. We watched about 4 of the Child’s Play movies, ai yai yai (traditional Christmas? actually, I saw a comment it's one of the top 10 scariest Christmas movies), and several of the Saw series (oh my). When a few children were around and started watching – and another Chucky/Child's Play was to start – I suggested we change it and watch some children’s Christmas kind of show – and ran for my Rudolph. [Two nights before, while fulfilling the request made by Fr. Christmas - better known as Santa, in the US - to help prepare some bracelets made from Ghanaian beads (a not-so-complicated skill I learned while at PCC) that had been purchased from our (PCC’s) Accra bead and lock supplier-lady (Aunty Lizzie), I watched Rudolph. Then, the night before, while helping Fr. Christmas to wrap the bracelets – each package included a bar of soap! Wow! – I watched It’s a Wonderful Life with Jethro.] As Rudolph began and Burle Ives started singing, the room gradually cleared of adults, but the children were periodically interested. So many foreign images and ideas in it, though – it seems like such a bizarre thing here – it all takes place in snow and ice, elves, cold, abominable snowmen, Christmas trees, talking snowmen – or, just plain any kind of snowmen! – jack-in-the-boxes that have names other than Jack, which doesn’t even matter here because no one is named Jack or the other name and most people have never seen a Jack-in-the-Box . . . anyway. I think the kids still enjoyed the music, the images, the animals, etc.

Then, it was back to Chucky.

Jethro was there with his wife and daughter, all three of them at different stages of moving on from the loss of Ephraim earlier this year. Benedict was there, cooking one of my favorite Liberian meals (potato greens and rice) on Boxing Day. Alice, one of my favorite people, was there, helping to keep the house running and helping me to wash the dishes (she has a visual impairment – mostly blind, in fact – and years ago I had the honor of being the first person to ever take her into the ocean, in spite of her having grown up on the coast. She couldn’t accept the fact that every time a wave came it wasn’t me pushing the water onto her, in spite of me trying to convince her of how waves work and holding both her hands when a wave would come. There’ll be a blog entry on her at some point in the near future – she’s wonderful, and she’s struggling to survive these days . . . anyway, will be explained in a future blog.)

This was our Christmas: good friends, laughter, special food, time together, old memories talked about, new memories made, and shared love. I hope you all had the same.

(My camera is somehow missing – so, I thank Benedict for accepting my request to document the day(s) with his camera-phone. You might be wondering, um, so . . . where are these photos? Sadly, not very long ago, but before I got the Christmas pictures from him, his phone picked up some kind of virus and all photos got lost as the camera phone was reformatted.)

2011-01-13T23:18:00.025Z

A HUGE thank you goes out to Sikkens in Holland, and to the friends I have there who helped to make this transformation of Bethany House possible. The house was officially opened 5 years ago, unofficially opened about 6 years ago, and over the years and the humidity and the Harmattan and the rainy season, it’s come to look kind of . . uh . . . dirty. We went around to some local paint suppliers/makers/companies asking for donations to paint the house, but no positive response. Then, in July, friends of mine visited from Holland, and they have a friend who works for Sikkens back in Holland (and I also know this Sikkens friend from previous visits to Holland). They measured the place and took the info back to their friend, who talked to her boss – and the paint got donated. Perfect timing – Hope for Life is having its 25th year anniversary this year. Now we have this “shiny” new house to make it look like we’re a "proper" organization – serious about celebrating 25 years and the work we do and the accomplishments we’ve had.

Another HUGE thanks goes out to Benedict and Pajeebo, our painters.

dusty Pajeebo

They sandpapered the entire house, bakery and wall, then painted the whole place. Neither are official painters, but there was a Dutch SMA lay missionary here in the
past who was a social worker, but was also an artist at heart. She often painted and re-painted wherever she was living or working. And she trained Benedict and Pajeebo very well. We (HFL) decided not to hire any professional painters, who often seem to scatter as much paint on the ground and anything nearby as they do on the walls, and pay some people we know, who care about the project, and who we know will do a good job. Benedict has been around, helping with the garden and small projects and other repairs while waiting, hopefully, for a sponsor for his education – he’s been a part of the family for over a year now, and he was put in charge and decided he only needed one other person – Pajeebo, also a Liberian, also “trained” by the same SMA lay person.

proud Benedict

hungry Pajeebo

Jackson

2010-12-09T14:32:00.002Z

Throughout the years on the camp I’ve seen Jackson, but have never really known or talked much to him. He sells pure water right outside the clinic on the camp – so we see each other, greet each other, I buy water from him, etc. And that’s it. In the past year, since I’ve been involved with some activities on the camp again, I’ve had a little more time to actually talk with Jackson about more than buying/selling of water. He has a slight disability, not much, just something with his foot/lower leg – and it’s never been anything we’ve talked about. It’s a non-issue altogether. Recently, while on the camp, he talked with me about his education and a need he had related to his housing during the time of his education. His church is providing him with a scholarship, but he needs to make other arrangements for his accommodation and food. I asked him to send me the details in an email, which I’ve copied below:

Hi Steve,I had a problem and decided to address it to you because I believed you can help solve it for me using your influence. I have been wishing to add values to my life after completing my senior high school education in 2002 but there is no support. By this I have always wished to obtain a quality tertiary education. Now that the opportunity has come for me to study General electrical at a technical school (Great Grace Technology Center, NVTI) in Accra through the assistance of my church, Grace Communion International but this scholarship only requires me to pay for my accommodation fees (rent a room), I do not have the hand. Please help me to pay for a room on a yearly basis in Circle or nearby area where the school is located. The duration of this study is for two years.For me to get a room in Circle or nearby area closer to the school is to be done in December 2010 so that in January 2011, I will start school. Sorry, I got the information of this opportunity (scholarship) last week Friday.The name of the man in charge of the scholarship in the church is Mr. Christopher Balidin and his contact number is 0243938523.Saturday this week, I will go to Accra to find out how much it costs to rent a room per year in and around Circle and later will email you the details.I count solely and strongly on you to have this great achievement in my life.Jackson-clinic

Further details came in a long text message the following week:

Hi Steve, I was interviewed on the 28th of Nov by the Head Pastor, Emmanuel Okai of my church “grace Communion Int’l”: the church agreed to pay for my school fees, examination fees and text books at Great Grace Technology Center (NVTI) in the course of GENERAL ELECTRICALS in Accra for two years. But I am asked to pay for a room and feed myself. I am able to feed myself but not able to rent a room in Accra now. I made inquiry about getting a room in and around Circle where the school is located in Accra and was told 360 Cedis per year at 30 Cedis per month. Please help to raise this amount 360 Cedis for me. Your financial contribution is of great impact in my life. I am asked to get accommodation in Dec this year so that in Jan next year, I will begin school. Please contact Mr. Balidin on 0243938523 for more information. He is in charge of the scholarship. Please reply me. Jackson-clinic.

So, I told him I’d do the usual and send the information out to friends and family via email and the blog. But last week was busy, and I’ve delayed in doing this. At this time, I don’t have any pictures of him to include, but if anyone is interested and able to help him, please let me know. As usual, donations can be sent to:

SMA
Attn: Theresa Hicks
256 North Manor Circle
Takoma Park, MD 20912

If you have questions about making donations, you can also call the SMA house: 1-201-270-2009.

The exchange rate is $1.00 = Gh¢ 1.40, so roughly $21.50 = Gh¢ 30.00 (if I did the math correctly this time), the monthly rent charge, and $257.00 = Gh¢ 360.00, the yearly cost of rent.

This is really a wonderful opportunity for Jackson. Education like this is a chance that many Liberians who are still in Ghana are hoping to acquire. It’s a good school, and will give him something to go back to Liberia with – knowledge and a skill to build upon.

Also, since I recently blogged about Elizabeth and her rental issue, I’ll give a quick update. She’s had enough donations come in to cover roughly a year of her rent. Even before that, though, she’d decided to stay with Harmony and the work she is doing. She’s come to care for the people there and would find it too hard to leave, she said. So, when she heard the good news that people who’d never met her were supporting her in this way, she was excited, relieved and thankful – to God and to those who are helping support her and the work she is doing.

2nd and a half of 3 (or maybe 4?) -part camp series

2010-10-30T19:05:00.015Z

While Elizabeth and I were sitting in the bright, lime-green Harmony “office” going over things this past week, I told her that some people had expressed interest in her story and would like some more information – especially about whether or not she’d made her decision about continuing with her work. So, before I do the next part of the 3- or 4-part series of things I’m doing on the camp, I thought I’d do a quick update on Elizabeth.

When we finished talking our “business” this past Wednesday and I started to ask her a few more personal, follow-up-to-the-story questions, she asked me to come walk with her - that she wanted to show me something. I thought it was so we could have a chance to talk privately without the others in the office overhearing her personal struggles. After about a 1 1/2 minute walk around the corner from Harmony, we came to a burnt out, roofless, crumbling-walls-falling-down 2-bedroom building. We’d barely had time to talk about her decision or anything else. This was where she used to live, she said. The group of people with disabilities on the camp had decided that they wanted to start learning Twi – the most commonly spoken Ghanaian language. Elizabeth helped to arrange an instructor for the classes. One day a couple of years ago she had a conference in Accra. While there, she received a message that there was a problem at her house on the camp; however, she couldn’t get back until late at night. It turned out that some people on the camp thought that, by making arrangements for people to learn the local language, she was encouraging Liberians to integrate into the Ghanaian society, and, as a result, she was hurting everyone's chances of getting resettled to the US – so they burnt her house as a warning. Luckily, she and her children weren’t home at the time – sadly, they lost all they owned. That's when she decided that for her and her family's safety, she'd move to the nearby town of Kasoa, where her rent is 60.00 Ghana cedis per month – that’s about $57.00.

In slowly walking back to Harmony and then accompanying me to where I needed to go for transport back to Accra, she told me she couldn’t easily leave Harmony or the work she’s been doing. She cares about the people she’s involved with, she’s known some of them for many years, and, for a couple of reasons, it wouldn’t be easy to hand it over. Primarily, she feels passionate about what she does and the people for and with whom she’s doing it; and also, there’s no one around who could reliably continue her work. So, her decision is to stay.

A couple of weeks ago (on the day that I describe in that last blog entry) she was doing what I do on those kinds of frantic days when I’m running around, feeling like I’m being played, sweating, feeling the thirst and the hunger and not knowing when I’ll get a chance to at least resolve those needs, and all the while wondering whether this running, worrying, sweating, etc. is just an ongoing exercise in futility - - - she was venting to someone who could be trusted and who would hopefully understand, she was letting off steam, expressing frustration and maybe expressing what she’d love to do that would give her peace at that very moment – while knowing that what she was talking about was something she really wouldn’t do.

I’m honored that this amazing woman trusts me.

2nd of 3 (or maybe 4?) -part camp series

2010-10-24T11:14:00.013Z

Just to clarify, I’m not in a constant state of anger, frustration or depression. Some people were concerned from the last blog entry – but, in fact, I’m fine. The anger and frustration are just related to my involvement with the SMATVTC (and maybe a couple of other situations). Depression is not in the picture at all. I’ve got good people around me, making it possible to do what we do.

Elizabeth is one of these people. I’ve known her since 2004 when I first began working on the camp. She is somehow employed as a “volunteer” or something like that with UNHCR. So, she gets some compensation (I think it’s called a “stipend”, since she’s a refugee and can’t officially get a salary – but it’s possible I’m wrong on this, and it’s not the point, anyway) for work she does. When I first came to know her she was the contact person for the UN for work being done with people with disabilities on the camp. She was also one of the counselors at the women’s counseling center. At this time, she’s in charge of Harmony, an organization for people with disabilities on the camp, and which also teaches some vocational skills – sewing, baking, and I’m not sure what else – not just to people with disabilities, but to whoever’s interested. Through Harmony, there’s also an afternoon program for children with disabilities – mostly with multiple disabilities – and some of the other community children who are interested also can join these classes.

Years ago, we did well in dividing the work. Liliane Fonds, for which I was the mediator, helped people with disabilities under the age of 25 years. Elizabeth referred people in this category to me, and I referred older people to Elizabeth. We sometimes went to the orthopedic center together, occasionally met and discussed work – but we didn’t see each other too often at that time. Over those 3 ½ years of being “colleagues”, I didn’t get as much time with her or to know her as well as I have in the past year. I was busy with the deaf school and all else going on, and she was busy in the niche that she took care of.

Last year when I was moved back to Accra for Hope for Life and for following up with the SMATVTC and the deaf children still on the camp, the SMA lay person who was involved with Harmony was leaving and asked if I could also be involved there. Harmony gets monthly funding from Point Hope for the afternoon program that they have with the kids – it sounded great to me. It was a project already going on, already organized and already funded. And I’d be working with Elizabeth, who I already knew and respected, and with Thomas – who I also knew from years ago (his family had been killed in Liberia and he was in Ghana with his aunt; one day, on a trotro coming back to the camp from Accra, there was a nasty accident just in front of the camp – Thomas was the only one to survive, his aunt and all other passengers were killed. He wasn’t unharmed, though, and now walks with a slight limp and is unable to do hard, physical work – another story for another blog entry).

Thomas, in the Harmony office

The little group running Harmony (there’s a third man, slightly older and also with a disability), keep their project going. I don’t know all that’s involved, my focus is mostly on the afternoon program and being the link with Point Hope. Elizabeth is still the contact person for a lot of the people with disabilities on the camp. She’s always this calm, classy, simple and compassionate woman – yet strong and in-charge without being forceful about any of it. A beautiful mix – and a beautiful woman.

The last time I saw Elizabeth was 1 ½ weeks ago. I was coming to the camp, as we had planned, to discuss a few things, and to collect the monthly donation from Point Hope. She wasn’t at Harmony, which wasn’t strange – she’s often out for something the UN has called her to follow-up on. I had other things to do, so while calling her to let her know I’d be back, she rounded a corner, hurriedly walking my direction. We met and I’ve never seen her in this kind of “frantic mode”. Turns out the UN had called that morning and told her she needed to come immediately. When she arrived at the UN office, she was told she needed to gather 15 of the people from the groups for which she is responsible (the people with disabilities, women, and maybe some others), and tell them that they needed to come immediately that morning to the UN office for some kind of program/meeting/discussion.

Ah yes – the building up of people and the treating of people with dignity again. “We know you have no lives outside of us – so therefore, even though we’ve known of this meeting since last week – we will tell you to drop your lives and come running when we say RUN!!” And Elizabeth was running. And sweating. And not in her usual,calm, non-flustered mode. She was angry at being treated this way and yet having to respond. She was angry at being put in the position to treat 15 other people this way and then be on the receiving end of their justified anger at being treated as though they have no lives.

Money is needed to do relief work, but how it’s administered is just as important, if not more so, than the money itself. If projects are put into place, but people are treated as though they have no dignity and their daily lives have no importance, as though their only response when asked to “RUN!!” can be to reply, “how fast and how far?” – then how are we building up people who have been torn down by war, famine, disaster, whatever? When people are treated as though their lives have no value beyond the interaction they can have with a donor organization – then are we building up the essentials? Are we building up lives – restoring dignity, self-worth, self-esteem – qualities that are needed to be restored to give people a sense of control back into their lives?

Years ago money had been donated to UN to build a school. It didn’t matter how many schools were already in existence on the camp. It didn’t matter that most of these schools had staff in need of further training. It didn’t matter that most of these schools had no teaching materials, no textbooks, and a serious lack of educational supplies. It didn’t matter that yet another school wasn’t what was needed – and that the improvement of existing schools would actually bring up the quality of education received. So – a beautiful new school building was constructed - - - which then sat vacant for over 6 months because there was absolutely no need for it. The donors got their school. People on the ground were not consulted about the actual needs – people thousands of miles away decided what was needed and made sure they met the need that they had determined was the greatest.

About 2 years ago Elizabeth’s house on the camp burnt down. It could have been arson, or it could have been an accident. For safety, she moved to a nearby town, where just recently her rent has again come due. People usually need to pay their rent at least two years in advance – it’s a huge sum of money to come up with all at one time when you can barely make ends meet from month to month on the “stipend” that you’re allotted. Everyone has side things going on – little money- making efforts here and there. Still – it’s a struggle. This same day 1 ½ weeks ago after we met each other on the “road” and I then swiftly walked with the frustrated Elizabeth, she told me some of these struggles for rent (the landlord’s been coming and has given her a deadline and she has no idea where to turn) and getting by day-to-day. We got back to the Harmony office and she told me she’s also thinking of leaving her position – she’s had enough of being treated this way for practically no pay at all. I’ve seen her passionate about the people she’s involved with – going above and beyond most fully paid staff members. She cares and is involved with the lives she’s touching. But she also needs to think of her own health and her family (she was recently diagnosed with lumbar spondylosis and she also has 4 children).

I don’t know what her final decision will be – either way, she’s one of the people who has made my life and the things I do on the camp not only possible, but pleasant. Please keep her in your thoughts, hearts and prayers.

1st of 3 (or maybe 4?) -part camp series

2010-10-19T23:18:00.020Z

I’m still involved with individuals, groups and organizations on the refugee camp – some inspire me and leave me standing in admiration of some wonderful people who I’ve known for the past 6 years. Some, often due to outside circumstances, organizations and individuals who have a say over situations and lives on the camp, leave me frustrated and pissed off. At other times, due to cultural attitudes towards people with disabilities, I find myself walking away from families, feeling thoroughly annoyed with the responses given and apathy shown towards their children with disabilities. Regularly I find myself reflecting on my role here, on the role of most “relief” agencies, and on the benefits/harm of relief money sent “for the needy”. Will I get into that in this blog entry? Hmmmm. The electricity just went out (again, ai yai yai – it’s off more than it’s on these days, which in the past wouldn’t have mattered, but these days, with the dependency that’s been created for all our electronic devices – computers for record keeping and most other administrative work and communication (. . . and and and) and cell phones especially – it makes it extremely difficult to get things done when the electricity is off. Office days are planned, but the electricity goes off that day so nothing can be done and it’s too late to make other plans/arrangements. And/Or, the electricity is off for a few days in a row, and all cell phones die.) so, even if I do get into it in this blog entry, it’ll have to wait until the electricity goes on again and I have a chance to continue. Ugggh.

*****************************

OK.

Electricity is back on, so I continue.

When I was involved with life on the camp on a daily basis, fatigue and extreme, out-of-control emotions were regular parts of my life. I remember a good friend giving me a DVD of Bridges of Madison County and in the first 5 minutes tears were already rolling down my face. My friend was confused – why was I already crying – nothing emotional had happened. And yet, in my mind, it had – somehow maybe I knew what was intended from the movie (tearjerker) or I already figured the direction it was going to go and end up – I don’t know. But I cried in those first few minutes and experienced regular tear showers for the next 2 or so hours. When alone during those years on the camp, at the end of the day, thinking about stuff, emotions were running high and tears were often threatening, sometimes falling.

I had a flashback to those days just a couple of weeks ago.

Last year, when I was moved down to Accra, I was asked to follow up with the SMA Technical and Vocational Training Center (SMATVTC) in Buduburam. [Here's a brief history of the SMATVTC (with a few editorial comments): It was begun in 2002 (or maybe 2001 or 2003). In 2005, several staff members and one of the founding lay missionaries went to Liberia to open a branch of the school there. About 1 ½ years ago half of the remaining staff also went back to Liberia. Nine of the original staff people chose to stay behind, believing the school could – and should - continue, that there was still a need for it and students would come. Sadly, that’s not what happened. UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) also opened a vocational school – and . . . it was free. Ah, what a great way to build up people’s dignity and self-respect – give them a sense that they can’t earn something on their own – that they need yet another handout. And what a way to build up community by driving out other organizations that are offering similar services by offering these things for free. How messed up is that?]

So – for the past year I’ve been working with the vocational school. It’s maybe 5% – 10% of what I do – and yet it takes up a disproportionate amount of heart-space. I’ve known the people who are still there since I began on the camp in 2004 – they literally laid the foundation for the school. They are among the people who built it up from the ground. And they have stood by it – they believed in its relevancy and its importance to life on the camp and to building up individuals. And I have an incredible amount of respect for these people who have stuck with it.

I was asked by SMA to become involved and see how best to continue what lay missionaries before me had started. But – in addition to difficulties getting students due to the free vocational school, problems related to the land also entered the picture. And to be frank, I can’t even begin to explain a lot of this stuff – the land belongs to the Archdiocese, but the buildings and all other resources still housed in these facilities belongs to SMA. Something like that anyway.

I’m more concerned about these 9 people. They have been dedicated to the school and to the Liberian community. And when I arrived a year ago, it was already being discussed what to do with the school. The person assigned to this task was extremely busy with his responsibilities – he was an SMA priest working on the other side of the world from the camp and in reality didn’t have much time to dedicate to the situation. So I came in. (In a way there’s not that much choice sometimes in what we get involved with as missionaries. A few years ago the Regional Superior – he’s our local bossman – said something jokingly to me and I told him that I wouldn’t do whatever it was. He told me that I’d signed something about obedience to him. And I told him something along the lines of: “Hell no. I would never have signed anything like that.” When I got back home and dug out my contract, dusted it off, removed the gecko and frog droppings, I found that in fact I had signed something like that. Yikes. What was I thinking? I guess I’m just too trusting about some things (even though in other things I have HUGE trust issues – a topic for another blog entry, which – trust me – will never happen). I might have read and been aware of the obedience part but I never suspected I’d be asked to do something totally wrong or, more accurately, totally against what I believe. I’m not saying that’s what happens – I’m just saying that I guess I also believed that the obedience meant that we’d have dialogue. If I’d been less naïve I’d have realized that obedience and dialogue are not exactly synonymous. Fortunately, though, this has never been an issue - and, in fact, dialogue does take place and blind obedience isn't what's expected.) Anyway – this seemed clear enough – meet with the staff that remained and figure out the future of the SMATVTC. The staff and I discussed their goals for the school and for themselves – they sincerely wanted it to keep running – but also were coming to accept the reality that this was a major struggle when there was free training being offered elsewhere. Students weren’t coming to register.

Hoy. What to do. The staff wanted the school to become registered and to fall under the Ghanaian system. They looked into it and found out details, and suggested offering scholarships to students – I forget the exact numbers, but the numbers got whittled down to maybe 150 students (the school offered training in: auto mechanics, tailoring, plumbing, drafting, electrical engineering, construction/masonry, IT, soap making, and more). A large sum of money was needed for this – I forget exactly, but want to say around $15,000 (this was after much cutting out of things - some materials needed to be replaced because when the other groups went back to Liberia they needed to take supplies with them - so along with the scholarships was a list of needs to build the school up a bit, again). And I thought, "wow – these people are crazy amazing – they’re so dedicated to this project – they want scholarships to be offered to students, get a student population present, and then be able to call in the officials to observe what is going on and then for these Ghanaian officials to accept the school as a valid vocational training center."

Other things were going on, though. The Archdiocese wanted the land. Other plans were in the making. The Regional at the time suggested instead of offering scholarships, it could be more realistic - and cheaper - to offer “resettlement packages” to the 9 staff members who remained – giving them a chance to have something to return to Liberia with and still hold up their heads in justified pride for their accomplishments.

The staff met on their own, discussed things, and realized the future of the school was limited as long as they weren’t able to register and as long as cheaper/free options were available nearby.

I want to skip through all the drama, because I see that I’m now on page 3 of a Word document.

I feel I’ve been the go-between for all that’s been going on. I’ve been meeting with these people who I respect immensely and have known for over 6 years. And I feel that we’ve been getting this non-stop run-around. I’m going back and forth. The SMATVTC staff jumps and responds to requests that are coming for so many things – inventories, assessments of assets, more inventories, proposals, blah blah blah. I take these where they need to go. Promises are made, suggestions are . . . uh, suggested – and sometimes for good reasons and other times no reason at all – delays arrive, I feel like runarounds are presented, and frustration (for me and the staff and others involved with this game being played at a higher level, beyond the pawns on the ground) abounds.

I feel like an ass. The staff has trusted me, and I’m the one who passes the constant delay messages onto them, the constant requests for additional information or different information. I thought this should be a quickly resolved thing – and yet it goes on . . . and on and on and on.

A little over a week ago I got a call from the Archdiocesan go-between that some of the classrooms were needed for something and we need to do an immediate inventory of what was there. And I’m so very tired of playing the “JUMP!” and “how high, kind sir?” game. So I didn’t play. I pissed off some of the other players.

After shouting at (ok, maybe not shouting, but just being very abrupt with) the person I was talking to, finally saying that my phone units were almost gone (because they were and I had just added Ghc 5.00!!, which means nothing to most people who are reading this), I cut the phone and told the people I was with (we were in the process of filming a sort of documentary for the Hope for Life project to be used in Holland and maybe other places for fundraising efforts – and our days were packed solid) who had just returned to where I was (they left me to do some filming when I had the call) that I really needed some #%*()$&@)$(*&# time and I was ($%&*#_$& so $(#)@&%@$#) hungry, thirsty and pissed off and blah blah blah. They had patience with me. I ate some grilled plantain and peanuts, and drank some water in silence for my late lunch, and we moved on – I was fine – it wasn’t related to the moment that I needed to be in.

Early the next week, the camera people agreed to taking a little detour from our schedule so we could stop by the camp and I could meet with the staff of the SMATVTC. The staff told me they did what was needed. They trusted me. They’ve been with me and they knew me and would do what was needed. Oh my goodness. These people whose lives have been played with for over a year, to whom I’ve been passing on promises and hope that their suggestions would be heard and so on – and yet it’s dragged on and on with more and more painful delays – they still trusted me? How the hell? The film people were with me as we drove away from the camp (the camp wasn’t a part of the documentary). I tried to explain a little of what was going on – but couldn’t.

The flashback. Tears wanted to come. They are coming now as I write about it. I really hate being in this position. I hate feeling like I’m being used in this way. Yet that’s where I am. I hate playing with people’s lives – not even knowing I’m a pawn in that game because I’m too stupidly naive. I really hate it. And I’m trying to get out of it – which isn’t fair to the guy I’m trying to pass it off to, or to the staff of the SMATVTC who can't just pass it off and run away (so, I probably won't pass it off entirely). I have a fear that this will end with these amazing and dedicated people getting absolutely nothing to show for their commitment. They will be left on the camp or go back to Liberia with nothing for all their years of devotion to the SMATVTC and to the Liberian community on the camp. I hate that I’ve been a part of this dehumanizing process.

*******
Anyway – this is already incredibly long – and I have some other stories I wanted to tell from the camp – but . . . I guess now’s not the time. I also wanted to include some photos, but my camera battery was dead the last time I went and met with the staff (that electricity problem mentioned above). But – I have a few photos for the next story about an amazing woman I’ve been working with while involved with people with disabilities on the camp - hopefully a less frustrating story than this one.

Benedict

2010-06-02T18:00:00.002Z

I've written about Benedict in the past - I've known him since 2004 when I returned to Ghana and began working in Buduburam. He sort of came with the house that I moved into. There was a Dutch SMA lay person who was working on the camp prior to my arrival and she decided she wanted to live in this house, and the Dutch SMA paid about 10 years advance rent so the house could be completed for her. But – there were difficulties for her and things didn't work out for the best on the camp, so she moved on to another project - and that's how I came along to the camp. Benedict was working for the lay missionary in the house before I arrived – helping to do her laundry, keep the place clean, cooking, filling the water tank (this involves waiting on the road for a small tanker-like truck to come by filled with water and then flagging it down to come into the village and fill the polytank), helping out however was needed, etc. I didn't want to put anyone out of a job, so I told him that if he wanted to stay, it would be great. I had thought that I'd be able to do everything by myself - keep the place clean, wash my own clothes, etc. etc. But - the reality of life here is that all those tasks take huge chunks of time (more than when I’m in the US), and having someone help out in that way - with the daily tasks of just living - freed me up to do all the other stuff I was sent to do as well as all the unavoidable things that came up – and it gave someone a job in the process.

The point of this is that Benedict was around SMA people before I came to the camp, helping the other lay missionary, making it possible for her to do all she needed to do. Then when I came along, I got added to the list of SMA lay missionaries and their visitors that he was helping out (he also went to work for the other lady in Accra). Then another lay missionary came to work on the camp and he also started working for her. He's a great guy who, sadly, hasn't always been focused. And that's been part of the problem for him. While he was working in our houses and making the act of living here much easier for us, and thereby freeing up our time, he had different opportunities presented to him. All of us have had visitors who met Benedict and had time to talk with him, get to know him, etc. And all the visitors enjoyed his company and (I think) have even been impressed by him and many considered sponsoring his education or whatever he wanted to do. But when they talked with him about what he wanted to do with his future, the answers often varied and often showed a lack of seriousness (with one visitor he’d want to go back to school to study hotel management, with another he wanted to go back to school to study business, with another it was something else – and if asked more questions, he didn’t know which school, didn’t have his documents ready, etc.). So, over the years, he missed out of several chances as the interest of these visitors faded with the responses he gave to their questions.

When I came back to Accra this past October, Benedict and I got together to catch up on things. He told me he’s been accepted into school, even sent me, via email, copies of the documents. I hadn’t planned and hadn’t wanted to get involved with looking for tuition for people again – but, Benedict seems to have his act together now. He’s been so involved with SMA lay missionaries for so many years, watching others go to school while he dedicatedly cleaned our houses and took care of us that it seemed I needed to try for him. I did the usual and asked him to write me a little about himself and his plans that I can share with others. I’ve copied and pasted it here:

Hi Steve,

I am Benedict Flomo Kollie.Born onto the union of Mr.and Mrs.Kollie.I am a Liberian who left Liberia in the year 1994 and went to Guinea because of the war,where I stayed for the next 5 years.

In Guinea life was not easy on me.I went on the street to shine shoes but I could not get any money to survive because I could not speak the French and Mandingo. So I left and went to push wheel barrow but because of the same French and Mandingo this could not allow me to even get money to eat. I went on to barber hair where I spoiled someone's hair because I never knew it at that time but it was because of the hardship I found myself in caused me to do all those things. So I decided to go and look for job, the job I got was to water a car road to stop dust from entering a boutique and the only pay I could get is food so I have to accept it because there were nothing to do. I stayed there until one day I ask a missionary to help me and she took me to help me for school until she took us to Liberia in 1999 where I completed high school. After my completion from high school in 2001 the missionary died and I left for Ghana. Since then I have not been to school. I try my weak way and apply to a university, I was accepted but could not enter because of sponsorship. So am kindly asking you people to kindly do this help for me.

I completed high school in 2001 and couldn’t continue to university because of sponsorship and am from a very poor family and again my father was killed in the war October 14,1994 and he was the only person that could try for us. I really want to learn because it has been my plan to study to the highest degree because when my father was alive, he once told me that he never completed high school so he will try his best for all his children to enter university and the war took him away. I have three sisters and three brothers, some have not completed high school, only one and I were able to complete through the help of others and since then we have not been able to enter university. I want to do this course because I believe it will start a very good future for me to be able to help other people who are in need. Because as you help other people, God will continue to multiply on what so ever you are earning. I am studying Banking and Finance. From what I have learned, I will put it into use so that I can be a help to other people just how I have been helped in Life by other people. It has always been my dream to be a help to the needy because no matter how things are, even if things are going fine, there are people who will always be in need, all fingers are not equal.
My goal is to get a degree in Banking and Finance, I believe after achieving my goal, I will be able to form part of human resource Liberia needs today. Thereby serving as source of income for me and my family.

In a separate email he detailed the fees associated with this, and the total per year comes to $2,000. It’s a four year program he’s been accepted into. Normally, I’d include a photo of him, but my camera, which was stolen back in November, has only recently been replaced, so – no photo at this time since I still need to read the instructions.

If anyone’s interested in helping him in any way, please let me know. I know it’s not an easy thing and a huge commitment.

I’m going to be updating this again very soon because there’s one other guy on the camp who I’ve known over the years and who’s also been involved with some SMA lay missionaries, was the sole survivor of a public transport accident – and the way he’s voluntarily helping with people with disabilities on the camp means a lot to me. I know I said above that I didn’t want to start doing this again – and believe me, every time I go on the camp there are several others who make similar requests and to whom I say, “sorry, nothing I can do.” Maybe soon I need to do another update on the camp situation.

2010-04-14T21:30:00.002Z

Jethro’s little boy, Ephraim, was brought home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago – even before I wrote that last blog update. But, I’m often behind in blog updates, and it usually doesn’t matter that much, so I just updated it. Ephraim was home, he was putting on weight again, he was regaining his strength, we were all happy and relieved.

A week ago I was on the camp to see the group of people with disabilities with whom I work, meet with a few of the deaf kids to give an update on what’s happening and meet with the SMATVTC (SMA Technical and Vocational Training Center – a vocational school begun by some Dutch lay missionaries back in 2002 or 2003 and is now struggling to figure out the future of the school and the staff – a story nowhere near as simple as how I’ve summed it up, but a story that’s also not the focus of this update). I went to greet the French lay missionary at the clinic (he’s a nurse but currently acting as the Administrator – and also trying to raise funds for a surgical ward in the clinic). I needed to give him an update on some SMA stuff. When I turned around from the window to his office (he was in a meeting at the time and there was a fortunate interruption so we were able to quickly greet each other and exchange our information through the window without interfering with his meeting), I saw Jethro standing outside the wards of the clinic.

I went over to greet him, asked how it’s going, and he told me, "Steve, something strange happened this morning." Ephraim woke up crying. They saw he had toileted on himself so they cleaned him up – yet he continued to cry. After a small time, he started to convulse. Before they could get him to the clinic, he went into a coma. Soon after, at the clinic, the doctor pronounced him dead.

The boy was getting better. He’d been in Korle Bu for a month and a half and then was released. He was gaining strength and becoming his old self.

And then he died.

I held Jethro in my arms and he sobbed on my shoulder. I don’t know this kind of pain. The tears in my eyes came from somewhere other than where Jethro’s tears came from. I was crying for his pain, for his wife’s pain, for their loss and that hollowness that I know has to be taking up space between his chest and abdomen. The hollowness that’s there when you lose someone you love. An emptiness that makes it hard to catch your breath.

Ephraim was buried the same night. And life went on. I had gone to the other meetings I had on the camp. The next day I left Accra for more meetings I have for SMA (where I am now). Jethro and his wife are putting things back together with their lives and I know when I get back after these meetings I’ll see him again.

As with Abby – it’s one of the things about Africa. Life and death are present regularly in ways I don’t see and experience regularly in the US. Things aren’t quietly tucked away. Death is a strong part of life here. We don’t know why Ephraim died. We’ll never know. He was released from Korle Bu and doing fine. Then he died.

*****

The next day, Akolo J needed to go to the hospital – hopefully to be admitted for his spinal surgery. He had asked me to join him, so I did. Last time, back in late January, he went at the appointed date, but was finally – after sitting and waiting all day – told there was no bed and the doctor was busy and blah blah blah and to come back on April 8. He wanted me there to show the hospital that he also had someone with him. We met at the hospital early in the morning. I always enjoy his company, so a couple of hours quickly passed while talking, laughing, catching up, etc. Then he pointed out the doctor on the floor who was passing by. I told Akolo J that if we don't hear anything by 10:30 then I'll go ask because I also needed to get going to prepare for this meeting that I was leaving for later in the day. He encouraged me to just go talk with the doctor right away, otherwise I may not see him later.

I'm always uncomfortable trying to push things here (partly, it's a color thing - I'm white and often get privileges that others don't get - and I don't want to take advantage of this) - but at the same time, pushing things is often the best way to get things done, no matter what color you are and probably no matter where in the world you are. So - I went up to the doctor and explained about my friend waiting to hear if he'd be getting a bed and wondering if the doctor could give me an idea since I also had some meetings to go to and I'd hate to just leave him there. The doctor checked out the file, and before I knew it, Akolo J was doing his intake paperwork with the ward nurse. Not bad at all.

It's been a week now - and he's called me several times while I've been away, just to give me updates on the process he's going through. Now, it's Wednesday night. Either tomorrow or Friday he'll be having spinal surgery that the doctors promise will take severaly hours. Dixon had spinal surgery - and came out great. I'm hoping, trusting and praying for Akolo J.

2010-03-31T13:50:00.009Z

After being in the same place for a long time (or a few years, which is a long time for me) the newness and freshness wears off (obviously). The novelty of each experience fades away because they’re not all “novel” anymore. The experience (challenge?) becomes (for me) finding the appreciation in the familiar, rather than the thrill and excitement of the new (which is easy to feel - - and easy to find if I don’t stay in one place for more than a few years).

I’ve now been living in Ghana for more than 8 1/2 years. It's not that long, but it's long enough for the experience of life here to shift for me.

Part of my wanting to return to Ghana a couple years ago when I’d finished on the refugee camp was to appreciate the “life” in markets again, to take time to just reflect on being here, to do what I want to be doing with my life, to be blessed to live in a time and place where I have the freedom to choose to live my life in a way that’s not necessarily expected but that gives me a feeling of fulfilment and love of life, and to have family and friends who support my choices in life, even when they don’t always understand or agree with them. (Yikes, I’m possibly beginning to sound like a Hallmark card, time to move onto the point . . .).

I wanted to come back to complete that shift of experience from the excitement of the new and exotic to the appreciation and the excitement of the familiar. Somewhere on the camp I got stuck. I no longer appreciated the life in a market – I asked friends to pick up whatever fresh fruit and veggies were available for me. I didn’t take time for the experience of life.

And now I'm trying to allow the shift of experience to go on for me. It’s nice to be in situations with people who know my weaknesses and can still respect my strengths. It’s a different level to go with a kid with a twisted foot to the orthopedist I’ve known for 14 years than it was 14 years ago when I was going to the “stranger” orthopedist for the 1st time.

It’s a new challenge to collaborate with the audiologist I’ve known for 6 years as we follow up and follow through on individual children and their families as well as programs to work with groups of parents and children, their teachers and the community overall in the awareness and inclusion of people with hearing problems into the communities.

It’s a wonderful, new experience to find Jethro - someone I've known and been involved with for 6 years (some of you may remember his story from several years ago) still here. He wanted to go to University for IT. He was impressive (and still is), and a friend of mine was able to make it possible for him to face the challenge of working towards his goal. Now, a few years later, I’m back on the coast and Jethro has completed school - and we still have a connection.

Hope for Life (the project I’m again involved with) has been talking of doing a database since before I left it 12 years ago. I was ready to try doing a basic “database” with Excel – files, spreadsheets, blah blah blah. Jethro came along and offered to do a database for us – voluntarily, to demonstrate what he’s learned and to show appreciation. What he’s doing now - - - amazing.

From time to time he sleeps at Bethany House, and for the past month and a half + he’s been sleeping at the house almost nightly. His 1 year old was admitted to Korle Bu, the teaching hospital in Accra. He had some abscesses on his neck, then head, then shoulder . . , he had high fevers and the clinic close to the camp referred him to Korle Bu. Jethro comes late in the night and leaves for the hospital early in the morning. Sometimes he arrives after I’ve gone to bed. I wake up, go to the garden, and when I come back in I find him sweeping the floors before we share coffee and breakfast and he heads back to spell his wife at the hospital. He and his family have become a part of “the family” here at Bethany House.

Akolo J is another person I’ve known for a long time – 14 years. When he was in his late teens, a tree fell on him, causing paresis from his waist down. He uses crutches, but his legs are like rubber. 14 years ago he was training as a tailor, then in “designing” (embroidery machine use). After I left in 1998, he also did tie/dye and batik trainings. He lived in a communal kind of street setting, then eventually got his room. But his area to be found is, and ever since I’ve known him, has always been Circle (hard to get a good link to show the fullness of Circle - the craziness, the hecticness, the traffic, the sensory-overwhelmingness of it all). Over the years, when I’ve come back to Accra, that’s always where I find him. These days he has a room somewhere and a small “kiosk” in his place at Circle. And he does basic watch and watch band repairs. And now he also has a wife.

For awhile he sold a few food basics in his kiosk – until one day when his sister came, took the money, and that was the end of that business.

About 2 years ago, he started experiencing more waist and back pain. About a year and a half ago, the doctors recommended surgery – putting screws into the lumbar region of his spine. Otherwise, eventually he will be more and more immobile.

He has the National Health Insurance, but that will only cover some (hopefully most) of the basic costs accrued in the hospital. But the screws cost $1200. The insurance doesn’t cover that. He’s had to put off the surgery while he tries different means of gathering the needed money. (Susu is one of the main methods.)

So, for the past several months, Akolo J, the watch repair guy at Circle, has been living in his kiosk. It’s too difficult to go home. His wife comes to him from time to time. He goes around the corner every few days to take a shower (since he’s not moving much he doesn’t feel the need to bathe more often).

He first scheduled his surgery for a year ago, but had to cancel when he didn’t have the money. Now, he’s saved $700, and has rescheduled the surgery. He believes he will have the balance, by the time the surgery will take place in early April. He hopes for more than the balance so he can rebuild his business after the time off for the surgery, and so he can meet his other needs during his time off for the surgery.

I’ve only been able to get to Circle every 3 weeks or so. And as happens, I’ve had a couple “open” donations come so he has enough for the screws, and therefore the hospital will admit him and do the surgery. Discharge and paying additional costs that the insurance doesn’t cover and rebuilding his life afterwards is another story, though.

And he moves ahead, makes his decisions and takes things one step at a time, trusting that it will be fine. That same story I’ve talked about – Faith.

*****

There will always be new experiences day to day if I’m open to them. I don’t even need to look. But now, I can have the new experience of familiarity, knowing people, established relationships, shared respect and trust that comes with the experience of each other over time (and this “new experience” of the familiar takes place with the familiar experience of unexpected situations day to day).

I have the resources (knowledge from personal experiences of similar situations) combined with friends and colleagues who’ve known me and who I’ve known for many years to better respond to the new experiences. I'm looking forward to the future.

Hope for Life

2010-03-01T14:15:00.006Z

For at least 3 weeks (but more like 1 1/2 - 2 months) I’ve had another blog entry ready to go – other than a few more rounds of editing to tighten it up, shorten it, figure it out, decide if it’s an entry I should do or not. It’s more like an ode to all the great people I had time with while I was on leave a few months ago – an appreciation for the time they gave me from their busy schedules. But I’m not going to use it at this time – maybe I never will. I might just keep it and work on it for some other reason. Maybe I’ll use excerpts from it in a future update – like an update about Morris, who I got to talk with for the first time, face to face, not writing anything down – just regular old talking. We’ll see.

I can’t use it now because there’s other stuff on my mind, so many other things going on with where I am now. It’s 1:45 a.m. when I’m typing this. I don’t really have trouble sleeping, but . . . for some reason I got up at this time with things on my mind and decided it’s best to just write about them. (To be honest - this is describing a 2nd blog entry I prepared about 1 month + ago, and I'm now posting an edited version of that - with excerpts to maybe be used in the future.) (Maybe that's confusing - basically, what's being posted is the 3rd entry I've prepared, which is an extremely edited version of the 2nd entry I did at 1:45. I know it's not at all important that this is understood - so just move on.)

I’ve been back in Ghana for 5 months – I think it’s almost exactly 5 months. If I remember, due to a canceled flight I ended up arriving here on 3 October, and now it’s 1 March.

I’m at a project called Hope for Life. Some people who’ve known me for awhile might remember I was also at a project called Hope for Life from 1996 – 1998. It’s the same project – just a 12 year-older version of it. One part of the project is called Bethany House – it’s where I live. It’s also a part of the project that was a big pull for me to come back here. It’s not only where I live, but it’s also where members of Hope for Life, all people with disabilities, are welcome to come stay if they want a break from their daily lives, if they want to have time with other people with disabilities, if they need/want somewhere to prepare for exams, if they want a place that will have electricity and running water (assuming the city is supplying those things while they’re staying at the house), or for whatever reason at all.

Over 10 years ago, the house was in a different location. HFL rented, and for a variety of reasons chose to leave the place and build its own house. Running the house can be difficult, though. It can be hard to get sponsors to be interested in donating money or resources to this part of the project since it’s just a place where people come eat, gather, rest and be happy. I’m not sure how/if it will ever become self-sufficient. Just before I left here in 1998, the lay missionary I was with worked on a proposal for a bakery to help make the project more self-sufficient. That bakery is now located on this same property (right outside my bedroom window, in fact). It’s been barely breaking even – and frequently operates at a loss. However, it recently received two sweet contracts – one is supplying the bread that goes on the airplanes flying out of Ghana, which means that some, if not all, people flying out of Ghana, when they’re eating that little sandwich thing they get on the flight just before landing, or they get the little dinner roles with their meals – it’s Hope for Life bread that they’re eating.

A year ago the house was officially closed due to lack of funds. The “House Mother” was let go. HFL members weren’t officially allowed to stay here because there was no one to look after the place, provide the meals, etc. – no money, basically. When I came back in October one of our goals became opening the house again. (I like to think of it as a project goal – but it may have just been a Steve goal.) I hoped it would be accomplished in a month or so – but then saw realistically I should shoot for January. I came back with a donation and immediately we started getting the plumbing working. I wanted to put in a garden – focused on things people use all the time in sauces and stews, but I saw that I’d never be able to actually get around to digging up the place myself.

In someone’s “wisdom” a few years ago it was decided that the driveway should be all gravel since it would be much cheaper than pavement. Uh . . . OK . . . now let’s try wheeling a wheelchair or walking with crutches or crawling on hands and knees across that gravel. One benefit at this time, though, is that a section of the gravel was much easier to shovel aside for a garden than pavement would have been. (We still need to figure out how to make the rest of it more accessible, though.) When a friend from the refugee camp who’s still here and is accepted into a university but still waiting for sponsorship (for those who visited me on the camp, I'm talking about Benedict - you probably met him at the house where I was living) asked me to help find a sponsor and in the meantime to remember him if I had any work to do – I thought, “hey – I’m not going to get around to doing this garden anytime soon – maybe he can do it.” And he did – and is still working on it. It’s amazing – already we’ve had to put to rest several beds of tomato plants that never flowered but were, all the same, beautiful to look at and smell , a bed of watermelon that produced baby watermelon that soon rotted, and a cucumber bed that had similar difficulties as the watermelon. We’ve replanted some of these beds, and have prepared a couple of others for transplanting. Other crops have done better, and, happily and yummily, we’ve already enjoyed a few meals with Okra from the garden, others with cabbage, and the carrots have also contributed to a few meals. A personal favorite is also there – radishes. I love radishes – they grow quickly and easily and I think they’re delicious - and an added bonus is they always remind me of my grandmother who first introduced me to them before I was old enough to appreciate them properly, but she enjoyed them and I love that memory. They’ve been a part of breakfast for the past couple of weeks. It’s like the only thing I’ve planted that’s solely because I wanted it (Ok, other than some herbs – mint, parsley and basil are doing the best and we’ve been enjoying them.) And the lemon grass I always end up planting is doing really well. Anyway – the goal was and still is to reduce food costs. And to open the house in January (which we did). And to give me pleasure with the radishes and the herbs and just digging in the dirt. Another lay missionary who was at Bethany House for a few months before I came shook her head in disbelief a month after I arrived saying that she never thought the garden could happen.

We pushed forward with the garden and with working towards opening the house. We interviewed people for the new House Manager. People who were unofficially staying here and would probably be considered squatters were given their notice to move along. A House Manager was chosen (the former House Mother). The overflowing septic system (yes, nasty) was cleaned out. Major scrubbing and cleaning took place. Curtains were re-hung. Kitchen and other items that were no longer around were replaced. And - - - the house opened in January.

This has been my goal – with no idea of how it will be funded. Another lay missionary who was here last year (and is still here) recently told me that (for some reason I can’t remember because it made no sense to me) she didn’t do any fundraising for the project last year. I know she had a lot on her shoulders - and maybe that's basically the reason - it's a big project and can be daunting, leaving someone scratching their head and wondering where to begin. And now, the funds are finished. Sadly, I’m not the best fundraiser in the world – mostly operating on trust and faith - but that’s the work before us now. Christmas Eve – I received an email from some friends who are like family, that they were sending a HUGE donation for my work in Ghana. My eyes watered. I didn’t quite cry, but I seriously wanted to. I knew we’d be able to keep the house open for awhile. Last week, the HFL Secretary spent a couple of days with me writing fundraising letters for local businesses – and this week we’ll start delivering them. We’ll see how it goes – because this is how it usually goes – you have to go ahead with things and not let the fear hold you back. Things don’t change – we go ahead on trust and faith, like I said. It sounds naïve – and I’m sure to any banker/money person, there’d be a lot of cringing going on with decisions being made to go ahead with things not knowing where/if the resources will be there. But if we don’t go ahead, then nothing gets done – ever. (I'm sure those bankers are probably nodding their heads in approval that I got out of accounting in my junior year of university.)

Happily, for a few months now, I’ve been surrounded by great people. They’ve been the ones making so much of this possible. They've been the ones adding to a good spirit at the house - and a feeling of home that's coming back to the place.

2009-11-14T11:51:00.002Z

I’m going to jump to another place – not Nkoranza, not my leave in the U.S., not where I currently am (Accra and Hope for Life), but back to the camp and over to Liberia.

Since even before I left the refugee camp, people have been encouraged to return to Liberia. Many have, but there’s still a significant number who haven’t. This is an update for a couple of people I’ve written about in the past who are now back in Liberia.

I’ve written about Samuel several times in the past (but, I'm not linking to any of those stories because I'm trying to find them quickly and am having a hard time finding them). He’s the one I’ve known for about 1000 years (since 1993), who I’ve seen struggle through and then build himself up from difficult situations time and again. There’s a story about him at this site (but you need to scroll down a bit) – the version in French is what he wrote and is much better written and more accurate than the translation that someone else has done in English.

A friend of mine helped him get through University – other donations from friends helped with some unexpected expenses that arose during his education. Just before the end of last year, after completing his studies, his wife and son returned to Liberia while Samuel remained to pack up their things that wouldn’t be easily replaced in Liberia (primarily text books). He also needed to follow through on his final project, making sure all copies went to where they were needed, that it followed the correct format, etc. Then in February this year he returned to Liberia – where he found it wasn’t so easy to get a job. And then he found that, in spite of staying and following his project through to the end, there were problems with the final result.

But, to sum up the story – he will officially graduate on the 14th – sadly, he won’t be here to walk across the platform and be handed his documents. There’s not enough money for the transport (he’s got some other priorities going on – his family, for one). And he’s also just been hired by Save the Children. So, good things are happening for him – it’s exciting.

Another guy I’ve written about in the past is Otis (another past update on Otis is here). He’s the one who’s a tailor and also does “designing” (which usually means machine embroidering). He does some good work. A little over a year ago he returned to Liberia. It was a long process. He wanted to return earlier, but then was told he could get into a program to help set up his business, and something something something, and he ended up shipping all his equipment back, but then being interminably delayed here by the “helping” organization(s). In the end, no help came through from this group, so he found his way back to Liberia, and met his equipment waiting for him there. His getting through this process of shipping his equipment [not a cheap task, and it included some sewing machines, embroidery machine, generator, knitting machine (that’s the thing that stitches up the ends of the cloth so they don’t unravel)] and then being delayed for a few months with no means of supporting himself was helped by some other friends. (Timing is always perfect – I’ve talked of that in the past – a donation comes when it’s most needed, it seems. This time the friends who sent the donation ended up being the brother and sister-in-law of the friend who had at one time helped Otis to buy one of his machines. So it was nice – kind of coming full circle, staying in the family, etc.)

So he got back to Liberia and was finally able to rent a place where he could start his business.

And gradually it built up and he was doing well for himself. Then suddenly, his sister died. And Otis was the working member of the family, all eyes and open palms turned in his direction to help with the funeral business. That barely finished when his father also fell sick – and again, those eyes were looking his way and the palms were looking to be papered by him. He needed to basically pawn his generator to get the money he needed to help his father. He told me the story and I gave him a hard time for giving up the one thing he most needed to be able to ensure his income in the future.

But it’s a system I can never fully understand. It’s a system very different than the one from where I come. It often seems to be a system that operates a lot on fear – fear of reprisals, fear of poisoning, fear of being “witched”, etc. So – out of fear, people do what’s expected of them, even if what’s expected can seem unfair and if what’s expected holds a person back from getting ahead and moving on in life.

So, this is what was happening with Otis – this system had these expectations of him – and that has led him to do things that will hold him back. But again, things worked out well and a donation came after a few months. He had already worked it out that the person to whom he’d pawned his generator was allowing him to use it – but he had a deadline to pay the balance of the money. Fortunately – another donation came just as needed and he was able to keep the generator.

After all of this, he’s decided he needs to move on – he can’t stay where he is because these expectations will always be on him and he’ll never be able to advance in the way he’d like to do. He very much wants to return to school to study fashion designing. Either that, or at the same time as school, he’d like to return to Ghana, or any other country that would give him some distance from these expectations, to set up his business again. He told me of a school in the States – but it’s pretty expensive. I also know of a school in Ghana (the guy who took over the running of the sheltered workshop where I was the past couple of years attended this school). Again – finances.

He wrote a story for me to share with people who might be interested or able to help him out – but I can’t do that. The story refers to and criticizes a few things, situations, groups, and individuals about which and whom I don’t know enough or have any kind of evidence to support putting all into the blog. That’s why I’ve chosen to do my own summary of what I know about him.

He also sent a few pictures to share, showing his current workshop:

2009-11-01T11:12:00.032Z

Before I left Nkoranza back in July, I did a blog entry and mentioned that I had a couple more entries I planned to do before leaving. However, the internet café (which wasn’t working too well at that time) and some last minute visitors didn’t make it easy for me to cooperate with my plan. I thought, “no problem, I’ll be going back to the U.S. and will have even faster internet access there.” But now . . . I’ve been back in Ghana for almost a month – so, that plan of catching up while in the U.S. obviously didn’t get followed through upon. Ah well. The main part of the delay while in the States was that I was just being with people where I was at any particular time – does that make sense? I was visiting family and friends from NY to CA, and they were giving me their time and presence – and I really try, when people are able to take time out of their busy schedules because I say that I’m hoping to come visit, to do nothing and want to do nothing more than be fully present to those moments and gifts of time that I’m being given. (Sadly, I’m not always successful in these efforts – I sometimes check my email, answer the phone, send a text – do something that takes me away from that person/those people I’m with at that moment. If a TV is on in the same room (I HATE all those restaurants and bars that need to have a tv within every angle of vision), I can easily become mesmerized by the moving sites and colours – not even aware of what I’m watching other than images blending and moving. And I often regret afterwards my forgetfulness that I can just let the phone ring, the text go unanswered, and the emails wait. And my eyes can be trained not to drift to the backdrop of floating scenes. I ask my friends and family to forgive me those lapses.)

So – I’m going to combine one of the blog entries I hoped to do before leaving Nkoranza with a little bit of an update of my time in the States. There may not be much writing going on here, just a bunch of pictures.

I had mentioned to some friends about painting the septic tank just below my house. It was a big slab of cement in the foreground of this spectacular view of the valley below and the hill beyond. I had visions of doing a mural – sunrise to sunset over an African village kind of theme, planning to blend it in with the colours of the surrounding environment.

Sadly, the really sweet image I had in mind didn’t quite come out on the septic tank. Then rains came and it was hard to paint. So, for a long time – a really pitiful mural adorned the cover of my sewage storage area. I could barely sit or stand on the rock behind my house to simply enjoy the view, not just because of too much wine or beer making it hard for me to stand but also because this childish, unfinished image was there - mocking my "skills".

(Believe it or not, I had taken a series of photographs – showing progress all along the way – from pre-painting, to ½ way with paint tins on the tank, to each stage. My delusions of grandeur had me convinced that the reality of my mind's image would make the process worth documenting - and could lead to world reknown as one of the best septic tank painters in the universe - so maybe universal reknown. I'm sparing you the good - or bad - majority of those pictures.)

The killer part is that it started off with a nice blending of colours – hoping that blending would be the background – going from lighter to darker shades of green, blue, yellow, etc. – enhancing the sunrise to sunset idea.

And this initial background is where I should have stopped. I would have preferred this view during the rainy season. Oh well.

I finally had a chance to fix it up in the last few months of my time there. Sadly, though, a new phone company had come into Ghana and purchased ALL the red paint in the country. (I hate that company. I like red, but suddenly everywhere I looked another shop or house had been painted red with this phone company’s name splattered across it. Awful. I still like the red, but I seriously detest the phone company.) I searched high and low for red paint, near and far, up and down – but no luck. All the little shops up and down every blessed road in the country were painted red – except for the few that competing phone companies had managed to paint with their colours. Anyway – I’m still fine with the result of the septic tank.

There were a few other painting pastimes while I was there – one was my table. It had been a slightly chipped, industrial gray kind of colour at its birth, so I painted it red (this was before the detested phone company came on the scene). Then one night when the power was out (a rare occasion where I was living) I was able to use a few of the paints I had for the septic tank but couldn’t use due to the rain – and I repainted it.

It was done by candlelight and seemed necessary to do no matter what level of lighting because I was going to be gone for the following few days so it would have time to dry.

So – painting - or more like just blending colours. One pastime over the past couple of years.

Another was gardening. I used to talk of digging in my garden when people asked what I had done over the weekend. But it was a little embarrassing at the same time, because it started off small – just clearing the bush, putting in a small sitting area and transplanting a few plants I found around the property.

Gradually, it got a little bigger, and ended up being kind of pleasant, I think.

Even though I was an Agricultural Extension Agent (oh la la) while in Peace Corps (a position gained by being guided to reinforce, during my interview with the Peace Corps, the fact that for a couple of weeks every summer I took care of my grandparents’ garden while they were on vacation), I know next to nothing about gardening.

I mostly know that I get some kind of satisfaction and peace and calm from digging and experimenting in the dirt.

And, as with the murals, I have visions of what I think it really could be. And, as with the murals, those visions don’t become the realities. However, I think the reality was also quite nice:

So – I think that’s about it. (If you look carefully, in addition to the flowers you'll find some herbs - basil, parsley, lemon grass, thyme, dill.)

I’ve changed my mind – it doesn’t seem right to combine this entry with some of the experiences from the States – those things need separate entries. (And I ended up writing much more than I thought I would.) But that means I’m falling behind on blog entries, because there’s another I was going to do about a second or third favourite pastime while in Nkoranza (taking different kids to the BIG city on weekends – and that would have had pictures of people in it – maybe more interesting than this one), and another with a few stories and updates from some refugees with whom I’m still involved, and still another entry with a little info on the first few weeks back in Ghana. Oh well, I’ll work it out. The blog entries won’t be in any kind of chronological order, but they’ll be in the usual, random, rambling sequence (is that some kind of anachronism – a sequence that’s rambling and random? I don’t even know since I sometimes think I just use words I’ve heard and read without fully understanding them; although I usually try to use them with confidence so that other people who think they know what they mean and think I’m using them incorrectly question their own judgment and understanding of the words since I’m pretending to be so confident in my verbosiveness).

2009-07-12T15:52:00.007Z

My younger sister, Karen, warned me when I came here to be careful, that I have a tendency to pick up characteristics of different people. She was specifically referring to an autistic guy I worked with in the states for awhile who would spontaneously clap his hands and do a high pitched screech at the same time. A kind of fun, amusing characteristic to imitate at times – or, at least I thought so.

After living in Ivory Coast for 2 ½ years and then in Ghana for another 2 ½ years I decided to return to school, and wanted to live somewhere in the north – I really wanted WINTERS again (even though I’ve really come to love hot dry and hot steamy weather). I ended up in Chicago. I needed to take my GRE, and wanted to focus just on that and on finding an apartment before looking for a job. But, things have a way of working out on their own, and it doesn’t matter all that much. I went to look at one “wonderful”, probably “deluxe” studio apartment that ended up being another trash heap, and on the way back to the EL saw a help wanted sign in what turned out to be – after I stepped back to look up higher at the wall – a West African restaurant. How to resist? I had just come from 5 years in West Africa. I went in and Grandma took my name and number to pass onto her son-in-law. That night I received a call and ended up being hired as manager of this restaurant, which then became a main and wonderful part of my life and experience in Chicago. Those first few months of mine in Chicago I was only working in the restaurant 6 nights a week. Grandma (the Nigerian mother of the owner) was the main chef, and the person with whom I spent most of my time. We’d take buses and subways to museums and other places from time to time. People would look at us and think, “hmmm, maybe . . .”. After all, I called her Grandma; her father was Scottish, so she’s fair skinned; I’m fairer skinned (my ancestors a mix of English/Polish/German/Danish/Swiss) – but I could see people’s minds working – “hmmm, maybe - -- -- - - - who knows? A couple of generations, blah blah blah, blee blee blee.”

As is customary in my blogs and conversations – I digress.

I managed Ofie (the restaurant - it's now closed, though, so, sadly, no good website to refer you to) throughout my time in Chicago. This also involved being the host, the busboy, the waiter, occasionally dishwasher, the salad maker, inventory taker, etc. (it was a small restaurant). In waiting on tables, I could always overhear customers discussing me, wondering where I’m from, etc. etc. Some had the courage to ask me – thinking South Africa, Boston, East Coast, Australia, U.K. and I forget where else. No one ever guessed Wisconsin.

My sister is right – I pick up the characteristics of people I’m with. I don’t really think of it. Sometimes it’s just mannerisms that I like. Sometimes, behaviours that amuse me. Sometimes maybe just too much exposure. This goes for speech patterns, as well as behaviours and mannerisms. While working in the refugee camp and spending a lot of time up/down in the truck to hospitals and wherever else, I always listened to BBC. People I met often thought I was from the U.K.

Della –

a wonderful guy here - - -he’s the focus of this blog entry (and it’s only taken most of one page to get to the focus). I think he’s my age. I think he might have been OK educated at one point – his English is better than some of the caregivers/staff. I think he lived in Accra for awhile. I also suspect that maybe he drove trotros or taxis or was a mate or somehow was involved with transportation. He LOVES cars, trucks, caterpillars – if it has four or more wheels and a motor – he’s in awe and over excited.

If I walk with him in town, there’s regular comments along the lines of, “Steven! Look at the Caterpillar! Nice one.” (The “Caterpillar” can be any rusted junk heap of a tractor – it doesn’t matter – it’s always a “nice one”, and it’s always worth getting excited about.)

Della has great, imitate-able and useful expressions. If the smallest thing – like a bead – falls down, or if you’re walking and take a step off the main sidewalk (intentionally or not), Della will call out, “HEY! Accident!” (I don’t think he says this if a serious accident really happens – like if someone really gets hurt or if something really gets damaged.) There’s another guy here who, for some reason, Della doesn’t like at all. He always tells me, “don’t mind him – don’t mind John.” And if someone is really disturbing him, he tells others to call the police – or better yet, he just shouts out, “POLICE!!” If Della likes the shirt you’re wearing, or if you’re wearing something new, he’ll come up to you and say, “Look at your shirt! NICE one!” If I’m with him, there are constant questions (sounding like demands) of, “Steven! What is this!”, “Steven! Where is your key!”, “Steven! Where is your bowl!”, “Steven! Where is my money!”

The answer doesn’t always matter – I can tell him, “your money is in the TOILET!”, “my key is in the TOILET!”, “the policeman is in the TOILET!”, “the driver is in PRISON!”, etc. and he chuckles and says, “NO!” and then proceeds to tell me where and what the thing is he’s asking about.

So many Della-isms and Della speech patterns (emphasis on certain parts of a sentence, sing-songing other parts, etc.) have become a part of regular dialogues I have with other workers here at PCC. I use them, they use them, we don’t even think of them, and it’s all understood and always good for a smile or laugh (if we notice we're doing it, which isn't always the case anymore).

I probably won’t continue using them when I get home, though – even though my sisters Karen and Rose would be entertained for a moment or two, and my mom would be annoyed for a day or two, and some of his expressions and speech patterns would entertain at least me if I said them – especially the “HEY! Accident!” one. But, just like the clapping my hands and doing a high pitched scream at the same time behaviour quickly faded when I saw that I was the only one amused by it (other than my sister Karen . . . at first) – I have a feeling the Della-isms will fade in time.

Della, in his "office" at the workshop: "Steven! Look at my office!"

2009-03-31T17:04:00.011Z

The fermenting scent of cashew fruit once again surrounds my house. Since last year, I’ve found out I can make wine, distilled alcohol, jam and even marmalade from the fruits of the cashew. Narrowing these options down to the choices that are most appealing to me we come to wine or distilled alcohol. Narrowing it further, based upon what I believe would be the easiest choice – I have wine. Unfortunately, information sent to me last year about making wine from the cashew fruit includes ingredients I have no idea about where to get here, so - - - -- that means that the fruits continue to ripen on their own, fall from the tree, fill the air with their fermenting stench . . . while I just sip some coffee, water, tea, wine, cold beer, or martinis.

Narrowing down my sipping choices: water, tea or instant coffee, and wine are the most likely choices. Instant coffee is kind of out, though, because I feel like I've become a bit of a coffee snob and have some real coffee available. This requires very slightly more effort to prepare than a tea bag in a cup of hot water, though, so, if I'm considering my lazy options, then coffee is also out. I can heat up some water and sweat through a cup or two of tea (it’s humid these days, I don’t need the hot tea to help me sweat; I can do that while just drying off from a cold shower). I can bring a bottle or box of wine down to the house that lasts for a few days, whereas a bottle of Star beer, which is the same size as a bottle of wine here, only lasts for that one refreshing time after you open it. So, the easiest, most comfortable option is for me to sip wine while listening to the cashew fruit fall from the tree and speculating about how a cashew martini might taste. (Maybe I’ll get the motivation up to rip a few of those fruits from the trees, yank off the cashew nut and chunk it aside – too difficult to process that nut thing into something edible – and then sieve the fruit juice out via mashing and mushing techniques so as to try out a Cashew Martini. We’ll see.)

And it’s mango season again! Cashews and mangoes at the same time! Unfortunately, the mango tree behind my house only produces the extremely and excessively stringy mango variety - a version we’d never see in those frighteningly HUGE grocery malls in the states, [Not so long ago I was almost brought to tears, definitely to watering eyes, while home for a break and with good friends who were planning a meal for me. They took me to the grocery mall and asked me to choose the ice cream for desert – who knew the aisle would be a mile long and that the decision really didn’t matter that much? Any ice-cream would be yummy. (OK, I had only forgotten that the options would be a mile long, and I did know that the decision was important. It's ice-cream, after all. And I want everyone to be happy. And all of the options were delicious, especially when you're not normally faced with them – all of which contributed to making this a difficult to make.) So there I was, facing a mile of ice cream – the same 15-1000 flavors repeated in 3 – 5 different sizes per brand . . . and about 200 different brands – I think that brings me to 1 – 1,000,000 choices – or? (Even if the math is off, the feeling is accurate.) I finally, after 23.5 minutes, made a choice, only to be rewarded for what seemed to me as a humongous effort followed by a stupendous success (how could a Moose Tracks option be wrong – HOW? I ask you??) with the comment – “Wow! Such a large size!!” And this was followed by something along the lines of - “will you get the stuff we need for a salad?” What a relief to see the pre-mixed greens that are already chosen and even cleaned and cut up for us. But what a moment of stress to be asked, “ is that it? Don’t you want to add anything else to that mix?” (I know my friends wanted to add – “. . . of flavorful and delicious looking greens selection you have made?” This would have at least let me feel free to say, “oh no, this delicious, flavorful variety of greens mix, in a rainbow of green colors, is exactly what I’m wanting.” But instead . . . ) I was left looking at 124 different varieties of cucumbers to choose from, 223 tomato options – and that was in the non-refrigerated section alone – and I couldn’t even look at other vegetable varieties beyond these two and when I saw an equal number of options in the refrigerated section, my eyes seriously watered. But I held back the tears because I didn’t feel free enough to cry in public and perhaps the watering was only a result of the excessive bleach being used to keep the floors free of any possible contamination – I mean, who wants to be exposed to any germs while in public? (point is, there’s a chance the watering eyes were not from any emotional distress). So, I made my choices – and then my friends also chose to send me to the salad dressing aisle. By this point I’d been through the ice cream mile and 556 million vegetable choices – and I knew what to do ----- close my eyes, stick out my hand, and hope that whatever I grabbed would include garlic as one of its top ingredient and sugar as none of its ingredients – and that I would not hear over the loudspeaker “CLEAN UP IN AISLE TWO” as I knocked over a selection of Paul Newman’s.].

In the end, though, having a meal and, more importantly, some time with a couple of good friends made the trauma of the grocery mall worth it all.

I’ve become accustomed to choosing my vegetables based upon my mood, whatever’s available and whoever’s the friendliest or the least annoying in the market. My salad dressing consists of a mix of vinegar, oil, schmushed (the computer tells me this isn’t a word, but I know it is. Who doesn’t know the meaning of schmushed??) up garlic, a flavorful blend of the spices precariously balanced on the shelves hanging from the ceiling and a dash of local honey.

And my ice cream choices – Fan Ice says it all – because that is all there is here. Except, there’s a newly opened shopping mall in Accra – yes, a shopping mall – and I heard that they have a gelato place there! I have to go! – if only it wasn’t 8 – 12 hours away! I have fond memories of gelato. A few years ago, a couple of good friends got married in France and helped me with a frequent flier ticket to come for the wedding. And a couple of other friends from Taiwan came to the wedding and asked me to be their driver (if they decided to choose to rent a car) and their baggage handler in exchange for helping me with the costs of a trip through France and Italy. Let’s see – should I refuse such an offer? - - - ah . . . no. A little tour through France and Italy in exchange for driving and carrying bags from time to time – hmmm, seems more than fair. While in Italy, my two Taiwanese friends really wanted to shop – and I was extremely good about it. I’d walk into a shop with them, and then say, “hmmm, I think I’ll just wait outside.” I’d head outside, go to the gelato stand across from the shop – it seemed there was always a gelato stand across from the store – choose either a favorite or a new flavor, and have plenty of time to finish it before my friends emerged with their purchases. They’d come out and say, “Let’s get some ICE- CREAM!!” What was there for me to say, except, “OK, that sounds good.” Ah, it was a nice routine we settled into for a few days. But, before long, they started letting me know that there’d be no more gelato because I was getting too fat. Fortunately . . . there was still shopping that they needed to do.

A few weeks ago a psychiatrist from the UK, a psych intern from Japan, a doctor intern from Germany and a nurse from Germany all came from Kumasi, where they’re working in the hospital, for a visit during a weekend off. I usually have minimal contact with visitors – I greet them, maybe chat a bit, but then try to move on. This time ended up being different. I had just returned from Kumasi – another bead shopping trip – it was a little late and the volunteer who had gone with me (Greetje) and I were having a beer together. The other volunteers who are currently at Hand in Hand joined us, and then suddenly this group of visitors came and asked if we’d mind if they joined us. Of course my first reaction is, “yes, we mind,” because I was tired and I didn’t want to do all that social stuff: “where are you from?” “what are you doing here?” “how long have you been here” etc. etc. (We had started the day at 5:45 a.m. and now it was 8:00 p.m. and I just wanted to relax with my beer(s). But to be honest, my reflexive first response may not have been any different if I’d spent the day napping and reading.) I’ve become much better at being social since being here, but at the same time, if given a way out of it – I’ll jump at the opportunity. (A few months ago, one of the women who takes care of the restaurant/canteen at the front gate met me just as I entered the gate after coming from the market and the internet café around 7:30 p.m. and told me there was someone in the restaurant looking for me, and that she hadn't seen me come in the gate, so I could dodge it all, because the visitor would be here for a few days and I’d be able to see her another time, by quickly ducking off to the right and taking a minimally longer way back to my house. I thanked her, quietly and profusely, and slinked off to the right.)

But, of course I didn’t voice my thoughts of, “NO! Don’t join us; I want to relax; I don’t want to talk to strangers; I just want to enjoy my beer and question why it’s a Saturday night and these two beers we are drinking are the last ones in the fridge.” So they joined us, and brought with them WINE (that’s what the title on the label was, anyway – the UK woman thought it was wonderful, I thought it was quite a bit less wonderful) and OBAMA. Our president turns out to be named after the “Original OBAMA COFFEE LIQUEUER”.

Ingredients include: Genuine Coffee, Water, Ethanol, and Fructose Glucose, and it’s made by the Afua Mpo Enterprise, right here in Ghana, West Africa. (There’s something else in small writing, but my glasses got misplaced about 9 months ago, so it’s not likely I’ll be reading that while sitting under these energy saver light bulbs without any specs to magnify.)

And, as is usually the case after I get over my initial revulsion at social contact, I enjoyed talking to the strangers. Maybe Obama’s participation in the conversation helped – but at the same time, I’ve noticed that usually, after I’ve started talking to strangers, it goes fine and I wonder why I so desperately wanted to avoid the initial contact.

Anyway – a better update will have to come soon, because my excessive rambling prevents it at this time- and only one good picture to accompany all that rambling – but I’m sure the links will be interesting to check out and they have additional pictures.

The Last few Days of Christmas

2009-01-27T17:07:00.022Z

The last few days of our 12 days of Christmas celebration – more parties, more cultural dancing and music groups. The spirit was still there – and the energy was . . . uh, still there, but at a lower key after days of celebration.

The Kete group came to perform their dances with slower, seemingly more controlled, dignified movements. Bright quickly became the star performer of the Kete’s –

Bright's in the white trousers

and the caregivers realized he needed a wardrobe change to make it perfect.

The next day the Seventh Day Adventist brass band came to entertain us.

They’re always a hit when they come – everyone gets out dancing – Bright, of course,

and Stephen,

who was released from the hospital in time to be home for the Christmas celebrations. (To digress a bit – I don’t think one of my blog entries would be proper if I didn’t digress at some point - he stayed with us for about two weeks and then went to the rehab center to have his casts removed and an assessment of what to do next. After less than a week there, he and Leticia returned to us early one morning, after taking the night bus, with the information that he’ll be here with orthopedic shoes and a brace connecting the shoes to position the legs and then he’ll be needing another surgery in a few months.)

And then . . . the Dagare’s.

Dede, one of our newest kids, and Ntiamoah - waiting for the party

Mabel and Bright (more on Mabel in the future)

They’re a group from the north of Ghana and there’s a large population of them here in Nkoranza. They use a GREAT xylophone,

the women do the drumming, the singing is nasal-sounding – and I like them (although, I guess I could easily see someone thinking it’s awful – without understanding the words, a lot of the music can initially sound the same, I guess – and either you’ll like that sound, or you won’t – I’m happy I do). They’re the choir at the Catholic church on the hospital compound, where I usually go on Sunday. The mass is always in Twi, sometimes a bit of Dagare here and there, and occasionally some English gets chunked in – but it’s the Dagare choir that keeps me going to that mass.

Emma and his "son" Quentin, enjoying the Dagares and sharing a moment

The next night, a big New Year’s Eve bonfire – with dancing and sweating around the bonfire as Kofi Asare did his drumming. Later that night, Ineke, the volunteers, Samuel and I got together to toast in the New Year with some champagne – and bright stars all around us.

And finally, it was New Year’s Day – and a simple party, just with the community – and with new golden clothes.

Mr. Robert, in the wheelchair, giving the opening prayer

Kofi Asare, also known as Coco the Clown - dressed in gold rather than the Coco costume for the New Year's party

Zacharia, who went to the Monkey Sanctuary, pushing Innocencia for the opening dance

Our Golden Kids doing the kids' dance

The next day was a day of cleaning up and taking down decorations – and the final day of Christmas here was a day of rest.

Happy New Year

2009-01-18T16:28:00.022Z

Before I move on, I need to go back to the previous posting. I never explained the Christmas Goat from the title. And, I never gave a shout out to thank Chauncy for making it possible for everyone to have a coffee/tea cup. When I moved here I was hanging some shelves – a bigger process here than it is where I’m from in the states. The walls are cement block. My tools are limited. So, it was easier to try to hang the shelves from the ceiling – and it worked fine. As long as the weight is limited, that is. So – shortly after moving here, the few coffee/tea cups and other glasses became reduced in number to a couple of each (this was how I learned about limiting the weight and about the wisdom of not putting breakables on shelves hanging from the ceiling - or under those shelves, either). That’s fine when you’re alone, but not so convenient when you have a few guests. A few months after I arrived, I got a nice package with some tea/coffee glasses – like nice-sized juice glasses, but with rubber grippers included so hot drinks can also go inside. Perfect for 3 french
visitors, one Liberian, and the American host to have their tea and coffee – and later they doubled as wine glasses. And they’ve also been known to host wee drams of scotch from time to time. Thanks again Chauncy – you helped me pull off being a not-so-bad Christmas host.

Also – thanks to Rose for the Christmas decorations, which are still taped to the door, walls and hanging from the ceiling – many at knock-your-eye-out level.

And the Christmas Goat - - - I was lucky to catch my parents and brother and sisters on the phone at different points during Christmas day. My brother Dean was one of the last ones – and his first question was, “What’d you have for dinner? Goat?” And I stopped, and thought, “my goodness, yes, it was goat – and it was delicious.” We ended up having more mouth-watering goat throughout the festivities in the week ahead – and every time it was delicious – none of that usual rubber/leather combination that meat often tends to come in here (which has led me to explore the yumminess of fish more than I had in the past). This was melt in my mouth nice. This was not even thinking about it being goat nice – even though I saw the aftermath of the slaughter when we returned from the morning Christmas mass.

And now – onto the next day of Christmas. This posting is only about the 26th of December, because it is completely impossible to narrow the pictures down any further. (I think it was better for me before digital cameras – I had to be sure each picture was reasonably nice and a keeper each time I took one. Now, I can take something like 10 million pictures, and then face 10 million hours of narrowing down and weeding out. Ah well, I’m not really complaining. By the way, thanks again for the camera Mom, Dad, Rose, Aunt – after 3 or 4 years it’s still going strong.)

So – the highlight of Dec. 26 was the enactment of the Nativity. A pure celebration of Jesus’ birth. Visitors from near and far came to witness the performance. I’ll just kind of label the pictures as the performance goes on:

Balloon, as the Angel Gabriel (he’s the one I wrote about shortly after I arrived here, before he got his wings)

Some of the younger, less mobile kids as sheep, waiting in the manger

King Herod and some of his Court

Golden Emmanuella – a part of the King’s Court – who’s birthday was celebrated on Christmas, the day before this performance. The Dutch family that has “adopted” her was here for the birthday and Christmas celebration.

Bright (from the Bright in Kumasi blog posting), as one of King Herod’s advisors

Ayuba (from the Monkey Business posting – and who only the night before made his appearance as Father Christmas) and Ntiamoah, as a couple of the shepherds

Koo Emma and Boadu, two more of the shepherd contingent

Mary and Joseph, played by Afia and Kofi Asare, who is also frequently seen during our parties as Coco-the-Clown and who is also our Music Master, drumming and singing for days without tiring

The 3 wise guys – Kwabena, Mabel, and Amma – and the star they followed, held in place by Philomena (one of the 2 kids that went to visit Stephen in the hospital)

The shepherds with their herd of goats and sheep – or is it a flock of goats and sheep?

Kwame, a former caregiver who left here a few months ago to attend University, returned for the holidays and was the MC for the enactment (as well as for all the other parties during the holiday). He was assisted by Patrick, another caregiver.

The manger – which doubles as a donkey cart for the other 364 days of the year – with baby Jesus, played by Kwaku Chairman

The caregivers and some of the kids praising and celebrating the birth of our Savior

Suddenly, Kwaku Chairman got restless – he had been practicing his part for at least 3 weeks and decided he needed to run around somewhere. Fortunately, his understudy, Kojo (one of the newest kids we have here, and he might actually be named Kwame - hmmm, I'm suddenly confused) was ready to step up to and get tucked into the manger

Holding Jesus up to the world – truly celebrating and rejoicing in His birth.

It was a festive, energy-filled celebration of the birth of Jesus. It wasn’t the calm, reflective portrayal we in the US normally have of the nativity. People were celebrating the birth of our Savior, holding Him up, announcing His arrival, shouting, throwing confetti. I love the calm, serene representation we have in the states, but this was exactly as it should have been – it was perfect for where we are and how we are at this moment.

The 12 Days of Christmas (the first 4 of them) . . . or, The Christmas Goat

2009-01-06T15:24:00.017Z

Our Christmas celebration lasted 12 days here – if you include the decorating, the clean-up days (before and after) and the day of rest following the last clean-up day. Reggae versions of our favorite (and other) Christmas Carols were played throughout each day – and they were received in varying degrees of delight and distaste. There was dancing, drumming, singing, feasting, celebrating, partying, Father Christmas, gift giving, champagne, a Nativity enactment, Christmas visitors, cheese and sausage, golden clothes . . . and the Christmas Goat. Everything and more – only no snow. (Although, it did get a little chilly in the wee hours of the night – something like 18C, which is around 65F – which is a little nippy when you wake up and the sun isn’t yet so strong, thanks to the Harmattan’s dust blocking its early morning rays.)

We decorated – lights, paper decorations made by the kids and caregivers and palm branches were tied together, strung up, and spread throughout the compound. It was a big decorating party – the caregivers and kids who were helping to decorate had a good time hanging things up, playing around, etc. – as Christmas preparations should be.

Then the Frafras came to dance and sing (another Frafra link here)– but I didn’t have my camera that night so you’ll have to take my word for it. It was the first real party of the season here, everyone was full of energy and excitement.

On Christmas Eve, another SMA lay missionary from Buduburam, Claire, came up for a visit. She’s French, and her brother and his wife had just arrived in Ghana a couple of days prior, with the plan to spend Christmas here in Nkoranza. They drove up in the truck I used to use – the one that has my butt cheeks sculpted into the driver seat (it seemed like I was in that truck so often – going to this doctor, that hospital, this orthopedist, that other audiologist, etc. – and maybe the beach once or twice – while I was on the camp). And they came with Samuel – a Liberian friend I’ve known for almost 16 years (I've written about him before). He’s just completed his Bachelor’s degree (thanks to all those who helped in this process), his wife and baby boy had just left for Liberia, and Samuel’s plan was to be here for Christmas and New Year, before going back to Accra to make arrangements for the shipping to Liberia of irreplaceable items, and also for arrangements of school records and credentials to be carried.

It's kind of like a "Where's Waldo" Nativity scene - I like it

Christmas day came, along with an 8:00 mass at the “outstation” – the Catholic Church on the hospital compound – just next to PCC grounds. The music is done by the Dagare choir (more on that in the 3rd Christmas blog entry in the near future) – it’s got a nasally tone to the singing, women doing the drumming, and a beautiful xylophone. I so much want to get a xylophone like that – HUGE and with a beautiful sound. Most of the mass is in a language or two that I don’t understand, so mostly I enjoy the music and the daydreaming as my eyes wander outside the window.

Ah, but Christmas day, the French visitors, Samuel and I all went to mass in the morning. And it was nice – a beautiful spirit going on. After communion, men and women started to do a spontaneous dance up to and around the altar area as the Dagare choir sang, drummed and xylophoned. Such a rich feeling.

Then home to a nice Christmas breakfast - complete with french cheeses and sausage, nice coffee with Amarula (a Bailey's type of pleasure), if desired, eggs mixed with yams, some veggies, Laughing Cow - and a small mountain of garlic. Even a few gifts were exchanged. It was great to have visitors - we ended up only being 5 at the table, but it's more than I usually have. And it was as breakfast (or any meal) should be (at least in my mind) - plenty of food, talking, and lingering for 2 1/2 hours.

Christmas Night was another party. A lot of visitors end up coming to PCC over Christmas - so there were extra people at the party. Every party opens with Coco the Clown;

it's an open secret that it's Kofi Asare, one of the older kids here who's dressed up as Coco. He comes out in costume, and starts off the singing and dancing - the opening song is always:

"I am Coco -

Coco, the clown.

I am Coco -

the best clown in town."

And the party continues with Coco the Clown taking on Kofi's role as the Music Master. He's a drumming natural - knows songs by heart and drums and sings them with spirit after only listening once. The rest of us do a shuffle dance in a circle - pushing kids in wheelchairs, carrying kids, or just moving in the spirit.

Evans, who went to the monkey sancutary with me, always ends up pushing Paa Yaw for every dance

And then Father Christmas showed up. He made the rounds of the crowd, greeting everyone. After that, he took his seat, surrounded by three of his favorite elves.

I didn't recognize him at first, but Ayuba, who also went to the monkey sanctuary, was a great Father Christmas

After dinner, Father Christmas called the names of every kid, visitor, caregiver, worker, guest - even Ayuba's name was called - who was there to come up for a gift.

(My favorite gift was the one Ayuba received. I don't have a picture of it yet - but it's a plastic, toy phone - pretty sweet with hidden compartments, magnifying glasses - you name it. Since I've been here, he's frequently been on the "phone" - a small piece of wood, about the size of a cell phone. Now, he's not often far from his new phone.)

Then, more dancing. And Santa rocked.

For me, Claire, her brother and his wife, and Samuel - we ended up back at my place for more wine, french cheese, foie gras and more conversation.

2008-11-26T14:18:00.005Z

I met Otis over 4 years ago when I was working on the refugee camp. He had polio as a kid and was on the camp alone. At one point, he had been sleeping on a table in the market. Before I arrived on the camp, Patrick (who I’d known since the time I was living in Cote d’Ivoire, and who I was fortunate to be able to visit last year at his new home in Norway) had noticed Otis and invited Otis to come train as a tailor and sleep in the workshop. By the time I arrived, Otis was well into his tailor training, and doing well. After a year, Patrick and his family got resettled to Norway, and Otis was completing his training. But Otis has a vision and some good plans – and he wanted to go on with his training to also learn embroidering – or “designing”, as it’s referred to here. I was getting some help from Liliane Fonds for my work with some of the disabled people, and they agreed to help Otis with his embroidery training.

Finally, Otis was ready to open his own shop, and he wanted to return the assistance he’d received by assisting other people with disabilities to learn how to sew and embroider. The UNHCR was possibly going to be assisting him in this effort (but their help never quite came through in the way that he hoped and needed). Through my friends and family who made donations through me, and also with Liliane Fonds, we were able to help him to meet some of his goals – he was able to get an embroidery machine, a few extra sewing machines and a generator (the electricity was always going off on the camp). So, Otis had a school in his workshop where he was training people with different disabilities while at the same time trying to run his own tailoring business. And, twice a week he was also giving sewing classes at the school for the deaf – and he was trying to learn a little sign language.

me and Otis, my last day of work on the camp, last year

For the past few months, there’s been a lot of increased pressure and encouragement for Liberians to return to Liberia. And for some people, this was easier than for others. The UNHCR allowed a limited amount of baggage to be carried back – and some people have been living on the camp for 18 years now, so they’re certain to have established some kind of life and acquired possessions – furniture, tv, stereo – and in Otis’ case, equipment for running a business. Again, a friend who’d help Otis in the past and had even met him while visiting a couple of years ago was able to help out a lot. David had just lost his job, but had money set aside that he asked if I needed for anyone. As often is the case – God works in wonderful ways and the timing was perfect. Otis timed things well; he shipped his tailoring equipment to Liberia, where he had someone he trusted to receive it and keep it safe for him until he returned a week or so later. He also submitted a proposal to the UNHCR for assistance in establishing a training school, similar to what he had on the camp, back in Liberia. And he registered with the UN for his return trip – meaning they would pay for his return trip to Liberia. All was fine. Until UN told Otis he needed to wait until they reviewed his proposal and he found himself stranded on the camp with his means of living secure with his friend in Liberia. We were able to help him out, again with a few nicely timed donations, while he waited . . . and waited . . . and then waited some more. Until – after about 2 months – he was told by the UN that they no longer provide that assistance here and he should return to Liberia to submit the proposal there. So – finally he was heading back – and all was ready to go – and the plane they (the other Liberians scheduled to return at the same time) were to be on had mechanical problems and he ended up being delayed another couple of weeks.

But now he’s back – and he called me almost as soon as he landed. He hit the ground running – checked out his stuff, which was all fine, then went to the part of Liberia (Ganta) where he wants to set up his school to see what the situation is like and what's available along the lines of buildings or land or whatever is needed. When he returned to Monrovia he submitted his proposal to the Liberia Refugees Repatriation and Reintegration Commission and to the United Nation Development Program, from where he was later told that he will have to wait until next year before he will receive any response from them.

Anyway – he’s always impressed me. He has his dreams, his plans, his goals – and they’re goals that will help him and will build up his country. And not just build up his country by introducing new skills (embroidery is not very common in Liberia), but will build up a group of people (the ones with disabilities) who are often left behind. Not only does he have these dreams and plans (lots of people have dreams and plans), but he has followed through with them – he researches them, he makes contacts, he keeps the contacts, etc. I like the guy, and we’re friends, but at the same time I know part of why he called me almost as soon as he landed is to keep that connection – not just keep a friendship.

I recently received another email from Otis. He plans to start working as soon as possible, not waiting for a response, which may or may not be favorable, from those organizations. So he has gone around to find out the options. He found a place he could rent for $50 per month. He was able to borrow money for 3 months, and he's trusting that somehow, before the time is up and he gets sacked from the place, the $600 for a full year's rent will come in so he can pay off the landlord, and also pay off his debt.

As has so often been the situation during my time in Africa, especially my time on the refugee camp, so much moves forward based upon trust and faith in God. Sometimes this works as hoped and believed. Sometimes, our faith is tested, and what we hoped and believed and wanted to happen isn't how it works out. And the faith in God's plan not necessarily being our plan - that God's vision is greater than ours - is truly tested. I'll let you know how this works out for Otis.

2008-11-21T16:15:00.023Z

Stephen is about 3 or 4 years old. He came to us in May from an orphanage in Kumasi. He’s not like the majority of other kids who live here – he’s physically disabled, like some of the other kids, and he’s been totally abandoned, like all of the other kids – but unlike most of the other kids (except maybe some of the kids with cerebral palsy) he doesn’t seem to have any kind of intellectual disability. There was a volunteer at the orphanage who came and asked Ineke to consider taking Stephen here. The staff at the orphanage never allowed much physical contact, didn’t want the kids to be picked up or held, etc., according to the volunteer – and she felt strongly attached to Stephen and promised that she would continue to send support to cover his expenses here at PCC (a promise which was kept for only a couple of months, unfortunately; I think sometimes people return to their countries and the time they spent here in Africa becomes a dream to them, hopefully a good memory, but something from which they eventually feel distanced).

We were able to take Stephen to the people from the OTC (the Orthopedic Training Center - I tried to find a good link to include for this place, but couldn't find one in English). I often used to take people with disabilities there – when I was living and working with Hope for Life in Accra and then again when I was on the refugee camp. So it felt like seeing old colleagues again; old colleagues who were recommending surgery for Stephen – in fact, a series of surgeries which, along with the recovery and therapy process, might last up to a year.

my photo of a picture taken of Stephen and his "Mom" following his surgery

Stephen’s legs are bent up (just to clarify, this is not the technical, medical diagnosis), and he crawls around – and he’s a bundle of energy, chasing after the other kids, fighting (both play-fighting and serious fighting), laughing, crying, asserting independence yet demanding attention. Basically, he’s just a typical 3 – 4 year old (with bent up legs).

Stephen sitting up in bed upon our arrival

Greeting Janet, and maybe more importantly, trying to get some cookies from her purse

Finally, a couple of weeks ago he received the first of his surgeries. We went to visit him a little over a week after (the Saturday which ended up with me rehydrating milk as described in a previous post): Joyce, who’s like the mother of everyone here, Janet, the woman in the kitchen who keeps us fat, Philo, a little girl that Joyce takes care of, and Emmanuel (Ema), one of Stephen’s buddies.

Within no time, Stephen demonstrated he’s the same bundle of energy, shouting out Ema’s name, laughing loudly, crawling on the floor, chasing after Ema, taking playful swings at him.
And doing all of this with casts that go from above his knees down to his just above his toes.

Stephen teaching Ema how and where to properly kiss his "baby"

Leticia, his “mother”, has been staying with him in the hospital – taking good care of him, making sure he stays fat. He’s also made good friends with Isaac, the boy in the bed next to his, who has the same casts on his legs that Stephen has. Just this week, 12 days after his first surgery, Stephen has received the second operation. Now we’ll see how the things progress – if any more surgeries will actually be necessary, how much time for the therapy, and how long before he can return to his home here at PCC.

2008-11-18T15:50:00.012Z

Cheese isn’t very easy to get here, and it isn’t cheap if you can get it. Even the Laughing Cow variety (mentioned in a previous post that also included a wonderful link to the Laughing Cow website) isn’t always easy to get. It’s very often not available at the shop on the PCC grounds (the shop has supplies available that I think are believed to be wanted by most foreigners here – the visitors and the volunteers – things like sweet crackers, Rose wine, other sweet stuff, and when something is acquired like Laughing Cow, it doesn’t last long – but it takes long before more becomes available. Salty snacks are NEVER there – which is probably a good thing, because they are definitely a weak point for me. Red wine has rarely been there, until recently because a couple of people requested it – yes, I was one of those people – and white wine is available more often than the red, but not as omnipresent as the Rose. Charity, the lady who runs the shop and Baffo, the guy who stocks it, say that people buy the Rose, that’s why they have it – not realizing that people buy that because it’s the only one that’s available. Anyway – as usual, I digress. . . ). But some friends told me they’ve been making homemade cheese – and sent me some of the ingredients that would be hard to find here – rennet, citric acid, lipase powder, thermometer, rubber gloves – and the instructions.

It took me awhile to try to make the cheese – I was hoping to find the recommended brand of powdered milk, which I didn’t find. Then there was the time factor – I needed to be home one night to mix the milk so it could rehydrate overnight, and then I wanted the following day a little free so I’d be sure to have enough time.

milk mixing ingredients - 1 can of happy looking powdered milk, and then 4 bottles of drinking water - mix and let sit in fridge overnight full full rehydration

Finally, last night I mixed the powdered milk – 1 gallon of it!! But where and how to store it? My fridge isn’t that big – fortunately, it also doesn’t have that much food in it, so I was able to take the water out and put the milk in.

So as to get proper picture, I removed the lid of the larger pot

Then tonight I was ready – I almost followed the directions – I cleared off the counter, washed it down, wiped it down, did a version of sterilizing it (I couldn’t get the bleach locally, so I just tried boiling water).

after my version of sterilizing the "work" area, I followed instructions and premixed the cheese making stuff

Brought the milk out of the fridge – unfortunately the pot couldn’t hold all that was recommended. Then I forgot to add the cream that the directions said you should heat up and add and which was the final ingredient and one of the things I went to Kumasi for last weekend. But after mixing some of the ingredients and starting to heat it I remembered the cream (was it too late? or is it better late than never? I think it can never be too late – although it was whipping cream, that should work, yes?).

milk with added ingredients happily coming to the correct temperature

Who knows what happened – it could be that I don’t have measuring spoons, so I used the teaspoons that I also use for eating for the measuring. It could be that I don’t have measuring cups – so I used a coffee pot for the larger quantities of liquid and then guestimated the smaller quantities. It could be that my pot may not actually be stainless steel, although I think it is, (after all, it worked last weekend when I made some tomato juice which also says it needs stainless steel). It could be that the directions only talk of nonfat dry milk and then adding cream, but all the powdered milk here is full cream – so should I still have added the cream?

how could I not add this cream?

And should it have been whipping cream?

It could be that my slotted spoon was actually a slotted spatula – oh wait, that’s not it because I never got to the part in the process that uses the slotted spoon. It could be that I was following the directions for if you have a microwave and then jumped to the other directions for no microwave – which actually are a little confusing to me because it seems they also think if you have no microwave that you have no stovetop. It could be that I think my stove has a gas leak (I used to think it was the schnozzle connecting it to the gas bottle, but I replaced that; so maybe it’s the rubber hose from the bottle to the stove; or maybe the gas leak smell is because one of the knobs is broken off, but I don’t think that’s it – how could that cause a gas smell?) and maybe the extra gas fumes in the air didn’t react well.

But for whatever reason – I don’t think the milk ever curdled. It seemed to do something, and it was at the temperature recommended – even higher. And then it was to sit for 3 – 5 minutes or so for the full curdling to take place, even an extra 1 – 5 minutes if needed, for the curds to firm up on top so I could use the slotted spatula to separate them – but nothing happened – and it’s going on 45 minutes now. And I have a pot of milk on the stove – maybe a gallon or so of it, which is mixed with rennet and citric acid and lipase. And I don’t know if I can use it for anything else – it doesn’t sound like it would be too delicious to drink. Hmmm, but maybe – liquid uncurdled cheese anyone?

So – I guess this means I need to clean up and try again another day after I’ve rehydrated some milk overnight (and I don’t think it really rehydrated, either – it seemed kind of thick on the bottom). And I need to remember to add the cream appropriately – maybe that’s the key. And maybe get a bigger pot, too. And maybe the measuring stuff. (But I like, some people might say Love, whipped cream – sometimes in University I would buy some pre-made whipped cream and enjoy the container for desert – sometimes I’d enjoy it for dinner. And often, pie is just the condiment for the whipped cream I help myself to. So – I may not have any whipping cream left by the time I get to make more cheese, which may not matter since the milk says it’s full cream already.)

My sister, who I called at the last minute so I could find out how many ounces are in a cup, so that I could then calculate the other measurements based upon the measuring lines on my coffee pot thing recommended that I take photos and do a blog entry on my cheese making. I wasn’t sure I would, but decided to take the pictures just in case. And now, while waiting for the cheese to curd up it seemed like a good way to pass the time.

clean up time - oh well

2008-11-11T18:00:00.029Z

When I arrive somewhere new, it always seems like within the first couple of weeks there are 1 or two people with whom I feel some kind of connection. And often, that connection develops into a strong friendship that lasts for years, it seems. When, at the beginning of my junior year, I transferred schools while getting my bachelor’s, I was living off-campus and in a major (accounting) that really wasn’t the best match for me (other than that I kind of love math and it comes easily). Within the first few weeks, by chance, someone who was in one of my non-business classes was entering the apartment building I lived in while I was going out to make a phone call (alas, I had no phone yet so needed to go out to the parking lot pay phone to call my sister and relieve my homesickness/loneliness). We talked briefly in passing, and then got together for a cup of coffee after I finished my phone call. Anita and I were buddies for the duration of my time in Whitewater, and we’re still in touch. I’m still in close contact with several friends from Peace Corps days. I recently wrote about Samuel, a Liberian I’ve known since 1993 when I was in Cote d’Ivoire. Etc. etc.

But for some reason, I haven’t made that connection here, yet. There are people I’m friendly with – but there’s a structure, or a hierarchy or something that seems to prevent anything deeper from coming about. It’s unusual for me – usually I make my friends through work or school, or whatever my normal, daily activities are – a few people with whom I can hang out, laugh and relax, share a beer, talk about work, have deeper conversations about life, religion, culture, values, etc. But that hasn’t been the case here. Maybe that’s good – I spend more time alone, and as someone recently pointed out, I get a chance to reflect on my relationship with Africa. But, this isn’t what I’m posting about this time – I just like to digress from time to time. (Or, since I’ve taken two paragraphs with digression, maybe I should just say it is part of this blog posting.)

I do have some friends in Ghana – and I’m lucky that a few have been able to come visit me.
Just a couple of weekends ago, Saka was able to come for a few days. He lives in Kasoa – the town close to Buduburam, and he is in charge of the group of blind people with whom I worked sometimes, and he helped me to follow up and visit the people with disabilities in Kasoa, and he helped me find my way around to the families of our deaf students who lived in Kasoa so we could visit them. He ended up being on the Board of Directors for the school for the deaf as well as running the income generating project that was established for the deaf school so that the lunch program would be able to continue more independently after I left. He’s partially blind and his wife is totally blind, and they have 3 beautiful kids. Their son, who is now two years old, was born while I was on the camp, and I was able to attend his outdooring.

The problem is there’s not much to do up where I am now. In the south, there was always the beach – and not much further were some “castles”, the rain forest canopy walk, etc. Here –there’s not much. The PCC is a beautiful, peaceful place. But on the weekends when I have time off – there’s not much else to do, which is fine, but when there are visitors, it’s sometimes nice to have an activity or two.

However, there is a monkey sanctuary not too far away, and this is what I’ve tended to do with a couple of my visitors. The best part for me is the walk through the forest – there are mona monkeys and black and white monkeys, but the main thing for me is just the walking, the huge trees, the flowers, the smells of it all, feeling the trail under my feet, listening to the forest sounds.

So – that’s what Saka and I did – and we took three of the older kids from here with us –

Evans, who has cerebral palsy and I can’t understand most of what he says, but he’s a funny, friendly guy; Ayuba, who has Down’s Syndrome and can look very serious as we are all walking along,

but at the same time has a beautiful, infectious laugh; and Zacharia, who’s non-verbal and is one of the hardest workers at PCC and also has one of the most constant, largest and beautiful smiles.

We started in the market at the stand where I love to get lunch about once a week – watche (sounds like watch-ay), rice and beans cooked together, with some tomato stew usually added, some Shitto (hot pepper stuff), gari, spaghetti – and maybe meat or fish or egg.

Mmmm, delicious. Then the taxi ride – 4 of us squeezed in the back, Saka, with the longest legs, in the front.

The road’s not paved for part of the way there, and if you take a wrong turn, or are directed down the wrong road, you still get there, but it takes about twice as long and on a road that’s 4 times as bad. This second option was the way our taxi decided to take.

Even before our taxi finished rolling to a stop, a guide was already making his way to us, and almost as soon as we were out of the car we were making our way down the trails.

The monkeys are welcome in the village of Boabeng. On some of the houses, you can see scratch marks below windows where monkeys are welcome to climb in and help themselves to some of the family’s food. Check out the website to understand some of the beliefs about the monkeys and why people in this village feel about them as they would about cousins or other family members.

Certain monkeys have certain families to whom they pay regular visits. The people in the village know where the monkeys tend to hang out, they know if there have been births or deaths, and if there’s been a death, it’s mourned, and the monkey is buried in the monkey cemetery. The guide took us through the forest,

found some of the monkey families, led us to the monkey cemetery,

showed us some of the impressive trees, and led us back to the village.

there were a few monkeys in the trees - right above our heads -
when we got back to the village

Our taxi took the more direct route back to Nkoranza.

Saka, who’s muslim, went to find a mosque where he could pray while I took the guys out for some cokes (but forgot to take a picture of us with our cokes) while on the way back to the PCC.

Bright in Kumasi

2008-10-08T16:58:00.022Z

Kumasi is the 2nd largest city in Ghana. It was formerly the capital of Ghana, and has been forever and still is the seat for the Ashanti kingdom. It’s also a crazy busy place. The city feels like one big market to me. There is a HUGE market there – Kejetia (just pictures on this link)- which "they" say is the largest market in West Africa – where it’s easy to lose yourself and overwhelm your senses. (It’s the market I wrote about in a former blog entry on a day we went to buy beads.) It seems to dominate my entire impression of Kumasi every time I go.

I sometimes like to go there just for an escape, to be overwhelmed, to buy a few supplies that I can’t get locally (like another seasoning, or a bottle of scotch), to mail stuff (there’s a local post office in Nkoranza, but shortly after arriving here I mailed 2 things – a card to a friend and some insurance forms - the insurance forms reached their destination, but the card still hasn’t arrived, so now, even though SMA has been reimbursed for the physical I had prior to returning to Ghana, if I want to mail something I save it until I make a trip to Kumasi), to eat a pizza or some other such delicacy, to be lost for a short time, etc. I don’t go there often, though – I’ve only gone maybe 5 times, other than the 2 bead shopping trips we made there.

Two Saturdays ago I went with Bright, a 15-something-year-old boy with Down’s Syndrome. The kids here have all heard of Kumasi – it’s like OZ. Bright was too happy to agree to go with me – but he had no idea what he was getting himself into. When we got to the transport station in Nkoranza (don’t go picturing Grand Central or anything, it’s just an unpaved parking area with taxis, small buses and vans, called trotros), we found out that we had just missed the trotro to Kumasi. So – we had an hour wait til the next one filled, but being the first ones for the next trotro (this link has a little video, maybe it's good, takes too long for me to open here), I chose some nice seats for us – towards the front with more leg room, and window control – all nice bonuses for a 2 ½ - 3 hour minimum ride to OZ. As we passed through each small village along the way, Bright asked me, “is this Kumasi?”

After testing Bright’s patience with a traffic jam unlike anything he’s experienced in Nkoranza, we got down from our ride into the Kumasi trotro station – a hectic place with taxis, trotros and people rushing every which way. Our first goal, and the main reason for making this journey (other than getting lunch and an experience) was to visit “the beadman.” He’s from The Gambia, and gets beads from all over Africa, some of which we use for the necklaces and bracelets we make in the sheltered workshop.

The trotro station collides with Kejetia’s swarming, swirling, masses. It’s wonderful – a huge crowd of people fighting their way out of the “station” try to merge and fight their way into the huge mass of people swarming into the station, as well as out of, into and around the market. Toss in a couple of hand pulled carts being pushed and pulled by a few people and blocking the walkways – and it’s enough to make Bright start chanting, “Steven, let’s go back, Steven, let’s go back, Steven, let’s go back, Stevenlet’sgoback, stevenlet’sgoback.” It would probably be enough for most people coming from small towns and and probably even from some big cities to start chanting, "let's go back, let'sgobacklet'sgobacklet'sgoback."

But Bright did well – he faced up to the overwhelmingness of it all. I promised never to let go of his hand. And I kept reminding him of the chicken and rice and the cokes we’d soon be having. Once we got into the crowd circling around the edges of the central part of the market, descending the 8 stairs into the interior of the center-most section was too much for Bright to handle – after all, he was still adjusting his senses to being surrounded by lions and tigers and bears, oh my. We skipped the first entrance. By the time we got to the second set of stairs, he had changed his chant to “let’s go to Sunyani, let’s go to Sunyani.” (Sunyani is a larger-than-Nkoranza town that he’s been to before.) With some major cajoling, and constant food reminders as well as a promise of even 2 cokes or more – he made it down the stairs.

We found our way to the meat section, where, without knowing the route or how I get there every time, I always end up, and called “the beadman” who came to get us and take us to his shop. We told him what beads we needed, gave him samples, placed an order, received a parting gift for Bright (a necklace that he hasn’t taken off, except for me to repair it, since we’ve returned), got directions for the quickest way out of the market, got to the road, grabbed a taxi, and made it to the chicken and rice. And two cokes for Bright. A cold beer for me.

Whew – things were right with the world after that. We went to the obruni store (the slightly more expensive grocery store that many obrunis/foreigners shop at), got my mixed seasonings, season salt, a container of Laughing Cow cheese (who knew all the varieties pictured on their site are available? wow) and a box of red wine. And then we headed back to the trotro station, buying some cookies for Bright along the way. Again, we were among the first people to get on the trotro

And that meant we had time to eat the cookies, buy some Fan Ice ice-cream, get some bread and candy, and re-hydrate a bit too much. We also had time for some pictures around the trotro –

Bright also tested his photography skills.

15 minutes outside of Kumasi – Bright needed to pee. And for the first time ever for me, I got to yell to the driver – and for the benefit of everyone’s ears on the trotro – that we needed to pull over for urinating. (I’m always able to hold it, and prefer to hold it than shouting for the driver to pull over so I can urinate. But it was no problem at all, and ½ the people on the trotro also got out to take care of business.)

It was amazing how well Bright did – there was the initial over stimulation of it all, but he still made it through an almost 12-hour outing.

The next day, I was trying to catch up on digging in the overgrown garden outside the house, and Bright came down for a visit – so, here’s a couple of closing shots:

2008-09-22T16:24:00.020Z

Shortly after I arrived at the PCC, I updated the blog with an entry about the weaving that some of the youth are doing in the sheltered workshop here. That’s only one of the things that the kids are working on, though. There’s also Nana Yaw’s Paradise, a special place for some of our kids with autism. They also sometimes help to string together beads, or make greeting cards, or envelopes.

Then there’s also beadmaking – involving big, clay ovens that become red-hot and then have clay molds filled with broken glass shoved into them so the glass will melt into beautiful beads.

And then, another part of the sheltered workshop is where the necklaces, bracelets and earings are designed and strung together – so these glass beads we make (along with beads we purchase in Kumasi that come from other parts of Ghana and Africa) become the final products that the kids produce in this part of the sheltered workshop. (If you check out our website – see the link to the right – you can find some pictures of the final products that our kids are making here.)

Once a month is also payday for the kids working here. It’s one of my favorite times, and a time when I actually feel I’m doing some work in my field. The kids come into the office, they all have their own box for saving their money, and their own key for their box. And we sit and talk about the money they have earned, what they have done to earn the money, what their plans are for the money, etc. There are different level of understanding and communication ability – and there’s also growth in this area with some of the kids. There’s also a range of plans for their savings – some are just saving with no idea what they will do with it, some are saving for a car, some are saving to open their own shop one day.

celebrations

2008-08-23T10:49:00.014Z

It’s been a time for some celebrations here. In fact, it seems like there’s often a reason for a party – a new arrival, an imminent departure, a birthday, an anniversary, someone’s return, a special visitor – there’s always a reason to celebrate if you’re open to finding it. But sometimes the reason is even more special. We recently had a couple of celebrations that were like this – clearly times that were beyond the ordinary special times that call for celebrations.

Most of the children who are at the PCC (over 40 of them) have no identified family. But during the school year the number of residents increases to over 60. There are several kids who have family in surrounding villages and come to stay with us during the school year. We have a boy’s dorm and a girl’s dorm, and these seasonal kids follow the cycle of the school year – coming to join the sheltered workshop when other kids are going to begin their school terms, and returning to their homes when each school term finishes.

(PCC – or Peace of Christ Community, Operation Hand in Hand wasn’t set up to be a substitute for the families of kids with disabilities. The permanent residents all were abandoned kids with primarily intellectual/mental disabilities but many also have physical disabilities – some were found in the market and brought to us, some were abandoned in the hospital, some were referred to us from orphanages throughout the country that were unable to care for them due to their disabilities. The sheltered workshop, however, is a chance for kids with mental retardation to learn some skills, to be challenged intellectually and, at times, physically, to earn a little income, to feel dignity and to earn some respect from their families and the community. Therefore, it’s open to children with disabilities who also have families that care for them, and not just the abandoned.)

Special times for celebration include when these dormitory kids return to us, and when they have finished the school term and are about to return to their families for vacation. We just finished what is basically the last term of the school year – so it was a different kind of party. Usually the parties here take place at night, there’s drumming, dancing, some special food, cokes, cookies, etc. Because it was the end of the school year, however, this time, in addition to the night party, we went to a nearby hotel to have some chicken and rice for the kids.

We just had a second special occasion to celebrate when just a few weeks ago Ineke, the founder of PCC, received a national recognition award from the president of Ghana for her role in establishing the health insurance. Ineke has been in Ghana for over 30 years; she’s a tropical medicine specialist and a surgeon, and she founded the PCC in 1992. She was a key player in establishing a local insurance plan for the region where she was living/working several years ago. This plan became the base/structure of the National Health Insurance plan, which was implemented just a few years ago while I was living and working in Buduburam with the refugees. She and Bob, her husband, went to Accra for the award ceremony – everyone at PCC went to the TV room for 3 ½ hours. A few days after her return, there was a party celebrating Ineke and her award. The chief (who nominated her for the award) and his wife were here, many other friends from the community and colleagues were also invited. It was an evening of music, speeches, dancing, eating, picture taking and general celebration.

2008-07-12T14:53:00.033Z

One of my favorite times of day here is pool time. It’s at the end of the day (4:00) and it’s a time for just having fun with the kids.

Most of the rest of my time has been spent doing this:

a HUGE spreadsheet that has probably any bit of information we could want about the products being made in the sheltered workshop (inventory, sales, new production, retail value, orders shipped out, etc. etc.). I had studied accounting, and as a result some related business classes, for the first 2 ½ years I was in university – and when I finally clued in that, even though I liked math and calculus and it all came easily to me, becoming a businessman wasn’t in my future, I left the field and never took a backward glance to see what I was missing. And none of my part time (or full time, for that matter) jobs were ever in retail. The thought of that has always given me a bit of a shudder. I always went for the food industry – fast food, fine (or at least nice – or maybe interesting) dining. This choice always came with some nice fringe benefits (free, or at least discounted, meals). And now I find myself in Africa, at a wonderful place, with good people and with people for whom I have a lot of admiration and respect (Ineke, the founder, recently received from the President of Ghana a national recognition award for her contribution to the Ghanaian health care system – in particular for instituting an insurance scheme for the hospital she was in back in the 80’s, upon which the national health insurance is now based). But I am basically an office- , and what feels to me like a sort-of business-, person, teaching myself Excel and creating monstrous spreadsheets, organizing a shop for selling the necklaces and other bead products we make, managing some personnel (which I'm learning is not something I'm so good at in this setting), and needing to do small talk with visitors hoping that they will buy things, but even more importantly carry parcels with our products to our distributor in Holland. It’s what’s needed to be done at this time, but . . . uggh. In the past I’ve sometimes avoided parties and other social occasions because I’m no good at small talk stuff (although, most of the time once I’ve started talking with people it’s fine, and even interesting). It’s not the most inspiring work for me – hence these multi-monthly time lags between blog updates – and not something that’s easy for me to feel passionate about, which is too bad. But, it’s for a beautiful project, filled with beautiful children. It’s good to learn these new skills, I guess, and to be challenged to do things I would normally avoid (being outgoing, doing inventories, etc.), but facing this field I happily left behind many years ago makes the 4:00 pool time an even more wonderful escape. (I have a couple of other escapes – so hopefully I’ll update the blog again sometime soon.) And - there's always hope that in the future there may be changes in my role to make more suited to my skills and interests.

I’ve also been fortunate to have a friend of mine – a Liberian guy I’ve known for 15 years! – visit me a couple of times. It was great to have an old friend around, someone to talk freely with, to have some good times with, etc. He was also able to give me some updates on what’s happening on the camp. Here are also a few links (some older, some more recent):

CRAJ urges refugees to abide by laws of host countries

Liberia: to return or not to return?

Relaunched Liberian repatriation operation gains momentum

Tripartite Committee Meets On Liberian Refugees

Liberia: 'The Love Of Liberty Brought Us Here'

I recently had to go to the coast for an SMA meeting, and while there I was able to see a few friends from the camp. Even the most nervous of these has felt the tension and fear ease up in the past month or so. They no longer feel the pressure to get out as soon as possible.

The only other visitors I’ve had mostly stay outside, but a few make it in. Here are some photos of these folks:

The big black scorpion was somewhere else on the compound, in fact, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen any more of them at the house. And the browner Praying Manthis chose to live inside with me for about a week, then disappeared. I hope he’s happy – or maybe he’s had his head eaten by his spouse (isn’t that what they do?).

2008-04-28T12:20:00.003Z

I don’t have any pictures for this update, but I do have some links to different websites I’ll include. The update’s also a little overdue. And it’s also not about where I am currently living and working, rather, it’s about Buduburam again. I’m still in touch with some of my friends and some of the people with whom I was working these past few years, and in the past couple of months things have been tense on the camp.

I’ve been expecting a couple of good friends to come from the camp for a visit – but the visit got postponed a week so that they could stay a little longer when they did arrive, and then when the bus didn’t leave on the scheduled day of departure the visit became postponed indefinitely. It’s too bad for a number of reasons – I was looking forward to being with some good friends, laughing and talking freely (I am gradually getting some friends like that here in Nkoranza, but it takes me time), and I was also looking forward to getting first hand, face-to-face accounts of what’s been going on in the camp and how the troubles and tensions are going to affect the refugees – particularly some of the students I know who are almost finished with their university education. (I did just get a call from one of my friends who says he is now planning to come alone this Saturday - I hope it works out - so much can come up, though.)

If you have time, check out some of these links to get more information on what’s been happening: (thank you, Phyllis, for sending them to me)

Ghana: UN Refugee Agency Urges Govt to Halt Deportation of Liberians

Liberian refugee sues government

Buduburam Refugee Concerns International Calls for Action to ...

Safeguard refugee rights in Ghana

The time that this was all going on was stressful for people, obviously. I had a couple of friends calling me, giving me updates, not sure if they’d be needing to run into the bush to hide at any moment, fearing for their safety, of if they would just be captured and sent away with no warning.

It’s strange to think this was happening here in Ghana – this is a shining star of West Africa, and yet people were being treated in this way.

So – I’ll keep my part of the blog short because of those few links I included – I hope you check some of them out. I’m still not sure what the near future will be for the Liberians here – especially the students who only have a semester or a year left. We’ll find a way for them to complete their education – but it will be a bit more difficult, and probably more expensive.

But it’ll work out – that’s what happens here, things work out. People trust things will somehow be fine. Sometimes they may fight for what they want; they may get angry. But then there's often an acceptance that things will work out - that things always do work out - that things have worked out.

It’s hard to explain this attitude/feeling/approach to life, but when you’re here for awhile you sometimes can understand it and feel it. Things do turn out fine – not always as expected or hoped, but fine. It's often just a matter of adjusting expectations, adjusting a point of view. Often, a matter of trying for what you want, but accepting, working with and making the best of what you get. And then adjusting your view to realize that it wasn't what you wanted, it may have been disappointing, it's not what you thought was best, but it ended up for the best. (Anyway - I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this - so I'll end here.)

2008-03-25T16:25:00.011Z

It’s cashew season. I have cashew trees growing right outside the front door. I can smell the fruit whenever I come home – sweet and maybe slightly rotting. People eat the fruit and just chunk the nut aside. I’ve tasted the fruit – it’s nice, it’s sweet, and it’s got tannin or something in it that seems to suck my mouth dry even while it’s sweet juiciness is being swallowed. It’s not my favorite, so most of the fruits are ripening and just falling to the ground, adding to that sweet and slightly rotting of sweetness smell that subtly surrounds the house I live in. I keep intending to research online what to do about cashew nuts – how to harvest and prepare them. But then I don’t seem to get to the internet café anywhere near as often as I’d like, and when I do I’m so far behind on correspondence that I don’t take time to look up the finer points of cashew harvesting and roasting.

I’m still sometimes stuck in Niger time. When I was in Peace Corps – 20 years ago! – the rainy season always started in May or June. And in my mind today, while living in another country, a little further south, and 20 years later – it seems like that’s still when the rainy season should start. But we’ve had a few showers already. I’m looking forward to it – have started a few tomato seedlings, am planning out a small garden, have a few books lined up to be read on rainy days, as well as some other projects.

Kumasi is the 2nd largest city in Ghana. It’s also the closest major city to where I am, and it’s where we go when we need to get more supplies (primarily beads and thread for weaving) for the sheltered workshop. We just did one of these “shopping trips”. It was a long day – leaving at 5:30 in the morning and returning at 7:30 p.m. – and non-stop from the time we hit the Kumasi market 2 ½ hours after leaving home. As we raced and wandered in circles through the market in search of specific bead sellers, sweating in the sun, avoiding and miscalculating mud-puddles, stomachs registering their complaints at being ignored – smells, sounds, sights, crowds of people – everything surrounding us – meeting every sensory deprivation issue we may have ever experienced and leaving us teetering on the sensory overload edge, I found myself too happy to be back in Ghana. This was definitely one of the things for which I wanted to return – a chance to appreciate, be excited about, be overwhelmed in a wonderfully overwhelming way by Africa. The smells alone are impossible to get enough of – even though they surround and fill to overflowing every morsel of your being. They’re spectacular. And when I could pull myself away from my constant preoccupation these olfactory pleasures, everything else was still there to fill me up.

One reason I wanted to return to Africa was to be able to wake up in the mornings and be in awe and excited about being in Africa again. Even to simply be aware of being in Africa again, rather than aware of another hectic day ahead of me, was a goal. This shopping trip was a nice step in that process, helping to bring that excitement and awareness of the beauty and richness of life here back to me.

2008-02-21T13:05:00.017Z

I sat with Balloon today (actually, it was about a week ago when I first started writing this update) for about 20 minutes. He didn’t verbalize anything. We just sat there, watching some of the other children take part in an afternoon activity that their caretakers had arranged. Some of the time Balloon was giving me a hug, holding his cheek against mine, some of the time he just had his arm around me, some of the time I scratched his back, and some of the time we just sat there. All that was being communicated was peace and calmness.

Then we joined the other kids, who had been split into two competing teams. There was a large, central bucket of water and each team had an average sized bucket and a small can. And the kids took turns taking the small can to the central bucket, filling it with water, and carrying the water back to their team’s bucket. First team to fill their bucket won. The extra challenge is that some of the kids don’t have the steadiest gait, some have barely any grasping ability, some probably don’t realize it’s a competition, and some have a combination of many different challenging factors – autism, mental retardation, etc. One of the kids, while filling his team’s can with water, got distracted with drinking the water from his can. Another used his can to bop his opponent over the head – his opponent didn’t seem too aware of it, though. At the end, biscuits (cookies) were had by all – and then it was off to the pool, where the deep end reaches to a little above my knees.

And this is not an atypical afternoon at the PCC Operation Hand in Hand. I’ve been here for a little over four weeks – gradually learning about the children, about the caregivers, about the project, about my role in it all. There are 20 caregivers and 46 abandoned children – all the children with a combination of disabilities. There’s also a sheltered workshop – and a separate boys and girls dorm for those who are placed in the workshop but are too far to go home every day, or for whom home-life may not be the best option.

The sheltered workshop has four main components – necklace making, weaving, bead-making and the restaurant. Some of the people from the sheltered workshop have also branched out to help in other areas around the PCC – taking care of the grounds, helping manage the animals, etc. Other skills to develop will be determined as time goes on – maybe some basic tailoring (sewing together the strips of cloth being woven to make traditional shirts, skirts, vests or even light blankets), pottery, etc. (Any suggestions are welcome.) I’m only including pictures from the weaving department in this blog update. I’ll be mostly working with the sheltered workshop in a few different areas: developing the business - we spent a lot of time this past week working on clarifying some of the sales/business aspects of the products from the workshop (I even taught myself Excel - with the help of a workbook my dad gave me from a class he and my mom had takent) so the people in Holland who are helping to market some of the necklaces and bead products made here will have information that matches what we have; getting to know a little better and also encourage the families of the people who are working in the sheltered workshop; finding ways, with the staff and the workers at the workshop, to make the work even more meaningful for the people there (such as introducing some new vocational skills, increasing their understanding of the money they are earning, etc.). There are many possibilities - it's exciting.

Oh yeah – and I have a few pictures from around the house:

There was a new roommate applicant - but he was escorted to another place. The next night I saw his son (or daughter?) on my bedroom wall, but then I forgot about her and just fell asleep, instead of helping her move on to join her dad.

The day after I painted part of my door red, my neighbor came to call. Notice how she tried to match her polka-dotted coat to the new paint on my door (clicking on the right-hand picture will make her efforts clear). Cool.

I also have an upstairs neighbor – a cat, living between the ceiling and the actual roof. I’ve watched her going home, kind of amazing how she scales up the screening on the windows. She’s mostly active in the mornings – at some point after I wake up I can hear her dancing around. I’m hoping she will not make efforts to turn this space into a Kitty Birthing Center to rival the Puppy Birthing Center (if you click on this link, you need to scroll about half-way down the page - into the 23 July posting - to read about the Puppy Birthing (and Rehab) Center) of my last home.

Check out the website for where we are at this time – it’s much more informative of what’s going on than this blog entry is and has some great pictures and descriptions of the family I’ve joined here - including a picture and some of the story of Yaw Balloon, the guy I referred to above (click on the children, the third tab down on the left, and then scroll down the new page).

the return

2008-01-12T18:43:00.000Z

I’ve been very blessed. I have found a “job” that I feel passionate about, “work” that I look forward to doing, and a life I’m excited to be living. I know some will understand this and will share these feelings about their lives. And I know others who haven’t been as fortunate.

Of course there are days, and parts of other days, when it’s frustrating, when I’m unhappy, when I’m angry, when I’m sad, hurt, crying. And that’s part of what makes the rest of it so good – and I believe these feelings play a significant role in the passion I feel. (Isn’t passion, after all, about strong feelings? It can’t be one-dimensionally positive.)

SMA has been hugely generous with me. Time between our “assignments” is normally 3 months – however, I’ve been “between assignments” since the beginning of May. I’ve done some things for SMA during that time, and I’ve also had significant quality time with family and some friends. I feel a lot of my relationships with friends and family have grown stronger and evolved. (However, knowing my return to Ghana was so far in the future, I didn’t plan my time in the states very well. There were plenty of last minute calls to friends and family saying things like, “hey – I’m going to be in town tomorrow – mind if I stay with you for a few days/weeks?” And I kept thinking, “oh, there’s plenty of time to get around to everyone I want to see.” This thinking has ended up with there being a number of people I never got around to seeing. I need to plan better next time.) And I also feel a faith in humanity that has been not only restored, but strengthened – I’ve come across so many good people – friends, relatives and complete strangers along the way.

And now it’s time. I’m going back to Ghana on Sunday, 13 January. I’ll arrive early on the 14th. I’m excited. It’s time – I’m ready. I’ve organized in my mind (and in a power point) and processed a lot of the past three years (and still have more processing to do, but I’m in a good place with my heart and head). And I’m looking forward to joining a new project for me. It’s called Operation Hand in Hand, and it’s located in a different part of Ghana. I visited the project a few times – and I know it sounds corny, but I felt at home while there. And cornier still – I could feel the love as soon as I entered the grounds. Check out their website:
http://www.operationhandinhand.nl/engels.htm

I plan to continue the blog over the next few years – I'll change the title of it, though, since I'll no longer be in Buduburam.

I hope everyone has a great new year, filled with good health, love and peace.

2007-11-07T00:01:00.000Z

Morris in Boise

Morris, who was the physical education teacher at the deaf school in Buduburam, who was in the hospital in Accra for 3 months, who was then literally on his back in bed for about 6 months (except for the one month when it was difficult to breathe while laying down and he was sitting in a chair at the table in his room), who I’ve blogged about several times and who finally had lung surgery at the end of February, has been resettled to the states. He's now living in Boise, ID. He's been there for three months, living with George and Renee - his host parents. I finally had a chance to visit him a week ago.

I’ve been really lucky – a few months ago I was able to visit Patrick and his family in Norway, the first friends from Africa I’ve been able to visit in their new, resettled life. And now I’ve also had a chance to visit Morris, also a good friend with whom I’ve journeyed through some good times and also some difficult times, as he’s settling into a new life.

Before going to Boise, I was able to find a great car-rental deal resulting in me being able to rent a car for a week, making it possible for us to do a road trip to Fort Collins, CO. We had a chance to see a part of the country new to both of us (as it whizzed by at 83 miles per hour - there's no documentation that it ever exceeded that) and also to visit Rick and Marianne – some friends (and my new brother-in-law’s parents) who visited me, and met Morris, in Ghana back in January.

Morris is doing well in his process of adjusting to life in the US. He can work the remote control. He can get subtitles to show up. He finds his way around Boise with a combination of rides from friends, public transport, and bicycle. He just (maybe 3 or so weeks now) received cochlear implant surgery – and this will be activated in another 3 weeks or so, and that’s when a lot of work on Morris’ part will begin to be sure the implant is as successful in aiding his hearing and speech as possible. He also just found out that the surgery done back in February resulted in him now only having one lung (yes, they removed the other one – who knew?). Basically, he’s healthy and happy. His case manager is helping him to find a place of his own, and soon he also hopes to start working.

On our first full day in Colorado, one option was to go to Rocky Mountain National Park - to see the mountains, of course. But Morris expressed a strong interest in visiting Denver, so plans were made to go there. First stop - museum of modern art (but just the outside, the gift shop, and the restrooms), then the capitol building (where we met a peace rally), then a stroll around tall buildings and down 16th Street Mall (the kind of shopping, tourist area). The excitement of the Denver Rockies in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox (the first game in Denver to be played that night) filled the atmosphere that day.

We took Morris to a corn maze (a maize maze - I think this how it was interpreted at first and therefore a little confusing - or maybe I just like to think of it as a "corn corn" - or maybe it's just that a "maze" is a foreign concept to a Liberian refugee - imagine that).
They even had a pumpkin toss - the huge contraption pictured here that, uh, yes, tosses a pumpkin (more than tosses - it CHUNKS the thing way out there) where it smashes, hopefully hitting the target and not the maze goers (it does add a little excitement to finding your way through the maze, though - you not only have to pay attention to the path you're taking, but also to anything incoming from above). Another thing to imagine, chunking a pumpkin, something edible and which makes some delicious soups and stews - not to mention the cider - which after being chunked will probable not be the most desirable thing to eat.

Following the Denver Zoo, with all the kids in costume, we went to the Swetsville Zoo

Rocky Mountain National Park

Morris let out a little "wow" as we rounded a corner and the Rockies were there in all their majesty. He later posed by the Hummer (not the rental),

found ice forming on the edges of Bear Lake, met with his first snowball (thanks to Marianne - somehow she beat me to it), and took a little hike.

Morris in one of his favorite activity at his host family's home:

post Buduburam

2007-08-26T18:03:00.000Z

There is life after the refugee camp. (No surprise there.)

Morris, who's story has been shared here for over a year, was recently, and finally, resettled to the US. He's now living in Boise, Idaho. I've been in regular contact with him via email, and it sounds like all is going really well. He has begun the process of getting into the system here, including various medical appointments to follow up on his general health, his lungs in particular, and even his hearing. I hope to get a chance to visit him sometime soon.

Another friend of mine, who I wrote about shortly after I arrived on the camp in 2004 and was sending out "newseletters" (pre-blog era for me), is Patrick. He is an excellent tailor who also does his own embroidering. He is able to: copy anything from high-fashion magazine photos, create his own "western" designs, make something from a drawing brought to him, and design spectacular African fashions. I lived near Patrick, who was a Liberian refugee, while I was in Ivory Coast from 1993-1996. Then I was sent to work in Ghana, and about a year later I ran into Patrick on the bustling streets of Accra. He was interested in becoming involved with some of the work I was doing at that time with people with disabilities, and voluntarily began helping us by training some of the people in tailoring and embroidery. When I left Ghana in 1998, he and I stayed in touch for awhile, and then, somehow, we just lost contact.

Then, early in 2004, during my first week or two on the camp, I was walking around and there, across the way, was Patrick. He now had his shop on the refugee camp, where he trained people as well as ran a nice tailoring business. He also had a wife and 4 girls (and it turns out I knew his wife from when we were all in Ivory Coast - occasionally she would cook some droolingly-delicious Liberian dishes for us and she worked for awhile with Doctors Without Borders, who were in the same town at that time). Patrick was also continuing to care for some of the people around him - one day he had met Otis (who I wrote about in my last entry) on the camp, and Patrick is the friend I referred to who took Otis on as an apprentice.

In November, 2004, Patrick and his family were notified that they had been chosen to be resettled to Norway - and they had only 1 or 2 days to prepare. They asked if I could help to take them to the IOM office on their day of departure (I wrote more about IOM and my thoughts about it in the second blogposting I did about Morris. The first post about Morris was just a mention, in the July 4 entry at the bottom of this page), and from there they would later be carried to the airport. I had a tiny car at that time which semi-comfortably could seat 4 (including the driver), and with a little squeezing seat 5. For the trip to the IOM office we happily (if not comfortably) sardined 8 of us - and baggage - into that car and were grateful that it was one of the days the car was able to make the trip into Accra without breaking down or needing spark plugs or tires changed. They left the country in style.

SMA is an international organization, and most of the countries where SMA is established also have lay programs. The French lay program associated with SMA (FLM - their website is in French) has just celebrated its 25-year anniversary and decided to combine the celebration with the first international meeting of representatives from all the other lay programs associated with SMA. The American lay program, SMA Association of the Faithful, of which I'm a part, asked me to represent them at these meetings and for the celebration. The point of this diversion from Patrick and his family is that I happily agreed to take part in the meeting and celebration (and to go into details of all those events here would be too much of a digression - but I'll sum it up to say it is a really good, exciting step we are taking), and it was worked out that I was able to arrive in France a little early so as to have time to make a side trip to visit Patrick and his family in Norway.

This was my first time to visit African friends of mine who I met in Africa and were now living elsewhere. Norway itself I found beautiful and would love to explore sometime, but the primary purpose of this trip was just to visit Patrick and his family.

They told me that when they first arrived, the initial focus was on learning the language. They're all doing well with it now; even the little girls, when talking to each other, are often conversing in Norwegian. There were times when we were together that Patrick needed a little help in translating and turned to his girls. After learning the language, the adults have the chance for further education - and the kids, of course, go to school. Julia, Patrick's wife, went as far as she wants (for now) with school, and is currently working. Patrick's still in school at the moment. Recently, they opened up a shop together - tailoring in 1/2 the shop and the other 1/2 selling some hair care supplies and some soft drinks and kenkey. Patrick will usually spend his day there, when he's not in school, and his wife will come to the shop after she finishes work. They had no problem adjusting to different foods - and Julia is a great cook (I think this was my first time to eat reindeer and it was delicious).

And they were happy. I felt like a part of their family. They were settled, yet still had more goals and dreams for themselves and their girls. And the girls, as children will do, have acculturated extremely well. While I was there we went one day to McDonald's where the youngest girls played in the playland, then to the shopping mall where Patrick had promised he'd get something for them, expecting it to be some kind of toy. Instead, first stop was the pet store, where hopes and fantasies of a hamster were seen in the eyes and heard from the lips of each girl. Patrick had promised, so, instead of a toy, we walked out of the mall with a hamster, the hamster's new home, and 4 very excited little girls.

Throughout my experiences in West Africa, I saw that kids would also be excited about hamsters, which were synonymous with rats, mice, other vermin. (Patrick and Julia referred to this one as a rat.) But it was a different excitement in Africa. Patrick's girls were excited to have a pet, to love it, to care for it, to name it (Stripe), to watch it, to one day have it get married, etc. Children who haven't left Africa are excited because it's protein. It's meat. It's a snack. Who would think of capturing one, putting it in a cage, and taking care of it? Craziness. In Africa, you capture, kill it, and grill it. The girls have adapted to their new culture. They give food to stray cats in their neighborhood. In Africa, strays, even pets, are on their own for food. And now, they hold, pet, love and give food to a hamster. Patrick and Julia just shake their heads.

pet?................................................................or snack?

2007-05-10T03:40:00.000Z

I left Ghana on 20 April. In the 2 months or so prior to leaving I received some very nice donations that helped me to tie things up really well.

Otis is a young man who had polio when he was younger. As a result, he now walks with a limp. He is alone on the camp, and a few years ago – about 6 months before I arrived – another Liberian I had known when I was in Ivory Coast had taken Otis on as his apprentice for tailoring. About a year after I arrived, my friend got resettled to Norway, but he had introduced me to Otis and we were able to find the money needed (thanks to Liliane Fonds) to help Otis complete his training, and to take it a step further by also learning embroidery. About a year ago he completed all his training, and was able to set up his own tailoring shop.
Otis instructing some of his students

Otis embroidering in his shop

The thing that’s really special about Otis is that, in addition to running his own business, he is training – for free or a reduced fee – other people with disabilities. He also voluntarily comes to the school for the deaf once a week to hold a class teaching the older students some of the basics of tailoring. He believes that this is the only way he has to repay the assistance he received in the past – by helping other people with disabilities learn a trade and hopefully gain a means of becoming more self-sufficient.

(A few of us outside Otis' shop - Otis in white t-shirt)
Otis has been struggling to make his business successful – just barely getting by. Part of the problem is that the electricity on the camp (and in the country) has been extremely unreliable. In parts of the camp the residents can go for days without power (just prior to my departure I went for two weeks with no power – fortunately I don’t keep too much extra in the fridge, just in case, and I was able to eat what was there before it spoiled). So, when the power’s out at Otis’ shop, it limits the work he can do. Some of the donations received helped us to remedy this problem by purchasing a generator. He still has more hopes and dreams for expanding his business – but this was a good start.

Otis with his generator

Another person who impressed me a lot over the past few years is Mr. Obeng. He’s 74 years old and has a few children – one of whom is in her mid-20s and has schizophrenia. (Unfortunately, for some reason I have no pictures of Mr. Obeng or his daughter, Hagar.) Often when people have disabilities they’re not valued as highly, are sometimes abandoned, put out for begging, and are the last to receive any resources the family may have available. Even though Mr. Obeng is trying hard to make ends meet for his family, he didn’t do this with Hagar. He took good care of her, even paying for her to apprentice to a seamstress. When I met them, though, this training had been interrupted because they didn’t have the money needed to go to the doctor for her psychotropic medicines. Again, Liliane Fonds helped out – agreeing to help with the costs of the meds while Hagar completed her training.

Meanwhile – Mr. Obeng’s poor vision was becoming worse – he was practically blind. So we took him to Mercy Ship (I wrote a little more about Mercy Ship in my July 4, 2006, blog entry - if you scroll down the link here you'll find it - just after the Puppy Birthing and Rehab Center pics), where they were able to do surgery to improve the vision of one of his eyes. The recovery took more time than expected, though – and he still needed glasses afterwards.

Those timely donations helped us to get Mr. Obeng his eye check-up and glasses, as well as to get Hagar some of the basics she was needing to begin her business as a seamstress now that she’s completed her training.

This entry is getting long, but one last story that’s very nice to finish up. Dixon left for Liberia the day before I left for the states. It was so nice to be a part of that entire process with him – his arrival in Ghana for the spinal surgery, scheduling the surgery with only faith that the money would be there when the scheduled date arrived, the surgery, the recovery, training in computer repair/maintenance while in the recovery process, and finally, with the help of those donations, acquiring a 2nd hand computer and a couple of other items for him to carry back with him to Liberia to get himself established there.

It’s a nice ending.

2007-04-15T09:39:00.000Z

One of the first things Morris asked me the day he was discharged from the hospital was, “when can we go to the beach?” We had gone a couple of times last year, prior to his getting sick, and then a couple of his better days while he was sick. And now that he had received his surgery and was feeling incredibly better – he was ready to go again. Fortunately, that afternoon was already open – I had only been planning to get caught up on some paperwork. So, we went to the beach that afternoon after stopping in the camp to pick up his brother, a couple of other friends, and some take-away chicken and rice.
Morris is doing very well. He’s been out of the hospital for a little over two weeks, has increased energy, humor, a spark in his eyes – and is putting some weight back on. It’s expected that in the very near future he will be re-settled to the U.S.A. We believe that all he is waiting for at this time is the all clear for travel from the doctors.

2007-03-12T19:43:00.000Z

Over three years ago when I returned to Ghana and started working in Buduburam, I thought I would do some “updates” once in awhile to let family and friends know what I was doing. The updates were also intended to be a method of keeping my own journal and thinking through my thoughts. I know these updates over the three years have been used in different ways – some people actively read and respond, some look at the pictures, some figure they’ll read them later when they have more time (because I probably ramble a bit from time to time and they can get long), and some just press delete, I’m sure. A year and a half ago, I learned about blogs – they’ve turned out to be a great way to share more pictures.

But that means some of the early newsletters can’t be referred back to. One guy I wrote about in my first update was Leo. He was in high school and some people had been helping him complete his education when he went through some kind of nervous or psychological breakdown. By the time I arrived he was doing much better, but his sponsors had decided not to continue assisting him. I happened to mention him in my first newsletter and someone wrote back asking how much was needed to help him complete his high school education, and then offered to send what was needed. He had two years left of school, and finally graduated this past year. By the time this picture of his graduation was taken, he had already begun attending vocational school. Fortunately, his new sponsor has been able to continue assisting him and he will complete with a diploma in about a year and a half.

Another guy I have written about is Dixon. From past blogs you know some of his story – the spinal injury, giving the go-ahead for the surgery with no idea how we’d come up with the money, the trust in God for all this to work out, and finally a successful surgery. He’s since been attending vocational school for computer hardware, software and networking - also through the donations sent for him - and has just completed a diploma for each of these areas. (He's pictured above with two of our co-workers, Peter, and Joseph, who have been helping alot with the hospital arrangements and the follow-up care.) Sometime in the next month or so he plans to return to Liberia - again with the help of some donations. In the meantime, he is voluntarily helping to teach some of the deaf students, using the computers we’ve had donated to the school.

A third person I wrote about a while back is Watson. We weren’t able to help him with hearing aids even after going to a couple more specialists. He was already skilled as a mason, and had hoped to at least further his skills in this area. Again, through open donations received, he was able to complete a plumbing course. We discussed with the instructor of the course the hearing difficulties Watson faced, and he was willing to help by following some suggestions for adapting the presentation of his lessons to meet Watson’s needs. A few months ago Watson completed his education and is now apprenticing under a Ghanaian plumber. Again, the apprenticeship, the tools, the education were all possible thanks to the open donations received.

In the last couple of months I have left I promised to give some updates on people and things I’ve mentioned in the past. I’ll try to do a few more – and if anyone is curious about anyone I may have written about in the past, let me know.

TIME

2007-02-20T16:06:00.000Z

Time feels different here. A day can feel like a month – when evening comes it’s hard to remember what happened in the morning. And a month can feel like a century. And yet, when the year ends it feels like just yesterday it began. My time here is almost over, and on one hand I feel I’ve been here a lifetime, on the other hand there are times when it seems like the past three years just began earlier this week (maybe that’s an exaggeration – maybe more like a few months ago).

And things get done gradually – “little by little.” There’s even a proverb here, something like “slowly, slowly the snail crosses the road.” It’s hard to explain why things that are URGENT and NEED to happen – sometimes life and death things – can take 2 – 3 months to be resolved. Things that can be done in a day stretch out to a month here. Things that could be wrapped up in a week last for 2 – 3 months. Bureaucracy is a convenient excuse . . . but that’s not usually the only or the primary reason. There are probably a number of reasons that would require a book to explore – and my blog entries get long enough without that. (Stay focused, Steve . . .)

So that brings me to updates about two URGENT situations I wrote about. One was Elisha, the boy who needed surgery. The other was Morris, the man who is living with just one operable lung due to the inefficiency of the organizations placed here to help the refugees. There’s good news for both of these guys.

Shortly after writing about Elisha, almost enough money came in from different friends to cover his surgery. One of these friends also asked people she knew if they had any jewelry they wanted to donate so that Elisha’s mom, Doris, could continue trying to sell jewelry to help meet the other needs of her family. It was exciting: Elisha needed the surgery, UNHCR wouldn’t pay, and suddenly the door was open for it. This all happened in early December. But then Elisha got sick. Then his mother got sick. Then it was Christmas and New Year’s. Then the doctors were on break. Then there were problems because the family is of the Jehovah’s Witness faith, and they don’t allow blood transfusions. Then the doctor wanted to push UNHCR to come up with the money after all. And before I knew it, what (I believe) could have been accomplished in a few days is going on more than two months. And it’s URGENT. Finally, though, the family has been thoroughly informed of the risks of surgery and the consequences of no surgery and I advised them to make a decision and stand behind it – once and for all. They took a few days, then called me. We met, discussed their decision, and immediately went to the doctors to discuss it with them – and the doctors are moving ahead – at last. So, hopefully, I’ll be able to do another blog entry in the very near future with a couple of pictures of Elisha in the hospital, following his surgery.

A couple of days after I wrote that last update about Morris, a friend called from the US. She’s doing some other fundraising for work she wants to do here, and she felt it inside her that helping Morris was something she needed to do. So, she sent enough money for him to have the surgery, and a little extra so he can be comfortable – have some good food, get the medicines that might be prescribed which go above and beyond the quoted surgery price. She asked that I transfer the balance to the other work she is doing here if for some reason the UNHCR does finally come through to help him, or if any other assistance comes along to help him get the treatment he needs. And now, 2 months later, Morris is still waiting for his surgery. He’s constantly spitting things up from his lungs. He’s become skin and bones. He has almost no energy. For a month he literally couldn’t even lie down – he sat and slept at a table in his room.

But the good news for Morris is that the doctors on the camp have been urging UNHCR to do an emergency medical evacuation so that Morris can receive his surgery in the U.S.A. Morris has completed all the formalities – the interviews, the reviews of his medical and family histories, and whatever else was required. The doctors have told me everything is looking good for him to be leaving soon. I have hopes that, along with the picture of Elisha post-surgery, I’ll soon be able to show a picture of Morris boarding a plane.