a breath of fresh air

Our car speeds down the nicest road I have been on since arriving in Sierra Leone. As the most “main highway” the country has, it is in relatively good condition. We stop in Waterloo, the last town outside Freetown on the way to Makeni. The car stops and we are immediately bombarded by children and young adults trying to sell us anything and everything. Bread, fish, biscuits, cold soft (soda), fried plantains… If the window is down you practically could eat an entire meal without moving just by biting down on the array of food thrust in your face. A get bocu padi dem. (I have many friends) One boy tells me he loves me and another asks for my number. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a celebrity. If it is, I don’t ever want to be one. I laugh and joke with them in my bad bad Kiro. And then we are off again and they promise me they will remember me forever.

As we continue on away from the busyness of the city, the landscape is not at all what I thought Africa to look like. It is lush and green—full of tall grass, tropical plants, flowers and palm trees. We pass through villages with houses that all look alike. Villages rebuilt after the war. The fighting left nothing but remnants of life scattered throughout the beautiful landscape. Housing projects and IDP programs came to rebuild, to get people to move back out of the overcrowded city of Freetown where the last refuge from the fighting was found. One after another, African versions of housing developments. Some villages reconstructed with mud bricks, others with thatched huts.

We pass through a larger village at a main crossroad on market day. People from all the villages within walking distance come to buy and sell goods. Colorful women with baskets piled high upon their heads line the roads as we pass.

There is freedom outside of Freetown. I sense it. Less chaos. More simplicity. A greater sense of peace. I take a deep breath of fresh air. There is freedom outside of Freetown.

***

I have come to Makeni, a town about three hours outside Freetown, where World Hope has another office. I have come to conduct communications trainings for the staff – how to write a basic impact story. FAAST is based in Freetown, but most of the work of World Hope is rural development out in the village communities surrounding Makeni.

I wake up to a baby crying outside and the dissonant praises being sung out to God in the next room. I have to pee, but it’s not light enough yet to not need a flashlight and to bother with winding my non battery powered light source doesn’t seem worth the effort yet. We have no NPA in Makeni. If people have power at all, it comes from a generator. No electricity, no running water. This is the Africa I was expecting. The Africa that gets along fine without these simple “necessities”. The Africa that sings praises to God for clean water pumped miraculously from the ground, as if Moses himself tapped the hard stone earth. The Africa so thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow and develop – eager to pass along not only knowledge but seeds to a fellow neighbor.

I see the work of Jesus – the way he calls us to live. And I see those living it sing praises to papa God for every chance at living one more day of life.

It is a breath of fresh air from the smog of Freetown. A freshness in the literal sense but also a clarity seeing the excited willingness of people to embrace new ways of life.

While I conducted the training, and Praise God it went extremely well, I am also here to capture stories for WHI general programs as well. I accompanied the staff to schools recently built, wells recently dug, and communities being transformed. I talked with villagers, laughed with their children and listened to their stories. It excites me to see the work of international development with true, tangible excited smiles to tell of the transformation.

I see people willing to break cultural norms that tear each other apart and replace them with a sense of unity and a spirit of working together. People learning to love and embrace their women, “we learn to call our wives honey” and empower them to take ownership of the work their own two hands can do. People learning to problem solve among themselves. To settle disputes and come up with solutions and even innovative ideas such as a shop for selling basic necessities to local villages to avoid the cost and time of traveling to Makeni or the inflated prices of sporadic good brought by traders. People learning to save money as a community for future development, for a bad harvest season, necessary repairs or a family in need of some extra help with school fees. People learning to value the next generation. To raise up healthy, educated children to carry on.

I am excitedly fascinated by what I see taking place and even more excited to sit down and write all the stories I’ve heard.

Yet, while my time in Makeni was a breath of fresh air, I am warmed by the feeling of peace in coming home. As we turn down Scan Drive I realize that this is home. I see familiar faces and hear little voices yell ‘Auntie Crissa!’. I am exhausted from the week but delighted to think that it is Sunday and we will have Scan Drive Pikin Club in a few hours. These are my neighbors, this is my community, I’m glad to be home.

Communications Training with WHI staff

 

Water is Life!

 

village life

stories...

She aged at least 15 years as she continued to tell her story. Each sentence she spoke was another step carrying a heavy burden that seemed to be getting heavier. I hadn’t seen her without a smile, without her playful glee and high-pitched squeals, since I met her. She was child-like almost, although she’s a grown woman. But as we sat out there on the balcony and she revealed the truth about a life desperately shameful to have lived, I found my heart filled more and more with the burden she spoke, the burden of truth. That she had actually walked the path she described. That she was a survivor.

The story is not new. The story is not uncommon. It is a story that I thought has lost its shock value to me, a story that once would make me cry but now has become common knowledge. But sitting there, face to face, with a woman I have grown to love already — the story became alive. Her story of survival, God’s story of redemption. The story became alive.

***

Maka’s small, frail ten-year-old body seemed to fold up into itself as he sat on the couch next to me. That is, until I brought up football (soccer). At the very mention of the game, I saw the sweet bright-toothed smile I knew had to be in him all along. “I play center mid,” he said proudly. “Me too!” I told him. And from then on I knew I had a friend.

But Maka doesn’t play much football anymore, or any rough and tough games kids his age love. If he gets hit in the shoulder where a blistering burn has forever scared his skin, “it hurt so much.”

Maka was a victim of child labor trafficking which led to an accident that will never let him forget this. The woman he lived with forced him to do hard house work, much too hard for a mere eight-year-old. And when he would forget what all she had said to do or took too long to do it, she would beat him.

One morning, two years ago, Maka awoke to the harsh sound of her yelling that he should not still be in bed at 5 am. But when he stumbled out to light the fire for the stove, the candle flame caught his shirtsleeve and lit up in flames. Maka suffered from severe burns across his left shoulder and chest.

He lifted up his shirt to show me the scar. We are sitting on the couch at his parents' house where he has been reunited with his mother, father and four brothers and sisters. His littlest sister is climbing all over him, before she decides I look like I might be more responsive.

“A glady fo de wit mi fambo,” he says as he smiles at his sister. He is glad to be home, glad to be back in school, glad to be a boy again. But his scars will always tell, they will always remember and never allow him to forget.

a few pictures...

 The FAAST staff at our celebration dinner

 

  

  God's masterpiece, painted for me everyday

When it rains, it pours...and the lion doesn't sleep tonight.

The rainy season.  The dry season.  There is no such thing as in between.  It is wet, or it is dry. Well, if there is an in between, we are in it.  During the middle of the rainy season it seems as if the sun has gone into deep depression, never to show her face again.  Yet since I’ve been here, the rain usually doesn’t last longer than a few hours, giving us a breath of fresh cool air. Last night, I was awakened to a sound that could be felt with every part of my body.  It was so loud, so deep, I could have thought it was a bomb going off right in my compound.  But I was so disoriented by sleep, the fear fortunately didn’t cross my mind.  Instead I waited for what came to follow.  The falling of water that cannot be described as rain, for rain entails drops.  But here, it is more of a stream…a river of water pouring from the sky as if all the clouds were completely concentrated over this little patch of earth. 

I heard from someone, although I don’t remember who, that Sierra Leone was named for the notorious roar of thunder that shakes the water from the clouds as if the lion commands it.  If it is loud here, on the bottom floor of my thick concrete compound, I can’t imagine what it sounds like from inside the thin medal structures, most call home.  The sound of the rain alone must make for many restless nights with the wind howling through every door way, window opening, crack or crevasse thrashing in rain and anything else it picks up along the way.  Yet this is the sound that promises life.  With it comes the water that will grow desperately sparse as the dry season stretches into the long dusty future. 

Water is life.  And the lion knows it.  Sierra Leone knows it.

***

This morning was set to a different sound of life, the music of crowded markets teeming with people selling everything you can imagine.  Fruits and vegetables, pots and pans, cookware and clothes to wear, shoes, sandals, radios, electronics and any film you could possibly think of – even if it came out in theaters last week.

I was in town for the lapas.  Beautiful fabric in every color, pattern, design and style.  Tailors will make any and every style of modern or traditional dress perfectly to fit.  I have determined that this will be the most stress free shopping experience of my life - despite squeezing through crowds of people, dodging anything with a motor (for clearly the bigger you are the more right of way they have), bartering prices that have doubled from the color of my skin and tripled from my bad krio speaking, and stuffing my way into a very overcrowded poda poda while grasping to keep hold of my load and still being able to see the landmarks that tell me when I’m almost home.  Not quite a trip to the mall, but so much better.  These are the stresses that excite me.  Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos. And to get a beautifully hand made, perfect to fit, skirt or dress that is exactly the right length for about ten dollars...simple, beautiful, messy, chaos...and wonderful.