City of Rest

“Jesus is the way, the truth and the life!” These words are painted along the top of the wall where guests at City of Rest gather each morning for devotions.  Jesus offers hope for a life – a life, society and culture have robbed from them.  Marked with stigmas and shame, those suffering from mental illness and substance abuse have few places to go in Sierra Leone.  Most are left to be consumed by their addiction, left to cope with their misperceptions, left confused by their abnormalities, left forgotten and abandoned by their communities.  But for forty of these men and women who struggle daily with challenges most of us can’t even fathom, they have found rest.  Maybe not perfect healing by our terms, but rest from the beatings and batterings of a culture that misunderstands mental illness and substance abuse, although it affects so many among them.

Painting the wall of City of Rest common room with a few of the guests

City of Rest is a rehabilitation center and deliverance ministry in Freetown.  It is the only facility that understands the need to attend to the medical, psychological and spiritual needs of those who suffer from mental illness or substance abuse.  In a country with fresh memories of a horrendous war that consumed many and traumatized all, mental illness and substance abuse reign king of all coping mechanisms, whether by choice or not.  Yet while widespread, it is relatively unaddressed, unsupported, underfunded. For all those who suffer from any degree of mental health problem – from depression or anxiety to severe post traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia or delusions to dependency on the easily acquired jamba (extremely strong marijuana) and “prescription” medications – only one mental health facility is operated publicly in Sierra Leone, an institution commonly known as ‘Kissy Mental’ and commonly associated with the ‘mad man,’ ‘kraze man,’ and ‘lunatics’ it gathers from the streets of Freetown to inject with sedatives and keep “under control” for a few weeks before releasing them back into the same environment that shut them out and perpetuated their condition.

This past week I assisted City of Rest in conducting a series of trainings for the Sierra Leone media personnel on how to use the media as a tool to sensitize and raise positive awareness about mental illness and substance abuse.  The World Health Organization funded the trainings in an attempt to shape public attitudes in a consensus that this is an issue that needs attention on the community level as well as within government.  We traveled to the four major towns in Sierra Leone, conducting workshops in Freetown, Makeni, Kenema and Bo.

My housemate Heleen is a psychologist and has worked at City of Rest as a consultant for about two years.  She is Dutch, but has lived and worked in Freetown for almost seven years.  She is a beautiful example of Jesus’ love for the poor in spirit, the broken and abandoned.  She recruited me to come alongside her for these trainings. I felt extremely inadequate to prepare and train professional journalists, since I’d hardly call myself one.  Yet just as Moses expressed his inadequacy and ineloquence of speech, God truly blessed me with the courage, the wisdom and the words to move and motivate as I truly believe He desired.

While the morning session was a brief overview of teaching on the most common forms of mental illness seen in Sierra Leone, issues surrounding substance abuse and current (or the lack there of) legislation.  It was incredible to watch the eyes of grown, educated adults opened to the reality of what the ‘kraze man,’ ‘mad man,’ and ‘lunatics’ they see everyday and admittedly fear, call names, even forcibly restraint – actually face.  It was as if they realized for the first time that these are real human beings.  Human beings that if given proper treatment and care many times could recover and actively participate in society.  I was brought on to teach the afternoon session about how to use the tool of media (which in Salone is newspaper and radio) to advocate for changed attitudes, better care and more services for this vast portion of the population. 

And for all of you who know me best, advocating for something I believe in and care about is what I love to do most.  It is why I write.  I recognize the power of the media, the power of a story, and the responsibility that comes with it.  Preparing for these workshops and compelling others to put into practice what I so strongly believe is possible, was an incredible opportunity of learning for me as well.

So now it’s my turn.  To advocate for this issue of widespread need in Sierra Leone and for the hope and possibly of life at City of Rest.

City of Rest is a small city of it’s own within the bustling, chaos of Freetown.  The small three story building houses forty guests, most of whom suffer from substance abuse but also mental illness. Pastor Ngobeh started a deliverance outreach to drug addicts in 1985 which became a day program in 1994 and by 1996 City of Rest residential rehabilitation center was opened.  The guests meet each morning for devotions with Pastor, they cook, they clean and live life within these walls.

The current City of Rest in Freetown

But the walls are small, the space is cramped.  City of Rest receives no funding from the government and is supported entirely by individuals and churches, mostly from within Sierra Leone.  The funding is small, the staff underpaid, medical supplies limited and the facility badly in need of repair.  Yet with the little they have, Pastor Ngobeh and the rest never cease to love – love God and love the guests – and that’s more than these guests have ever received and all that God requires to work miracles of transformation. 

Some guests come and go quickly.  Others have lived at City of Rest for some time.  One man, once a guest who suffered from a severe drug addiction, is now fully recovered and a full time volunteer.  His is a story of recovery, of redemption, of resilience.  It is a story that could be told so much more if the love and care he received could be felt by the many others outside these walls.

City of Rest just recently acquired property in Grafton, about 30 minutes outside of Freetown.  It is beautifully nestled in the hills, away from the noise, the smog, the chaos of Freetown.  It is quiet and peaceful, truly the site of a City of Rest.  Plans have been made for a facility that will have the capacity for 70 guests, rather than only 40.  There is room to breath, fresh air and fresh perspective.  Yet the building process is one of prayers built upon prayers.  As the miracles come in, they have built what they can.  A wall now stands with the sign of what will, by the grace of God, one day be inside. A City of Hope.  A City of Love.  A City of Rest.

 The site of the future City of Rest!

Working on mapping out the foundation!

I invite you to be part of these prayers.  Pray for the building funds, for miracles.  Pray for the staff, for endurance and perseverance, for wisdom and strength.  Pray for the guests, for them to know and feel their worth, their significance, the love of God despite the rejection of man.  And pray for their healing.  Pray for the people of Sierra Leone, for eyes to be opened to the hope and opportunity for transformation of the lives that suffer from mental illness and substance abuse.  Pray for compassion and sympathy.  Pray for the journalists to use the tools they have within media to positively influence public opinion and advocate on behalf of these issues.  And pray for the government of Sierra Leone, for the urgency of this issue to be addressed through programs, funding and legislation.

Thank you to all who are following my journey.  This is continuing to be an incredible experience and I am so grateful to get to share it with all of you.  I love your comments, emails and updates.  Please keep them coming.  Blessings to everyone and Happy Thanksgiving!

Seven wonderful friends + the tallest mountain in Sierra Leone = one wonderfully beautiful weekend

What do you get when you have…very, very bad roads, bridges made of a
few tree trunks lying side by side, villages with chiefs whose
permission to pass through must be bought and paid for, thick, lush,
dense rainforest, and a raft tied together with vine to navigate a
strongly flowing river…between you and the tallest mountain in Sierra
Leone?

The most wonderfully, challenging, frustrating, painful, breathtakingly
beautiful, backpacking excursion to Mount Bintumani.

 

While in theory we were relatively prepared for most of these
adjectives, I am still pondering the range of emotions I experienced
packed into four short days.  From the awe of God’s breathtakingly
beautiful (think the island from ‘Lost’) creation, to sheer physical
exhaustion after hiking over 18 miles in one day, through more
diversely beautiful terrain than I have ever been immersed in, finally
reaching camp (aka what became a clearing after our machete bearing
hunter guide so kindly deforested an area large enough for our tent)
after hiking the last hour in the dark with headlamps that often
missed illuminating the root that is out to trip you or the branch
that pokes your eye out or the vine that seems to stretch out and grab
you from behind – and this was just day one.

The weekend painted a picture of Salone I had yet to see.  A lush
landscape of every shade of green tropical leaf and every pattern
colorfully winged butterfly you can imagine.  The beauty took my
breath away - every time I looked up from the path my feet were
attempting to follow without tripping, sliding, buckling or giving out
from beneath me.  And the night sky beamed with the brilliance of more
lights than Candy Cane Lane at Christmas time, a sight only seen when
the nearest electricity is hundreds of miles away.

 

(yes those sticks to the left...is a bridge!)

 

I discovered that the words for bridge and raft are quite relative
terms and can be used for anything that attempts to assist you in
crossing over water without getting wet – although its success in
this, is not required.  And I discovered that the strength of a Salone
teenage boy who carries a backpack filled with food and water up the
mountain I am stumbling up empty handed, is astonishing – yet does not
come free of complaints. (teenage boys are the same everywhere in the
world).  I discovered that seven white people coming to stay in your
village, which is inaccessible by motor vehicle, is probably the most
strange and curious thing to have happened in a long, long time – and
warrants spending the entire evening watching every move they make.

a raft?!

 

A few of our porters (he carried that rice on his head the whole way!)

 

'Snap me snap me!'  (they wanted a picture taken) Pikin dem at one of villages we stayed

 

Yet the weekend painted another picture of Salone I had yet to see.  A
picture of chiefdom culture.  A culture that is so far from anything
our western culture can even begin to compare to.  A culture of
hierarchical respect to be paid in currencies of money, rice and time.
Which reminds me, I have also learned never to be in a hurry – ever.
You will only always be late.

We never actually reached the top of Mount Bintamani.  Between
unplanned delays in the village, awaiting a chief’s decision of whether we
can pass through and our porters' unknown commitment to afternoon prayers, an unwelcome fever that
attempted to slow down our toughest member, and the looming threat of
the nine hour ride home (on roads that should not be called a road)
and work at 8:30am Monday morning – we cannot claim to have summitted.
 Yet while we never made it to the peak, if was a weekend filled with
more than we had set out for.

Maybe once the sore muscles relax, the bruised hips heal, the scrapes
and scratches disappear, the bug bites stop itching, and all that’s
left are the images of exquisite beauty and the ambitious drive to
summit the tallest mountain in Salone…we will toy with the idea once
again.  Until then, I am left with the masterpiece God continues to
paint of this country and its people – the masterpiece I am so
grateful He has painted me a part of.