no boundaries

 

I am awakened this morning to the horribly electric and piercing sound of my phone.  I lay there for a moment, trying to figure out where I am.  I hear a car engine rev outside and the sounds of life waking up.  The sunrise is barely illuminating the batik fabric draped across the window above my head creating a soft pink glow in the room.  Then I remember, Bo.  I’m up country in a guesthouse (SL version of a motel) in the town of Bo. (Boasting the second largest city in Sierra Leone, but much more of a town than a city and a significant escape from the craziness of Freetown.)  I realize my phone, still screaming at me to pay attention to it, is not the alarm going off but the ring.  I look at the screen – it’s momma!

I answer only to hear the loud sounds of what seems like a party. I quickly compute that it is still the night before back in America. Mom yells from the other end.  She has someone for me to talk to.

Immediately I am transported from a world of roosters crowing and mosquito nets (which has caught hold of me in a tangled mess as I try to get out of bed still half asleep) to a world of runways, lights and fashion.  A voice, whose soundless words over email have become such a source of encouragement and comfort, comes on the other end of the line.  It is the voice of an incredibly driven, talented, beautiful fashion designer and seamstress.  Kelsey’s show!  The pieces start coming together into focus in my head.

Kelsey’s show!  The one she started working on designing and creating dresses for this summer when I stayed with her.  At the time, the dresses only looked like big hoops of fabric—dreams I could see reflected it her minds eye that I had to take her word for.

After some shrieks of I love you, I miss you, I wish I could have been there the phone is passed off to another.  Ash!  Oh, what a morning!

Before I know it, it’s over, and I’m back in the silence of my little room, sitting in a plastic lawn chair, drinking my instant coffee.

A pang of longing sweeps over me for the first time since I’ve been here.  A pang of longing to be part of two worlds.  My heart has become part of Africa, part of this country and these people.  But part of my heart is still at home.  Still with family and friends in Washington, California, Arizona, D.C.  Part of my heart is with my new little nephews and their parents who have truly become family.  With my sissy and her beautiful new home so full of love and life.  With each of my many friends who are faithfully walking down the paths toward the future, many barely able to see one step in front of the other.  With my family as they gather to celebrate 80 wonderful God given years of blessings grandpa and auntie Joyce have shared…the list goes on.  A pang of longing to be with each where my heart resides.

Yet while my body cannot, my heart has no boundaries.  So as I sit in my plastic chair in a little room watching the sun bring life to Bo, Sierra Leone, I know that that same sun will bring light and life to another world as well.  A world across oceans and understanding.  And just as the sun will rise with my family and friends throughout the world, the Son has no boundaries either.  The Son, our Jesus, has brought light and life to all the world, and allowed my heart to do so as well.

While my body longs to be in two worlds at once, my heart rises with the Son – in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West.  Wherever He has taken my heart – there it is.

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.

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.