bearing the stain

As he appeared in the doorway, we both looked up. Her body stiffened. She stopped coloring in the flower, heart and star I had drawn on her paper. The man in the red cap. The man who is the reason we are sitting here in court today. The man who did an unimaginably terrible thing to this little five-year-old girl sitting beside me.

He appeared in the doorway, looked at me, and then turned around and walked out.

Little Letty didn’t go back to her drawing. She didn’t say anything or even turn to look at me. She stared straight ahead, her eyes starting to water.

I leaned down and whispered in her ear. Should we sing the song again? She nodded almost unnoticeably. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong…” Her eyes don’t move, but she doesn’t start to cry. Soon enough we are back to coloring.

"A wan go na os," she says in a little squeaky voice.

I can't imagine what this would feel like to her. Five-years-old. Sitting in a big court room, with big people in uniforms walking in and out, just waiting. I would want to go home too. We talked about how when the big man comes she needs to tell him what happened and then she can go home. But not really go home. Not go home to the way things were before she was raped.

Letty no longer lives at home with her mother and father. The man who raped her lives next door. Her father decided it best for her to live with her Grandmother on the other side of town. Away from the man in the red cap. Away from the scene where it happened.

He says he wants to move the family to another community, so she won't have to bear the “stain” of shame from what happened. Her bear the stain?!?

But the family doesn’t have the money to move and he has a reliable job working security nearby—alongside the man in the red cap, the man who traumatically violated his daughter and stole her innocence. But a job is a job.

The presiding Magistrate agreed to allow Letty to give her testimony first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. It was now 12:30 and he still hadn’t come. Finally around one o’clock he arrives. We all stand, the perpetrator takes his place in the front of the room, and with no reason given the Magistrate adjourns the trial until tomorrow. 11 a.m. sharp.

Surprised? No. Frustrated? Yes. Little Letty will once again have to wait in a big, scary courtroom anticipating having to relive what happened to her.

But to my surprise, her eyes light up and a smile brightens her beautiful little face when she sees me from across the crowd the next morning. When we sit down to wait - an ambiguously indefinite length of time - for the Magistrate to arrive, she begins to talk in her little squeaky voice, although today, a little bit louder. I give her a sparkly heart sticker and she is instantly captivated.

When the Magistrate finally entered, we all stand. He orders everyone out of the room except the police prosecutors, the perpetrator, Letty, her mother, and me. He asks Letty to take her place on the witness stand. When he realizes he won’t be able to see her over the railing, he allows her to stand on a bench near by.

He begins with questions she can easily answer. What is her name? Where does she live? Where does she attend school? She is answering, although quietly, but it's more than she was able to do the last time in court. Baby Love is the last witness to testify in the trial. She was unable to speak without crying the past four times the case had been called to court.

Earlier this week she came to the office and Mameh, the FAAST rapid response officer, and I talked to her about how important it is for her to be brave and talk to the big man about what happened. She sat on the couch fidgeting with her fingernails, her mouth moving but no audible sound coming out. But today is different. Today little Letty is being so brave.

She is ashamed, her father had said at the office. At five-years-old, she already knows the stain she will bear in this community for the rest of her life. The stain she will bear because of a man’s desire to overpower a little child by taking away her innocence. Letty was brutally raped by a neighbor man whom her father worked with. Although the man was arrested, he has been released on bail and continues to blatantly provoke the family. Her father determined it would be best for little Letty to live with her grandmother to avoid facing her abuser.

As soon as this is all over I want to move from this place, her father said. I don’t want her to have to bear the stain.

Bear the stain? Letty bear the stain? The stigma resulting from rape rests in all the wrong places. Little girls feeling shame for the abuse they are forced to suffer. It disgusts me, yet it is why FAAST is here.

Not only do these little girls need someone to sit with them, sing with them, love them and tell them of their worth – but the communities need to understand it too. The communities need to understand the worth of a child, of a young woman. The beauty they possess and the vulnerability they exude. Only through education and sensitization can the understanding and mentality toward trafficking, rape and abuse become that of protection, prevention and redemption.

That is why it was so important for little Letty to stand on the bench that day and relive a traumatic past. So everyone will know she is not to blame. So the man in the red cap will understand there are consequence for his actions. And I waited with her for hours in that crowded, stifling hot courthouse so Letty would know she is precious and beautiful and worth it.

the power of a story...

(written for the WHI anti-trafficking blog)

There are stories all around us.  We each have a story.  Stories of life, experience, joy, love, turmoil, hardship…lessons learned, lessons to be learned.  We live our stories and we share our stories.

Stories are incredibly powerful.  Through a story we see into a life that is not our own.  We can experience things beyond the boundaries of our own world, peering for a moment into the vast world of another person, another time, another place. 

I have discovered the powerful gift of writing God has given me.  The opportunity to unveil realities of this world to those who would otherwise not know or see.  To take people to experience another world, beyond their own.

It is easy to live in the context of our own stories.  To get caught up in realities of our present condition, present situation.  It is easy, especially for us in the West, to lose sight of the stories that compel us to follow Jesus’ teaching to love and care for the least, for the poor, for the widows and the orphans.  Number and statistics can be compelling, but also pushed out of sight and out of mind, our attention changed as easily as the channel on the TV.  But a voice, a story, is hard to ignore.  It is an invitation to imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to walk in another’s shoes, to live another’s story.

***

I have been living in Freetown, Sierra Leone as a Hope Corp volunteer Field Writer for WHI anti-trafficking program Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking.  My job is to write the stories of trafficking survivors.  I often tell people I have the best job, because amidst the dark evil of modern day slavery that still exists and enslaves hundreds of thousands throughout the world, I get to tell the story of hope.  The story of freedom.  The story of beauty in the resilience of humanity.

I have been here in Sierra Leone for over four months now.  I have written stories that make me cry, and stories that make me laugh – I have met children who have experienced more injustice, exploitation and horrors in their short lives than I can even imagine – yet I have seen them smile, as a child should, and it is in this smile that I am reminded of why I am here.  I want the world to see this smile.  To experience, if just for a moment, the joy and peace and freedom of a child who has been redeemed. 

At the beginning of December I led a training workshop with the FAAST staff on story and report writing.  Earlier, in November, I traveled to Makeni to lead a training on story writing with the WHI staff there as well.  I have loved these opportunities to teach for it is in these moments that I get to share my heart, my passion, my love for writing the story. 

For the staff, it is about the chance to take a moment and reflect on the reason we do the work we do. The story of the face behind all the hard work, the long hours, the frustrating challenges. The story of the one.  The one reason we believe that little by little this work is changing lives.  And if I can teach and empower them to write these stories, I truly believe it will not only give others around the world a glimpse of why prayer, emotional and financial support is extremely necessary for more of these stories to be written, but I believe it will also give my colleagues a chance to realize the power behind what they do.  The smiles that are renewed because God has placed them here to do His work. 

I believe God has given me a powerful tool in the gift of writing.  But as with all of His gifts, the true power comes from taking the opportunity to share them.  I hope and pray that when my time comes to leave this place, I will leave more than a few stories I have written.  I hope and pray I will leave knowing that the stories will continue – continue to be lived, and continue to be written.

tis a season to remember...

Oh, mi belle full! As I lean back in my plastic lawn chair looking out at the breathtaking view of Man of War Bay from the ledge of an unfinished concrete building the Wilson’s call home, I bask in the warmth and joy of a perfect day. It is Christmas Eve, and I cannot think of a better way to be spending it.

After taking a refreshing swim in the ocean this morning, wondering to myself if there is anywhere else in the world as beautiful as this, the Wilson girls, Letty and Samarata, come to collect me. I’m already hungry for lunch and so looking forward to the groundnut stew we are about to make.

I have become especially close to the Wilson family. They live near my house and the whole family attends the church I do. The two girls, Samarata (13) and Letty (10) are my favorite neighborhood kids (don’t tell), Hensley (15) is a smart boy with potential and promise, and little Gwendolyn Hanna Euphemia (we typically use any one of her three names) is the sweetest little thing…who is immediately handed over to me, any moment I am within arms reach.

We arrive at their home, an unfinished cement structure where the Wilson’s occupy two small rooms. We enter through a door leaning against the door frame without any sign of hinges, with all the necessary ingredients for delicious groundnut soup, one of my favorite Sierra Leonean dishes. Henrietta appears from outside on the veranda, a thin ledge along the side of the building facing the water, through the brightly colored gara cloth hung in the doorway that splashed a pink and green glow throughout the tiny dark room. She immediately ushers us outside in a haste that may have been motivated by her seemingly embarrassed demeanor toward their home or maybe just the beauty of the view from the hillside.

We spread out the food on an old wooden table outside being held up by a crate on one end. The fresh vegetables that are laid out in front of us are much more than the average person would ever get to use for cooking one meal. It’s good to be reminded in moments like these of how much I take the food I eat for granted and treat as so disposable. When I asked Henrietta to teach me to cook we both agreed groundnut soup would not only be the easiest but it is also one of my favorites. I like it with bocu vegetables and chicken—so I supplied all the goods!

We first boiled water in a big coal pot. All Sierra Leoneans use coal to cook, even Marie our house help, although we have a gas stove. We add the groundnut paste and allow it to bubble and boil. Groundnuts (peanuts) are a major crop grown in Sierra Leone and you can see them everywhere piled high on plastic trays a top women and children’s heads selling them boiled and in the shell or raw and already shelled. Groundnut soup is made out of groundnuts ground into a paste — peanut butter — which you can watch them make at any market. Unfortunately, based on the cleanliness of the grinding machines and the markets I wouldn’t recommend spreading it on your toast.

The girls make sure I take part in all of the cooking. From pounding the pepe (peppers which Sierra Leoneans LOVE and thankfully they appropriately reduced) in a wooded mortar, to chopping each of the vegetables, not on a cutting board but directly into the now rapidly boiling groundnut paste. We add garlic, spring onions, carrots, green beans, eggplant and lots of salt. As it boils, the soup gets thicker and thicker and smells of the rich aroma of nutty garlic. We cook the rice in another coal pot—no measuring cups, no recipes, no timers. It’s amazing to watch. As if they are just born knowing how much and for how long.

It has become an all-afternoon endeavor and by this time I am starving. When the rice is finished and the soup has been tasted and approved we fill a huge bowl with rice and pour the soup over. It is normal for everyone to eat out of the same dish…with your hands. Today we used spoons, a gesture made just for my sake. It was the best Sierra Leonean food I’ve had since I’ve been here! And the company made it so much better.

mmmm...groundnut stew!

This family has become my own. I’ve laughed with them, cried with them, prayed with them. Taught them things and learned so much from them, far more than just how to cook. Sitting there, at their own home, eating together, laughing together, holding baby Gwendolyn Hanna Euphemia I am completely taken back by how much I have come to love them, despite the short time I’ve known them and the worlds apart that we live. But there is something in Henrietta, an understanding I don’t feel with other women here. I feel truly loved by her, not just for what the color of my skin might promise, but as a sister.

***

In many ways it is still so hard to return back to my compound, filled with electricity, fans, running water, a full refrigerator. To snuggle up on the couch in the soft glow of the Christmas lights sharing Dutch chocolates while sipping tea and watching the Nativity Story with my housemates. It’s hard to know that most of the people around me will go to bed tonight without so many of the necessities I have, the traditions of this time of year I enjoy.

But on Christmas morning, as we gather together in our little unfinished church home, filling the air with dissonant, off key carols, I feel so much joy that God would merge my world with this one.

Letty, Samarata, Hendry and me with baby Gwendolyn Hanna at church on xmas morning

Christmas evening was a whirlwind of old traditions with new friends! The expat international bible study group met together for a potluck dinner. It was so fun to watch Remi, Saidu, Mohammad and Maka (four Sierra Leonean boys who live part-time with friends of mine in expat community) decorate a Christmas tree for the first time, to see the closest thing they’ve seen to snow from a “just add water” kit, to exchange white elephant gifts and see Maka’s determination to keep the huge plush towel probably meant as a gag gift. It was a Christmas of good friends, without all the excess (although we certainly had plenty of food). It was a Christmas of singing carols and taking time to truly reflect on what they mean, what it means for Christ to enter this world as a baby, lying in a poor and feeble manger...yet as the King who came to teach us how to love.

me and Remy at Christmas dinner

It was a Christmas that warmed my heart to the most important things this time of year and how God is letting me discover how truly blessed I am. Blessed by my Sierra Leonean family, who are teaching me more about this country and this culture than I knew I had to learn. Blessed by the chance to share my own traditions—tortilla soup with my housemates, coke floats for the FAAST staff, decorating Christmas trees with twinkling lights and shiny ornaments. Blessed by new friends who share in the desire and struggle to figure out how to balance the abundance we have with the lack we are surrounded by and give of the love we have to give.

***

We rang in 2010 with praises to God for another year of life given. It is common for Sierra Leonean Christians to go to a Watch Night service on New Years Eve. To count down to the New Year in fellowship and praise. I’ve never gone to church on New Years, but I don’t know why we don’t. It was a wonderful way to thank God for 2009, for the endurance and the strength, the providence and the blessing of one more year of life. And to praise Him for what is to come!

The streets were filled with crowds singing and clapping as we made our way home. We filled the air with sparkles and light, laughter and smiles – to put the finishing touch on 2009 and give a hearty welcome to 2010! Happy New Year!

Twas truly a season to remember…

what a celebration!

I can still hear the laughter ringing in my ears! Over 40 pikin running around our compound decorating Christmas cookies (aka dousing the cookie and themselves with red, green and white frosting) for the first time in their lives, making glittery shining stars and dancing to corny renditions of jingle bells and winter wonderland!

Sunday was our Pikin Club Xmas Party!

The kids crafts began in the afternoon. A frenzy of frosting and glitter flying everywhere! I made the cookies with some of the older kids the day before. It was a project they looked at me like I was crazy when trying to explain…although it didn’t take long to win them over! The kids also decorated paper stars with glitter glue to create our night sky backdrop for the program.

 

making cookies!

decorating the cookies...and ourselves!

mmmmm...

A few hours later the adults arrived. You needed a ticket to get it, and let me tell you, tickets were HOT commodities! The kids who have come to kids club over the past few months each received one ticket for themselves and one for an adult.

They proudly performed songs they have been learning and a few kids even recited bible memory verses!

Then the Christmas program began!

Some of the older kids and adults who have been doing a bible study with us after pikin club acted as the narrators and recited a part of the Christmas story and then led the audience in singing a carol. As ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Silent Night’ filled the air audience members were selected to “build” the manger scene. Mary and Joseph, angels, the shepherds, the wise men and baby Jesus were all there. They did such a good job!

The rest of the night was filled with food and fun! We asked some women in the neighborhood to prepare jollof rice with chicken for everyone! Jollof rice is a traditional dish of fried rice with vegetables and an oily tomato and onion sauce served only on special occasion because it’s a bit more expensive.

What a night! And what a celebration!

the road from kono

 

“Small Small” reads the front the poda poda.  Two small words that described anything but the amount of people crammed into the mini bus that was headed to Freetown.

It was 5:30 am and still dark out.  But the open “park” I was in was already buzzing with people surrounding the vehicles that would be traveling to Freetown and Makeni that morning.  The mini buses (a bit larger than the typical poda poda transport that have four benches behind the driver and can boast loading at least 20 to 25 people) were already filled to what seemed like capacity. 

I had asked around the day before to find out what time the vehicles would be loading.  Without getting any concrete consistent answer, my colleague Fabundeh and I agreed 5:30 am should certainly be early enough.  Maybe not.

I spoke to the driver and asked if there was any chance one more could fit.  “we don fill up, we don fill up” was all I got in response.  (we’ve already filled up)  The chaos of people yelling and shouting while pushing and shoving into the vehicle made me wonder what exactly “filled up” meant, but regardless, at this point I don’t think I would have wanted to be squeezed in.

But I did need to get to Freetown.  I had been traveling “up country” to Bo for a training of paralegals and then on to Kono with Fabundeh to meet with the Village Parent Groups and a survivor I am writing a story about.  My time in Kono had been wonderfully fruitful.  I really saw the work of FAAST reaching the people.  These groups of volunteers, made up of everyone from village chiefs to teachers to police officers to mothers and even students, committed to looking out for human trafficking.  They are excited to be part of this call to justice, even when it defies the traditional and cultural practices.  A call to bring an end to the exploitation of children, which is rampant everywhere you look.  A call to treat children with love and respect.  A call to allow children to grow with possibilities and opportunities to become more than another seller of goods or themselves on the streets.  A call to change the standards of disciplinary action against those who violate this call.

Yet after a few days of primitive guesthouses, the stagnant upcountry heat, motorbikes and dusty roads – I was ready to get back to a busy week of preparing all that I had accumulated.  I just needed a ride.

As I was beginning to lose hope a man called out to me, “driva wan yu, driva wan yu!”  The driver had found space…or at least made space. 

Ten minutes later we are speeding down the dirt road, bouncing from pothole to pothole, leaving a cloud of dust behind us (as well as entirely engulfing us).  I am positioned, or wedged may be a better way to describe it, between the driver and the two people already squished into the passenger seat.  I have nothing to lean my back against and I can’t extend my legs for I am seated on the center console behind the gearshift. 

So there I sit, knees hugged to my chest, gathering a thick layer of dirt and sweat, bouncing along with the rest of the passengers (who must have exceeded 40 and included two live chickens)…for the next seven hours.  Yes, seven hours.

You just have to laugh.  There is no other thing to do. I marvel at the thought of myself, the only white girl in the dense sea of beautiful black faces all of whom didn’t seem fazed by the journey at all. 

Similarly to the night before when Fabundeh had suggested going for coffee (an idea I welcomed with skepticism because I have yet to experience a “coffee shop” that sells more than Nescafe) and we stop at a busy street side eatery.  Although “coffee” (aka very sugary powdered milk with half a spoon of Nescafe) was served, it came accompanying a piled high plate of “macaroni and beench” (aka a plate of black eyed peas piled high with greasy spaghetti and some sort of meat toped with ketchup, a glob of mayo and sliced onion.  Bona petite!  And all for about 50 cents) hmmm…just let that one settle.  Then imagine the white girl, squeezed onto a bench of hungry “coffee” goers devouring the plate that I am looking at in amazement. 

See, you just have to laugh.  I absolutely love moments like these!  And I love that my God knows me inside and out…including how much is too much.

Once we finally arrived in Freetown and I unfolded myself from the accordion I had become, I was hot, I was tired, and I was still far from my final destination…home.  I finally got a taxi into the center of town, which was as crowed as the bus was packed.  Taxi after taxi passed, disregarding the name of the location I was calling out.  And as I was pushed and jostled from every direction, horns blaring so loud I couldn’t hear myself think, I really was about to lose it.  I felt it welling up from within me.  This was my limit. 

And at that very moment, through the crowds came a white Land Cruiser with the FAAST emblem printed on the side.  It was as if Elijah came riding in on a golden chariot, that’s how happy I was to see Sengbe.  We were far, far away from the office on a side of town our Program Manager would rarely frequent, but my God knew what I would need at that very moment and gave them some reason to be headed in my direction. 

Again, I just have to smile. Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos!  And I am just along for the ride in the midst of it.

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!