Dear Friends,

Upon returning from my third trip to Ghana, Africa and the effects of jet lag loomed large. I remember thinking I should have started this project twenty years ago when my body could handle going days without sleep...the return flight took over 23 hours from the time we arrived at the airport in Ghana until we touched down on home soil. I was fatigued and road weary, but there are observations, experiences and thoughts which remain fresh in my mind; these I must share.

My purpose of travel to Africa was the same as it has been my past two trips in the last 12 months, to try and work with the existing agencies and entities that are trying to improve the quality of life for an over-crowded population of Liberian refugees that are living in an encampment, now referred to as a "settlement" outside of Ghana's capitol city of Accra. I first heard of the camp because of an e-mail I received two years ago from a man named Victor who was posing as a woman named Winifred...rather complicated and convoluted, but a common practice of the refugees is to spend hours on the internet searching for people who will have pity on their plight and respond with money.

The truth is, Winifred is a real woman who lives in the camp, and the conditions truly are appalling. Since that e-mail exchange, I have received dozens of letters from listeners who have also been contacted in chat rooms and such from the refugees, begging for relief and support. One man has even been manipulated into giving up thousands and thousands of dollars to "adopt" two young men from the camp...problem is, none of the proper channels or agencies were involved in the scam, just a man living in the camp who used two innocent boys as his means to get access to money from a well-meaning man who really wants to adopt these two.

The camp resides on a little over 120 acres of land, and spills into the surrounding Ghanaian community. On this small swatch of land over 42,000 REGISTERED refugees live, and an estimated additional 40,000 which are unregistered. Most from Liberia, but also from Togo, Ivory Coast and other small nations that have been besieged by war the past 15 years. Try to imagine a teaming mass of people, crammed into houses no bigger than a standard US bathroom, with no reasonable access to fresh water or toilets.

Before my first trip last year, I founded and formed a not-profit agency, Point Hope. Through this agency we have attempted to bring change to the camp by working with agencies and organizations that have been established there already. We partnered with World Vision, who has offices in Accra, and undertook several major projects. The first was our water project. I met with the tribal chiefs that own the surrounding land, and arranged to buy some of the land on which to drill wells. At the present time residents are very resourceful in order to stay hydrated, they collect rain water during the rainy season from their rusty tin roofs, they collect water from a near-by drainage ditch, they walk the approximate 3 miles to a near by lake and dip it or they buy it off of "water trucks" that come into the camp daily and deposit their brown, murky fluid into large, black "poly tanks" owned by entrepreneur within the camp who in turn sell it to their neighbors. As a result of the consumption of polluted water, many of the residents, most children, have died of cholera and other water-born diseases. Those who have not died, are infected with diseases or just weakened from lack of fresh water.

It is hard to believe, but the average American family flushes more water down the drain in ONE day than many people in Africa have access to in a YEAR. Try to picture yourself having to buy dirty water to give to your dehydrated child, or not having access to a hot shower after an exhausting day in the sultry heat...

We continue to work with the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission) on Refugeesand Ghana water board to try and speed up the process of getting fresh water flowing, which seems to be taking forever.

The sanitation issue is even more over-whelming than the lack of water, or at least as overwhelming. Thousands and thousands of people with no toilet facilities, few bathing houses and tons of trash piled about next to their living quarters. I am not sure what causes the apathy about the trash, if it is simply a defeated attitude after years of being beaten down, or lack of education. The UNHCR kindly increased the number of trash trailers to handle the refuge from 7 a year ago to 30 at the present time, but it is still not handling the mountains of plastics from the drinking baggies that are piled everywhere. When the plastics mix with human refuge and animal excrement, it is a breeding ground for deadly diseases, and still the children die every day from the situation.

We are working with World Vision to try and bring in educated training people to teach the people sanitation and recycling principals to try and reduce the mountains of garbage, but that still does not address the issue of toilet facilities. There is no land on which to build latrines for individual houses, and no funds to build them if there was land. We are hoping to generate funds and find engineers to help us figure out this terrible problem.

We initiated a feeding program for the malnourished and starving children, which we were initially told did not exist within the settlement. Now the UNHCR has taken the initiative to build a clinic on land I had secured for a playground, and they have been providing nutritional supplements for over 5000 starving children and infants. It is amazing to see the difference in just a matter of one year, my first visit it seemed every child I encountered had distended stomachs and orange tinted, sparse hair as a result of malnutrition, now there are fewer and fewer such children playing in the dirt. I saw three young mothers in the clinic who's new infants are grossly underweight as a result of no food for the pregnant mother, but I can see an improvement in the over-all situation as far as nutrition for children is concerned.

Part of the land I purchased outside of the camp was intended for a soccer pitch, but the rainy season has proven that was not an educated decision, as the ground is clay and does not handle the water. It is currently a huge, clay pit of mud. A study we commissioned by local engineers makes the cost of excavating and replacing the mud with latrite cost prohibitive, so we have decided to try to secure more land close by that is NOT going to turn into a mud pit, and use the original land for garden plots. With composting, a few basic tools and agricultural education, the land can be turned into a source of fresh fruit and produce for the entire community. We are currently looking for funding and resources to secure shovels, rakes, hoes, wheelbarrows, boots and gloves for those who wish to farm. The farmers will be able to keep the produce to feed their families, or use it as a means to earn money with a portion of the food being tithed back to the community for those most vulnerable.

We had a meeting with several leaders from within the community, as well as those who work directly with the camp trying to manage and address some of the mind-numbing problems. They all agreed that water, sanitation and food security were the top priorities, but that education, reconciliation, trauma, HIV/AIDS and family planning counseling were also top priorities. Dorothy, the local social worker who is employed by the Ghanaian government to deal with thousands of heart-wrenching situations, told me that she is aware of over 500 young girls who are presently pregnant without partners. Many of these babies will be born underweight to girls who have no skills, financial support or education to care for them.

When I stepped out of a wonderful church service on a Sunday morning, I nearly tripped over one such child. She was sitting on the steps, crying in the sun, with the most beautiful eyes you can imagine, but tinged with yellow from malaria. When I bent to pick her up, her dark skin was burning against my cheek, and I asked for her mother. I was told she was the niece of one of the elder's, and I asked their permission to take her to the medical clinic. About half an hour after we arrived, her mother appeared, a child herself. The toddler, Faith, was diagnosed with malaria, and a respitory infection. She had not eaten solid food or drank any water that day, nor had she eaten very much for two weeks prior. Her fever was over 104, common with malaria. The doctor prescribed five different medications, and Karla, one of the women that traveled with us, patiently showed her mother how to give the medications to her. The mother does not read or write, and wants to attend school but has neither the funds, nor anyone to care for Faith if she could. Faith ate a tiny bit of a Quaker Oates snack that Karla wisely brought, drank some fresh water she provided, and spent the remainder of the day asleep on my back in the traditional "wrap" the women wear to carry their children...

Karla is gifted with children, she has a soothing voice that sounds almost musical when she talks, and the patience of a Saint. She brought several small "super balls" along and would spend hours entertaining the children, playing catch and watching them bounce the balls against the mud walls of the houses. Each morning before we left for the camp, Karla would load up her arms with small, brightly colored rubber bracelets, and when she would find a child who was severely traumatized or reticent, she would gently place one of the simple bracelets on his or her arm. It was a small gesture, but one that won her many precious smiles!

I have become friends with several members of the community, I am not sure if "friends" is the proper title since in reality, they are desperate and feign friendship in the hopes of receiving support and money. It is hard to know how to help without causing dependencies, how to care without violating boundaries, how to empower without causing resentment and bitterness. We have decided to take a holistic approach, in the model of World Vision and other agencies with years of experience, and instead of giving funds to specific people, to provide services and programs for the community as a whole. Still, there are a handful that I have come to love like my own family members and take suitcases full of clothes, shoes, pencils, ibuprofen, band aids and ointment to them specifically.

World Vision has partnered with us to allow people to help with a "Gifts in Kind" program. They have agreed, to ship for free, supplies and items that are collected for the members of the camp. If you would like to help, you can click here (get link from World Vision) and find out how you can send school supplies, clothes, sandals and a multitude of other much needed items to Buduburham.

My hope is that school children here will decide to "adopt" and embrace the school children living there, and send the "school tools" packages to aid in their education. If you could see the classrooms, unventilated cinder block rooms with hand-made wooden benches for desks, filled with 30, 40, even 50 shining faces learning to read, write and do mathematics without books, pens or enough pencils, you would be amazed. So important is education to these African people that they will give up eating in order to pay the nominal school fees. For less than $100 a year a child can attend school and get an education to propel them forward in life, and hopefully on to a better life than they have known up until now.