In December Of 2003 I received an e-mail from a woman named Winifred Ticley. Wini, her cousin Victor and her three young siblings lived in a tiny mud house, no larger than my bathroom, in a refugee camp in Ghana...
As the weeks went on and we continued to correspond, I contacted Rich Sterns, president of World Vision, and found out the refugee camp, Buduburam, really did exist and the conditions were deplorable. Between 40 and 82 thousand Liberian refugees living on 120 acres....not a single fresh water source, one medical clinic and thousands of children suffering from malnutrition, starvation, and malaria.
My heart was broken as I formed relationships with Wini, Victor, Patricia, Teta, and young Prince. As a mother I could not imagine the grief these children had experienced, their parents executed during Liberia's bloody coupe, their teenage sister forced to flee on foot with three young children in tow...and now they lived in a dirt-floor hut with no furnishings, no means of support and, not a drop of fresh water to drink. I cried, I prayed and I decided if it was the last thing I ever did, I would get fresh water to Wini, Victor and the three children.
What unfolded over the next few months was mind boggling, a trip to Ghana and ten days in the refugee camp...meetings with leaders in the UN and World Vision....meetings with tribal chiefs and community leaders.
And with each meeting, an over-whelming sense of the Herculean task at hand, getting fresh water to the refugee camp was impossible we were told over and over again. There is no land within the camp to drill a well on, every square inch is occupied. Their surrounding land is owned by tribal chiefs who are in dispute and their own people are starving with no fresh water. We were warned the chiefs would be of no help. The Ghana water project was under funded and was not in a position to assist the camp, and the UNHCR, the United Nations high commission on refugees, the organization that ran the camp, was grossly understaffed and over-worked. They told us to give up and take our good intentions to another refugee camp in the Upper Volta region, where the problems were not so overwhelming and where the conditions and refugee population were far more manageable.
I had no experience in international affairs, not even a poli-sci class in college, no geological background to discuss drilling projects and, no understanding of the politics of water. What I DID have was determination, faith that God can quench our thirst, and some resources due to my success in radio.
So I refused to listen to the naysayers and I went forward with my intentions to get water to the camp. I met with the tribal chiefs and they agreed to sell me land. The elder chief sold me 20 acres on which to build an orphanage and school, the younger chief sold me 3 acres for a soccer and basketball sports complex.
I gave a large grant to World Vision Ghana and then I waited for the water to flow. I expected with the land from the chiefs and my grant, it would be a matter of days or weeks before water was available to the camp.
But not so. I called, I e-mailed, and I sent a representative back to Africa twice... I wrote letters, I made phone calls. Nothing happened. The large piece of land was too far from the camp to pipe the water, the survey wasn't completed for the soccer field land and, the drilling team from Canada never showed up. The paper work wasn't filed properly...week after week it seemed the project was bogged down.
Each time I wrote or called to inquire, I found dead-ends. Finally in frustration I threw up my hands and said “God, I don't know what else I can do, I have done my level best” and I stopped beating my head against a wall that was not moving.
In Feb I returned to Buduburam. One year and two months from the day I received the original letter...seven months after my first visit.
We went to meet with the UNHCR, the same organization that had invited us to give up on Buduburam and go help assist another camp. What they had to say was nothing short of a "Red Sea parting sort of miracle."...
They had decided to speak to the tribal chiefs after our successful visits. The chiefs agreed to allow them to drill on their lands, and in fact the drilling was going on as we met! Because the UNHCR undertook the project, they also financed it, leaving the grant I had given World Vision to be used for much-needed food for malnourished children and other vital projects.
The next day we went to the site of the drilling and found the capped wells, high-yielding wells that will provide fresh water for all of the refugee population AND the Ghanaian population in the area. Now we are preparing to mechanize them and place the pipes for distribution. Soon fresh water will be flowing for thousands of people to drink!
God asked me to do my best, I did all I could do and gave all I could give, it wasn't enough. But God took my good intentions and the desires of my heart, and He made a way, a much better way than I had dreamed or imagined. He met the thirst of the refugees and others, with living waters...
