My third day of visiting Street Child projects was to a village south of Makeni. I have done a seperate blog for that.
In the evening Rashinda, Alfred (both work for Street Child) and I went out for a meal with some people who work for the International Medical Corps.
A pregnant lady came to the village of Pate -Bana Marank and fell ill. The baby aborted and the woman died. The villagers were sad but in a rural area such as this it was not uncommon.
Then the women who had attended the sick lady also became sick. So their families cared for them, wiped sweat from their brow, until all these women also died. Their carers also became sick and died. Can you imagine how frightening this must be for the villagers? They had not even heard of Ebola at this stage.
I went out with Sheku, another social worker today. We started in Yelisander village where he asked the teacher at the school to send the Ebola orphans down to the community hall to meet me. I started walking down the road with about 4 children. Another joined us, then another. By the time we reached the community hall there was about 20 children in the group.
Dora is a grandmother who is believed to be 102 years old. She looks after her four grandchildren aged 5, 11, 12 and 14 because their parents died from Ebola.
She is at a time of her life when her children should be caring for her, instead she has suffered the loss of her own child and the hardship and hard work involved with bringing up 4 small children.
Benjamin is a normal 8 year old boy who lives in Sierra Leone, Africa. What makes Benjamin special is that he is the single survivor of a family of 14.
Since Sepember 2014 Ebola has claimed his mum, his dad, his sister, aunts, uncles and cousins. It is impossible to imagine how he must feel.
Today I followed Lamin, a Street Child voluntary social worker to visit some of his cases. I have heard some very sad and harrowing tales of sowing, loss, and sadness.
After a good night’s sleep at Kabba crossing. James and his son (the headmaster) took me back up to the school. They teach 283 children in a tiny building so mostly use outside under mango trees as classes. This is fine at the moment but in 3 weeks the rainy season starts. When it rains, all the children go to the building making any teaching impossible in such a crowded space.. They have a half built building next door that needs a roof before the rains arrive. They need a contractor to saw up large roof timbers and some more zinc sheet. PLEASE USE THE LINK ON THE MAIN PAGE TO DONATE TO STREET CHILD AND MAKE THIS POSSIBLE. I am sure that a couple of hundred pounds will be enough to open a new school building for this and the surrounding villages.
Today was about great bike riding on mountain roads and on jungle tracks, falling off a ferry into a river, seeing fantastic wildlife, breakdowns and hospitality in a remote jungle village. It is going to be a long blog. ..
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Gambia is… I could write so many things here but the reality is I cannot do the people justice in anything I write. I have been welcomed by smiling faces wherever I go, and want to come back; and I want to bring Scouts from the UK so they can get some of the energy that has been given to me over the last few days.
The culmination of my time here was this evening when the Gambian National Scout band have me a personal marching display (I have videod it) and tonight when we had a campfire Gambian style (African music and drums) when I definitely felt like guest of honour.
JERRE JIF
(Thank you)