founder of the beacon house orphanage previously written about. The test she was talking about was 2 weeks spent in a small village called Namolgo in the upper-east region of Ghana about 45 min from the Burkina Faso border. While this did test our immunities breeding a minor case of malaria which caused us to cut our visit 2 days short, our spirits were raised far beyond expectations. Here are some highlights.
This is Yen and his children Esther, Yendine, Yenbil, Wunmahme, and Marlukgardya. Ramonna has been helping to send these kids to school, and gave us the chance to come and get to know these kids by bringing them school supplies trying to build profiles for them so she can seek outside sponsorship for their schooling. Possibly the most grateful man we've ever known. He gave us a chicken.
Buug Primary School is where Yen's children attend school. We spent 4 days here teaching and footballing. There is sooo much to be done here. One is desk-building. The class you see here is P4, the highest class, and therefore the best supplied room. As the grade level decreases so does the number of desks. The P1 room had 15 students with 2 usable desks and 3 broken ones in the corner 2 of which we were able to salvage with a hammer and some ingenuity. That still leaves half the class on the floor along with half of the P2 class and the entire KG class (appr. 30 students on the floor from 8 to 2 every day). I found it quite exhilerating to hear the kids start chanting as we rode up on our bikes each day.
The gold mines in Obuasi.Ben and I agree this was the sketchiest thing either of us has ever done... That shaft was the most cramped place I've ever been and about 60m straight down this make shift ladder made of strategically placed sticks and foot holds carved out of the rock. The men who work here are fiercely manly, though they are often looked down upon as greedy men willing to do anything for a buck. What Ben and I soon learned, however is that these men, some boys really no older than 14, don't really have a choice. If you're from the north, your choices are:
1.farm your families land
-due to LARGE families, the land is usually already crowded and over-farmed. some men walk
hours one way to find an open patch of land in the bush, spend the week camping on the plot, then come home to their families on Sundays.
2.go to find work in kumasi
-this would be the equivalent of moving from mississippi to anchorage to find work with no way to contact home once you got there. if you don't find work in kumasi, you end up begging.
3.work in the mines
-VERY dangerous work. Just 2 weeks before we went north, a smaller mine collapsed killing 18 miners. many of the men who escape incidents contract tuberculosis from the constant moisture and blasting dust they breathe. it does, however, promise work and allows the men to stay relatively close to home.
One day we talked the school superintendent for the area to take us on his rounds with him. If I haven't mentioned before, there are very few cars in this region in Ghana so transport is done by motorcycle. I was astonished when we went to schools in villages basically inaccessible by car. Seriously. This is the last school we visited that day, and despite appearances the best supplied with notebooks, desks, etc. By this time in the day, the super and I were pretty close as I had been straddling him for about 5 hours.
This is Bertilda, the best village host ever(the one holding the fufu, not the one with the big stick.... i don't know that lady). She took amazing care to supply our every need and translate us and arrange for our moto transport for all our after school endeavors.
This is where we spent both weekends we were in Bolgatanga, including the weekend Ben and I were both sick with food poisoning and malaria. The most miserable weekend of my life in about 8 years, but this lady(Mama Laadi) was a-mazing. She actually slept on the dining table outside our door so she wouldn't be far if we needed help. It seems to be her natural response to the sick and hurting to stay by their side no matter what. She told us the story of how this all started. It started with her as a medical assistant in Bolga starting to treat some of the sick street kids(kids who sleep and beg in the markets) in her own house. As it went she lived out 1 cor. 9:19 as she was evicted by several landlords because of the children and became homeless just as those she was treating. A lady from the UK came in and started hanging out with the street kids and started hearing of this Mama Laadi. This Brit lady started raising money, and soon had Mama Laadi her very own foster home and also started Afrikids, an organization with several clinics and a couple of foster homes in Bolgatanga now. Mama Laadi, as Ben so accurately put it, is an African Mother Theresa. I love you, Mama Laadi!
2.go to find work in kumasi
-this would be the equivalent of moving from mississippi to anchorage to find work with no way to contact home once you got there. if you don't find work in kumasi, you end up begging.
3.work in the mines
-VERY dangerous work. Just 2 weeks before we went north, a smaller mine collapsed killing 18 miners. many of the men who escape incidents contract tuberculosis from the constant moisture and blasting dust they breathe. it does, however, promise work and allows the men to stay relatively close to home.
One day we talked the school superintendent for the area to take us on his rounds with him. If I haven't mentioned before, there are very few cars in this region in Ghana so transport is done by motorcycle. I was astonished when we went to schools in villages basically inaccessible by car. Seriously. This is the last school we visited that day, and despite appearances the best supplied with notebooks, desks, etc. By this time in the day, the super and I were pretty close as I had been straddling him for about 5 hours.This is Bertilda, the best village host ever(the one holding the fufu, not the one with the big stick.... i don't know that lady). She took amazing care to supply our every need and translate us and arrange for our moto transport for all our after school endeavors.This is where we spent both weekends we were in Bolgatanga, including the weekend Ben and I were both sick with food poisoning and malaria. The most miserable weekend of my life in about 8 years, but this lady(Mama Laadi) was a-mazing. She actually slept on the dining table outside our door so she wouldn't be far if we needed help. It seems to be her natural response to the sick and hurting to stay by their side no matter what. She told us the story of how this all started. It started with her as a medical assistant in Bolga starting to treat some of the sick street kids(kids who sleep and beg in the markets) in her own house. As it went she lived out 1 cor. 9:19 as she was evicted by several landlords because of the children and became homeless just as those she was treating. A lady from the UK came in and started hanging out with the street kids and started hearing of this Mama Laadi. This Brit lady started raising money, and soon had Mama Laadi her very own foster home and also started Afrikids, an organization with several clinics and a couple of foster homes in Bolgatanga now. Mama Laadi, as Ben so accurately put it, is an African Mother Theresa. I love you, Mama Laadi!
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