2000 Sierra Leoneans welcome the Plymouth group in Jokibu.

Articles about Sierra Leone in "The Flame":

SLPP May 2006 Trip to Sierra Leone

"Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership trip -

A measure of hope for all our children"

by Ann Ludlow

from the "Flame," Vol. XXXVII, No. 7, July 2006, pp. 5 & 9

           Late afternoon. The beat of drums. Our Plymouth group of 15 becomes the calm eye of a human hurricane. A thousand children, men and women slowly turn around us, pressing to touch our hands, to greet us: “Bua! Bissiye!” 

        Rust and green – the colors of Sierra Leone: miles of rust-colored dirt highway between Freetown and rural villages. Oxidizing metal roofs, dull ochre mud brick and dirt yards spread out like aprons around homes. Forested hills. Slender palm trees rising over open fields. Sun sifting through rows of dense foliage in the mature palm oil plantations between Pujehun and Foindu. 

        These are images seared into my memory by the Sierra Leone-Plymouth Partnership (SLPP) trip led by Plymouth member and former Peace Corps volunteer Jeff Hall to the villages of Jokibu, Pujehun and Foindu in eastern Sierra Leone, West Africa. The primary goal of the May 7-20 trip was to forge relationships with families, teachers, students and leaders in the villages. Our secondary goal was to learn how Plymouth and its friends could work with the people of these villages to regain a measure of hope and self-sufficiency in an area of Sierra Leone particularly savaged by the 1990s civil war. 

        Already, nearly 300 new SLPP metal roofs now scattered throughout the villages have brought hope to the people of the three villages. Under one of the new roofs, our host family, my husband and I rejoiced in the cooler air and better sleep that two evening rainstorms brought. No one worried about a leaky tarpaulin roof that slowly allows the mud walls to become saturated with moisture, washing away the sides of the home during the rainy season, diverting the family’s energies from the hard work of reclaiming overgrown rice swamps. The Partnership is also a little nearer to its longer-range goal – banishing the traditional “hungry season” between planting and harvesting swamp rice and turning it into a modest opportunity for village profit in surrounding markets. 

        The SLPP trip brought other sources of hope to the villages. For the women of each village, SLPP brought a grinder mounted on a stand from Compatible Technology (a St. Paul non-profit supported by the Plymouth Benevolence Committee). Bill Schafer showed the women how to make peanut butter, husk rice and clean and maintain the grinders. The health clinic for the three villages now has some medical supplies; the shelves were bare before we arrived. Instead of using machetes, 9 farmers of the three villages can now use a chain saw to fell the larger trees that took root in the rice swamps during the war. Each of the village primary schools now has a coveted rotary pencil sharpener, a renewed supply of blank exercise books and pencils, some art supplies, a world atlas and a new soccer ball. With the help of villagers, the demographics work group created the first map of each village. 

        Soon SLPP’s efforts will bring another source of hope to the villages – more well water. Before leaving on the trip, Tom Schulenberg identified a reputable well-building and repair firm in Sierra Leone to fix five existing wells. Foindu presently has no usable well. Like most villagers there, the extended family hosting four Plymouth members walked two to three miles to the river to get all the water they needed for themselves and their guests. SLPP has already raised money to repair and deepen the five existing wells in the villages. Eight more new wells ($5,000 each) are needed to assure clean water year-round for all the people and they’ll be built once money is raised during the coming year. 

        Even though we’ve been back in Minneapolis a while now, all of us who were on the trip find ourselves constantly thinking of specific state-of-the-art solar power or telecommunications equipment help the villages before rural electrification becomes a reality? How can SLPP help get more books and teachers for the burgeoning classes of the villages’ primary schools? What are the health care priorities? Is the secondary school and college scholarship program that some in the villages seem to believe is their biggest hope for the future set up optimally? 

        The big, round, expectant eyes of young children; the intelligent, kind eyes of our host mother and father; the sun-wizened eyes of older farmers and women selling goods at roadside stands; the eyes of secondary school and college students desperate to make an impression, to be remembered, to be supported, to feel they have a future. May we remember all of them as we work together so all our children can enter adulthood with a measure of hope and the knowledge of God’s love in their hearts. 

• • •            

                           

An outdoor kitchen beside a house.

                      

In a 6th-grade Foindu classroom: typical desk and bench for three.  Windows are wide and high because there's no electricity for lights in the villages.