A boat ride to Mogponguba Village

(Above: Hiking through the Sierra Leone jungle to reach Mogponguba Village)

(Written on July 12, 2008) -- Today we went hiking in the African jungle. Sorry, but I just like to say that. It was a trip for many purposes. Andy’s sponsored child lives in our place of destination – Mogponguba Village. COTN also has a nursery school there with about 100 students who all needed their photos taken for sponsorship purposes by Scott and then I tagged along not only because there was a boat ride involved (which just sounded exciting), but also because I wanted to see and learn what COTN was doing there so I can better do my job when I return home. The hike was about one hour – covering about three to four miles through bush and jungle, pathways across palm oil and cassava farms and over tall grass and rocks. There was a line of us – the COTN school principal, the employee in charge of sponsorship, Dave, Scott, Sarah, Andy and I, the teacher in charge of the school in Mogponguba and then about three nationals who came along for the ride. But, I think the hike was the most exciting for the white folk who kept pinching themselves at what we were actually doing – was this real? We came to a shaded, shallow stream about 10 feet across. Our “guides” laid down a couple of branches and large pieces of bamboo for a foot bridge so our shoes wouldn’t get wet and we balanced across.

“We are so blessed,” I said to Scott who was walking in front of me. “Who gets to experience something like this? Who gets to come live in Africa for two months?”

(Above: The river we crossed and the canoe we rode in to get to the village.)

The pathway finally ended at the river – about a football field across. It is very large, trees and thick jungle surround it on either side and the water flowed quickly past. Once down at the water’s edge, we spotted our mode of transportation across – a huge, hollowed-out log. We’d cross over in the massive canoes – one of which began to slowly approach us, full of nationals: women on their way to the farm or another village carrying food and goods in buckets and bowls on their heads. They passed the white people. “Bua,” we greeted them. “Bua,” they answered us, clutching our hands.

The canoes were literally made out of one log – deeply carved out. We had to take two trips because there were so many of us – with the “driver” sitting at the back, a large, flat paddle in his hands. We slowly and carefully stepped backwards into the boat and walked to the back. Then, we squatted and held on to the sides, the bottom of the boat muddy from rain and dirty shoes. I’ll tell you, going across a river in Africa riding in a canoe made out of a tree was a pretty surreal experience. I was so excited that Scott was there to share it with. To make the water trip even better, half of the village was waiting at the other side to welcome us. They stood up the hill from the water’s edge, expectant eyes and smiles, clothed in bright colors and no shoes. What a welcome to ride up to! We were taken to an outside pavilion and seated in front of about 80 kindergarteners who had a 10-minute welcome program planned for us. “Welcome interns, how are you?” they shouted in unison to us.

Almost every child took a turn reciting a memory verse, they then recited nursery rhymes in English – shouting them at the top of their lungs. At the end, two children stood at the front of the class – one asked questions, the other answered. “What school do you attend? Who is your teacher? Where do you live?”

What gave all of us chills was the last question the boy asked: “Why do you go to school?” The answer: “Because I have a right to education.”

For the next two hours, Scott took photos of every kindergartener enrolled in the school which started in this village just one year ago. By starting this school here, COTN has begun to prepare these little ones to enter into the first grade in the Fall – when they’ll have to join the other children from this village who make the boat ride and the three-mile walk to school and home each day.

I stared at these children with such beautiful faces and saw such potential in their eyes and smiles. They were here, speaking English and learning because of COTN and that alone is such an amazing thing to see and be a part of. As the children proudly presented their “welcome” to us, Scott leaned over and said to me, “Imagine if you were Chris Clark and you were able to see all this happen from that one step of faith.” Chris Clark is the founder of COTN.

(Above: Scott and I inside the nursery school building with some of the excited students.)

What an incredible thing God has done here in this country through COTN – and that’s just regarding school facilities. The personal lives that have been positively affected and changed from the teachers, to pastors, to children and mothers seems endless. And what if Chris and his wife Debbie had come, seen the many children on the streets here in Sierra Leone, went home sad and done nothing? I’m sure people thought they were crazy, but they kept this faith and are now blessed to see such amazing results.

We were told that our little group that visited Mogponguba was the first group of white people from COTN to visit. This became evident as children were brought to Scott to photograph. Some of the four-and-five year olds were terrified of the tall, white man shoving a blank box in their face. There were tears, quivering lips and wide, staring eyes. The parents just laughed and coaxed them through it. But, like most babies in the nearby villages who’ve never seen a white person before, crying and faces of terror is quite expected. And can you blame them?

(Above: Sarah Saunier and I drinking from the sweet coconuts given to us as parting gifts. They were the best I've ever tasted.)

After Scott took every photo, we got a tour of the school building, which the villagers helped build together. A thatch roof, mud walls and benches made of thick bamboo strips completed the building. And by the attitude of the village, they were quite proud of their place of education. To experience the boat ride to Mogponguba was pretty surreal, but to witness the affect that this little kindergarten school was having on this remote village was even more of a privilege. The welcome we received from everyone was humbling (we even were given gifts of coconuts to drink) and unexpected, but to find out later in the day that we were most likely the first white people some of those villagers had ever interacted with, made it all the more strange, unbelievable and special in a way. Yes, we’re in Africa. 

(Above: Scott and I with Kudus, one of our favorite boys from Mogponguba Village.)

What did we actually do?

Our time in Sierra Leone went by so quickly – partly do to the fact that we were busy! Though some things Scott and I didn’t participate in fully since our goal was to lead the interns in ministry, we were able to be a part of everything that went on in some way. 

Here’s a look at what we did the first month …

(Pictured above: Intern Mark Drennan playing games with the children in his village)

VILLAGE MINISTRY (the favorite aspect of everyone’s time in Africa)

The eight interns (five Americans, two Liberians and one Northern Irishman) were teamed up in four groups of two and then assigned a village that would become their own during our stay. Monday afternoons consisted of Outreach, when each group would prepare a message, songs, games and skits to do for the children of their village. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons the interns went back to their villages and were placed with a family or group of friends who taught them an Africa “skill.” Interns came back with baskets they’d woven, a new hairstyle they’d braided, stools they’d nailed and mats they’d learned how to tie together. Some went to the family farm to learn what a typical day looks like, others cooked with the women of the village and tasted the food after. The main point of the “new skills” day was not necessarily to learn how to do all of these things, though the interns enjoyed it. It was an excuse to sit and form relationships with people in their villages, hopefully sharing with them about the love of Jesus, whether they could communicate with words or not. Sunday mornings each team of interns attended their village church which were part of a new church planting initiative that COTN has started in villages near their property in Sierra Leone. Most of the village churches the interns attended had just started a few months before. They helped lead songs, encourage villagers to attend, prayed and some even preached. This part of our time in Sierra Leone was very special because of the relationships formed between interns and the people of their villages. Imagine walking into a village in the middle of the African jungle and hearing people call your name and being able to greet everyone you see by their name as well. Pretty amazing experience. Thankfully, Scott and I got to visit each of the four villages, tagging along with the interns, numerous times and were able to experience a little bit of where they loved to go so often.

(Pictured above: Three village children at one of the school buildings; Tutoring on of my students; Intern Myles Hamby waking up his class with an exercise!)

SUMMER SCHOOL

This was the first year that the COTN school in Sierra Leone held summer school, meant for the students who were struggling the most during the normal school year. The interns were each assigned to a classroom and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning until noon, they split up the subjects of teaching with the summer school teachers. I got to participate in this part of ministry and helped Aunty Kadie Kobba teach middle schoolers English and reading. What fun! (And what a challenge!) The main reason why it was important to have native English speakers helping teach is due to the customary way that reading education works in Africa. Children are taught to memorize words instead of sounding them out phonetically. This causes major problems when, later in school or life, they come across a word they’ve never seen before and don’t know how to sound it out. Because the interns spent so much time with one teacher and with one class of students, it enabled us to really get to know them. My middle schoolers became very close to my heart – one of the boys who was not excited about being there on the first day, Shaka Sandy, soon excelled in the class and even came to bid me goodbye at our farewell party. This was a special time, no matter how difficult it might have been some days.

PERSONAL MINISTRIES

Tuesday and Thursday mornings, the interns spent time doing or preparing to do something that was personal to them – working in an area where they had expressed interest before arriving in Africa. Two girls who are in school to be teachers did one-on-one tutoring with students. Four guys who are all interested in pastoring or somehow going into the ministry planned a three-day pastor’s seminar for all the new pastors and church leaders from the church plants in the surrounding villages. And two other interns assisted the COTN counselor in mentoring groups of home kids on tough topics. This allowed the interns to work at and give to something they were good at and had a passion for.

(Pictured above: The orphan home children, interns and home mothers gather to listen to intern Elijah lead Bible study.)

BIBLE STUDY

Every Wednesday evening, the interns along with Scott and I helped lead the Bible study for the orphan home children (about 100 of them). The interns organized who was going to give the message to the older children and who was going to speak to the younger children, what the message would be about and what kind of skit would make them laugh really hard, and yet teach them something at the same time. We all had a blast making fools of ourselves for the skits and also singing Sierra Leone praise and worship songs at the beginning and end.

(Pictured above: Intern Myles Hamby leading his "Yellow Team" of children in a camp chant; The whole group of us enjoying a hearty camp meal of rice -- from top, left: Andy, Gee, Myles, Scott, Sam, Mark, Stacie, Laura, Stephanie, ELijah)

The last two weeks ...

One word can describe them: CAMP. Though going in to camp, we were under the impression that we were just in charge of crafts and helping with sports, we quickly realized that we were actually one of the main forces running the camp. The first week was for children – Try to picture about 250 Sierra Leonean kids all under the age of about 12. Most of them don’t speak English and most of them, like normal kids, want your attention all the time. They were split into four teams – red house, green house, blue house and yellow house – and two interns took a house (more than 50 children) to help lead throughout the week. The most exciting part for the kids had to be that they spent the night. The school class rooms were converted to dorms and each child brought a sleeping mat, extra clothes and a water bucket for bathing at the river twice a day (that was a site I’ll never forget!). All the orphan home children came, but the camp was mostly made up of children from the surrounding villages, which explains why they couldn’t speak English. It also emphasizes the amazing opportunity the camp was to not only tell these children about Jesus – some of them had never heard about Him before – but to also educate them in important areas. We talked about hygiene, sanitation, how to brush your teeth. We also just loved on them – some of them don’t get that kind of attention at home. The camp involved crafts, a Bible message, quizzes, lots of sports and even a movie at night (run by a generator). The interns were involved 100 percent for the entire day – helping with each aspect of the camp as well as keeping the morale up on their team, which involved lots of cheers, singing, fist-pumping and silly dancing around. Though there was exhaustion each night, the children made it all worth it.
The second week was the camp for youth, which was, incredibly, a lot more relaxed. Not only did we now know what to expect, we had teenagers who could sit quietly, understand and speak English. They were also a lot more competitive. Crafts, a Bible message, quizzes, and relay games still made up a lot of the camp, but soccer was added – the four colored teams competed their best players against the others. The other major additions were talk sessions lead by the COTN counselor with the boys and girls separated about sexual abuse, STDs,  AIDS/HIV education and what the Bible says about what’s right and wrong in a dating relationship. Both groups of boys and girls were very receptive to the sessions and had lots of questions. Some interns even brought their mattresses up to the school and slept with the children at night, bringing a guitar, playing cards, lots of love and an incredible amount of energy. The teenagers loved every minute of it.

One of the highlights of the entire two weeks, however, was on the first day of the first camp for the children. Two of the interns – Myles and Stephanie – were teamed up in a village called Wonde for the village ministry. While there, the village pastor told them about another village farther away where a church would soon be starting. They visited this other village with the pastor and realized that no white person had ever been there before. While there and after meeting so many of the children, Myles started telling them about the upcoming camp. He tried to convince the parents to let the children come and he promised that he and Stephanie would be back to escort the children to the COTN property (about five miles away) on Sunday (when the camp began) if any of them wanted to attend. On that Sunday evening at about 6 p.m., most of the campers had arrived – about 200 of them – and the group was beginning to sing. All of a sudden, out of the corner of everyone’s eye, around the bend came Myles and Stephanie with a group of about 50 children in tow – all carrying their mats and buckets, ready and excited for camp. Myles looked like the Pied Piper, with the biggest grin on his face. They had walked the five miles back from the village, picking up children along the way and leading them all there – to learn about Christ. It was a beautiful picture.

What it's like to come home ...

(Above: A few of the many goodbye letters that we received from the children on our last night in Banta.)

It’s been about two weeks since we boarded the plane in Sierra Leone to make the long journey home to the United States. Two weeks since we’ve taken bucket baths or slept with mosquito nets. Two weeks since we’ve wandered through the African jungle. Two weeks since we’ve greeted the Sierra Leone children whom we grew to love so much.

Two weeks, in this case, has flown by almost as quickly as our two and a half months did in Sierra Leone. I know that neither Scott nor I were mentally prepared to come back so quickly and the thought of jumping right back into American life seemed a bit daunting. Maybe that’s why the process has been slow for us. And its not that we didn’t want to come home, it was that we just could have stayed a bit longer. After two months, we knew almost every child by name, we had made friends in various surrounding villages and we saw how much work and how many projects there were to be done – to continue to better the COTN program. When you’ve got the most important person in your life there by your side, working with you, what exactly is the reason to leave? And yet, we did leave and life back home has been good to come back to.
The most difficult thing about coming home has unfortunately not been getting used to the luxuries we have here – the instantly hot showers, the cool and breezy air conditioner, the large amount – and choice – of food, my car, my house, my everything. As much as we would have liked for all these comforts to be fresh -- forcing us to really appreciate them -- they became normal once again after a day or two. On the second day home, Scott said to me, “How are we going to remember to really appreciate what we have after how we lived this summer? A hot shower is already just a hot shower to me.”
It’s amazing how easy it is to get back into our routines as the summer filled with skinny children who work so very hard and have so very little begins to get farther and farther away in our minds. We struggle to cling to it and the emotions we experienced there. We cling to them so we can try, in some way, to explain it to everyone here at home – so they can have a taste of what its like.

Which brings me to the most difficult part of coming home after spending two-and-a-half months in the bush of Sierra Leone: telling others about it. We know that one of the most important parts of going overseas and spending time in a Third World country is coming home and making the people and the situation there real to people here. Not only so they will hopefully desire to help, but also so they will simply be aware of the world outside of our safe borders.
So, why, then, when people ask us, “So, how was it?” do we stutter and give some general answer like, “It was amazing.” Or “It really changed our perspective on things.” I cringe as the words come out for lack of something better. How can I sum up an experience that challenged me like I’ve never been challenged before, that whipped me down to my knees so that I was forced to pray and ask God for help because I had no idea what else to do, that made me have tears of sadness and tears of joy? How can I tell people about living next to children who saw their parents killed or whose family didn’t want them? How can I explain feeling inadequate to be there, or watching a dying woman in a village cry out in pain at my feet and knowing that I probably could do nothing for her? How can I describe the feelings of anger towards injustice or the absolute love for someone I can barely communicate with? Oh, it’s a world that seemed so very far away before – was it even real? Those photos in National Geographic and those documentary films about distant African wars? I can now say yes, it is all real – the people, the lives, the wars, the places. So, now how do I prove that, how do I explain such emotions to those here who are willing to listen? And how do I give just one sentence to those who don’t want more than a sugarcoated answer?
This is what Scott and I wrestle with now. We must work at putting our emotions and our moments of experience into words so our time will be real to you. We will try our absolute best.

Due to lack of time and ability to use the internet in Sierra Leone, we will be posting blog entries that were written while we were there, but did not make it up on the blog during our stay in Africa. We hope you enjoy them.