Miracles [Thursday, July 5]

I was running down Siaka Stevens Street - the main thoroughfare in Freetown - and trying desperately to keep up with Osman. I guess it showed, as a young lad sitting on the street called out "white man, white man, run run! black man go befo!"

Runners are rare, but not unseen, in Freetown, but I an American running with a Sierra Leonean (especially in the middle of town) is very unusual, as most of the expats from abroad stick together in their air conditioned apartments in the West, while the few Lebanese who do run usually run alone.

Anyways, after my morning run, I took at a taxi over to HU for work. This taxi driver wasn't particularly talkative, but he did have fantastic stuffed animal collection on the dashboard. A teddy bear in a black and white, jail-striped "Prisoner of LOVE" outfit shared the dashboard with a pastel Easter bunny and an red "I heart Philly" bear. An Arsenal Football Club sticker on the plastered over much of the passenger's side of the windshield guarded the animal collection. Unfortunately, I had left my camera at home (for the first time in weeks) but I do have a few pictures of other taxi interiors:

I worked on a few contracts for an hour or so at HU, but then left early to head out to the east, as I had promised to visit an orphanage in Grafton, and to take pictures of the opening ceremony of the Miracle Corners of the World (MCW) community center in Kissy. I met Tamara and Jyoti (fellow iEARN interns/YMCA residents) and Moses at the Y and then we hopped on a poda for the hour long fight through traffic to the east.

Orphanages are nothing unusual in Sierra Leone, but the Grafton Polio Orphanage is unique in that it only houses disabled children. Almost all suffered from polio and most have at least one other disability or illness, ranging from muteness to mental retardation to epileptic seizures - but you'd never know that from looking at them. They're all well-dressed, clean, and happy:

I'd never thought I'd meet a match for my own wonderful mother back home in St. Louis, but Aunty Melrose might come close. Confined to a wheelchair by a childhood bout with polio, she's the mom for the twenty-two orphans ranging from toddler to 16 years in age. She does all the cooking, cleaning and the daily chores, which are considerable, considering there is no electricity or indoor plumbing, with the nearest tap being a quarter mile away. She had quite a few wheelchairs for the children, but simple wear-and-tear, along with a thief who smashed many of the chairs and also stole her cell phone and savings, has resulted in most of the children only scooting along the floor. I first visited on June 27, at which point there was only a half bag of rice left - here's Abbas, the oldest boy at 16, with the last remaining rice:

When I returned on July 5, they were out of rice and reduced to only a meager amount of food. Jyoti and I had some extra cash, so we gave them Le 75,000 for a 50 kg bag of rice. While Melrose is doing amazing things for her children, there's much more that needs to be done, as there are literally thousands of similarly disabled children. To fulfill that need, Pearl, a Canadian who spent a few months in Sierra Leone earlier this year, has founded the International Foundation for Disabled Orphans (IFFDO) with the hope of establishing similar orphanages throughout Sierra Leone. There’s more pictures from the orphanage below:

Grafton Polio Orphans Home - Freetown

As I had to get back to Kissy to photograph the MCW ceremony, we left Melrose and her children and took a poda westwards. The APC had a rally - essentially a dance party in the streets - and had blocked the main road. The podas all turned around in the road and went the wrong way, reversing traffic until we reached a secondary road that wasn't blocked.

We had made it about half the way to the MCW site with the Sierra Leonean music blaring when this second road as well was blocked, but this time by construction. We left the stalled traffic and walked through the construction site and grabbed a second poda on the other side, which took us the rest of the way to MCW.

The opening - held inside due to some early afternoon rain - was packed with people, with officials from MCW, the UN, various organizations, several journalists and, most importantly, the local community members themselves all attending. Amanda and Nick have been frantically preparing for it for the last few weeks, and it certainly shows. Eddie, MCW's executive director, was in West Africa for the AU summit last week and, although the building isn't completely finished, they had the opening since he was in the region. There’s pictures, both from the ceremony and the construction of the building, at the Picasa album linked to below:

MCWSL

It's days like this that inspire me after seeing so much suffering all over Freetown. It was fantastic to see the building filled with dignitaries and (and more importantly) children and community members, all incredibly happy to have a place to call their own.