Day 5, Camp Buduburam, Friday, August 21st

             This is it! The last day for Gerald and me at Camp Buduburam, Accra, Ghana! (At least for this trip!) 

 

We look forward to coming home and sharing with everyone. Also to bringing some of you back with us!! They really could use a dental clinic for at least a couple of weeks and these kids would eat up Vacation Bible School! The young women in the trade programs would love to meet young American women to share fashion tips and the farm could use all the help it can get through many hands making light work—especially if those hands had heads with gardening knowledge partnered with them!

The ladies in the knitting group were waiting for me...those who wanted to learn and those who brought back their progress to show me!!

 

 The Harmony House ladies get the Grand Prize for the most accomplished overnight (they are the teachers and caregivers for the disabled children’s program),

     but there were a number of other ladies who also had taken my challenge to  practice to heart and they came back with some amazing results on their needles!

One woman is Muslim and had to start fasting for Ramadan, so she gave her needles over to a friend to let her learn, so I was proved wrong (read it here, it doesn’t happen often! LOL!) about no one giving up her needles. I did find a couple more pairs of needles and a couple of circular needles; they are much smaller sizes for the most part, but will do in a pinch! So, I could show 4 more ladies how to knit...since we had more than four, some knit and some watched!

I told the ladies yesterday and today about our Prayer Shawl Ministry back home.  I left them some flyers and explained that just as I pray over each shawl and scarf I make, asking God to be with the recepient, to touch them and show them His love, these ladies could also pray for everyone who ends up with one of their handmade items, whether knitted, beaded, sewed or however created.  Even though they will probably never know the person, God will and does and they will be blessed themselves by praying for others!

  

I had even less time to teach this second group than I had with the first! The guys were standing around waiting to go to the farm and to the school over by the farm. Our VIP escorts from NEWAT had a schedule to keep which included two of them going to school in the afternoon, so I really had to move it! I promised the ladies I would try to drop in one more time before I left for America. I did find out two important things to share with all of them, however. One, the carpenters have agreed to make needles, so I left them a needle gauge and I talked one of the Harmony House ladies out of her needles (temporarily) so the carpenters would have a model; secondly, I have arranged with Chris, Point Hope’s Director who has just had wireless internet made available to him in his office, to let a few of the ladies go to his office to view YouTube video demonstrations of knitting if/when they run into any problems, so the knitting doesn’t have to shut down for lack of instruction.

How blessed to have internet access at the camp, also! I won’t feel as though the ladies have been so deserted if they can at least go watch some videos to help them out!

I am very excited about the needles being made there at the camp, I pray that goes well and a new cottage industry is born at the carpentry shop!

One of the jobs they do now is to make caskets.   

They have been making fewer and fewer, especially for children, but while we have been here a little 8-year old died and the funeral is Saturday—I don’t know the details of the death. The men did a beautiful job of building the casket, they ended up lining it with a pink satin material, tacking flowers on the satin. A child’s funeral is especially sad, but as the dying mother of one young refugee told her, “Honey, don’t be sad. You can’t go to Heaven if you’re alive!” I think that may be the quote of the trip!

OK, so we went back over to the farm with Phil because he hadn’t seen it.

 The farming brothers weren’t there, so we gave as good a tour as we could. When we went out to the pond, we were astounded to see the chicken coop already in the first stages of construction—so much progress in just a couple of days!

    

       

We left the farm and stopped by a daycare/school/nutrition center by the farm.  While here we dropped off some more school supplies and met the school administrator who was excited for the visit...tomorrow there is a graduation ceremony, which Phil and Rachel will have to tell us all about, as we :-( won't be here. 

              

Next we stopped back by the local watering hole, XXX, to treat our NEWAT VIP detail to  something to drink!

Back to the camp, I stopped by the trade school, no one was still knitting, but I did get to see some of the ladies once more and admire some more of their fabric and bead work.

I went by the clinic to see Michelle (starving baby) and Alberta (young mom) once more.      I confirmed Michelle would be put up for adoption as soon as she gets better (pray hard for her, please!) and that Alberta wants to go back to school. I asked her to feed Michelle more formula, as there just can’t be any more mother’s milk left since Alberta was gone for 3 weeks and hasn’t been eating that well...I pray that she listens and that Michelle is soon as chubby and healthy as the kids in the nutrition programs!

One stop by the bakery and batik printing area (the ladies were gone there too,  

   

 so it was all locked up tight) and we were on the road back to Accra, where we saw the Ghanaian and Liberian flags flying side by side at a street vendor 

more busy streets and vendors and life in Ghana,  then...after dropping two of the NEWAT guys off at their tech school, we drove past the Ghanaian Presidential Palace,

which had apartments across the street and vendors around, something that would never happen on Pennsylvania Ave back home... We got back to the hotel and had a final meal with Rachel (who had just had to drop Princess off at an orphanage in town while the adoption process is completed—so tough!) and Phil.

Frank, our superb driver who kept us from crashing or being rear-ended by the absolutely crazy drivers here, drove us to the airport   and...off to Amsterdam!

Thanks for taking this trip with us. We’ll give you some closing thoughts over the next few days! God Bless you all!! Pray for the future of Camp Buduburam and the Liberians and Ghanaians who are living there!!  

Comments

[Erin Briggs]

What a amazing experience, I felt like I was right there with you as I read your postings. You are a gifted writer. Baby Michelle will be in my pray and her mother Alberta as well.

[Erin Grant]

Mom-
I am so proud to have you as my "other" mom :) You and dad have such big & caring hearts to do this! It is an amazing treat to be able to follow along on your journey! I have been praying for you, dad and all the people where you are! You are a gifted writer as Erin said....I hope to one day come along with you guys and do what you did!!!
Love you XoXo