Yaw Balloon, the angel who brings good tidings.
20 December 2006
The last rehearsal and other Christmas preparations
It’s almost Christmas and all kind of things still have to get done. I just received a text message, for example, saying: ‘Your birds are ready’. Now if you would receive an sms saying ‘your birds are ready’ what would you think? With curiosity I looked at the text and tried to grab its meaning. I thought it to be a metaphor. Something is going to happen that has to do with flying, I guessed. Hmmm, nice, I still must have a poet or a mystic among my friends! Have another look at the sender, Ineke. Hmmm, from inside Ghana. Signed by an unknown name and then Don Bosco. Don Bosco? Ahhhh!
That’s where we were two weeks ago, I was picking up Bob in Sunyani at the end of his seminar given for a group of young priests and nuns, who were invited to share in his Jewish worldview. We had enjoyed a buoyant closing ceremony followed by a meal at the Catholic Don Bosco Congregation, and our seven or eight kids that had joined me had received a place of honor at the round central dining table. We enjoyed, were loud and generally made a mess of the place with rice and chicken-bones over the floor. Trust Amma, for example, to burst out in ecstatic shouts of joy when she sees a plate of food and digs in with her two hands all at once, something that can’t be said of just every young lady at those premises in Sunyani! It added to the fun of the occasion. Yes we talked about the chickens which the Don Bosco fathers breed for the Christmas season and should be ready for sale in a week or two. That’s it then, the birds have been fattened and are ready for slaughter, so come and get them! Gone the transcendent nature of words about birds! So, yes, we’ll send somebody to pick them up tomorrow.
In this way each day has about ten or twenty surprises which need to be woven into the plan of the day. But around Christmas everybody is happy and none of this would form any problem, contrarily!
Yaw Balloon, the angel who brings good tidings.
We are so engaged in preparing for the Christmas that it would be wrong to say: ‘soon it will be Christmas’. We have already started our Christmas! The anticipation and preparations are a wonderful and exciting part of the whole happening which, as past experience has taught us, will last until the beginning of January. When everybody has had enough of it we collectively sit down and feel tired, remove decorations and stop the show. The curtain falls when we are all ready for it after the New Year has started and not a moment earlier!
The children of the sheltered workshop already celebrated their Christmas. After a great fufu-party and music and dancing till late at night the kids spent their last night at the dormitory and said their goodbyes the next day in order to go to their own parents during the Christmas vacation. It’s good to be able to go home after three months of hard and wonderful work delivered! Three of them are still here today, Latiff and Kwame who asked to spend the Christmas at Hand in Hand and George Kumih, who has an abscess of his leg so he can’t travel.
Our forty children, forty-one to be precise, don’t have any other home or family than us. That’s why we always plan so extensively for a super exciting Christmas that lasts as long as we have energy to make it last. So that they feel that it is good to be home for celebrations.
Philo is the star that leads the wise men to the newborn baby Jesus.
At the end of November we started. Committees were erected to organize decorations, presents, new dresses, visitors, food, the Christmas play, the Father Christmas celebration, musical chairs and water-games, the campfire and the choirs from the churches in town who come to sing to our children. A special committee for the ‘Mikesap party’, a party given by the owner and manager of Mikesap Hotel where Bob and I eat every week with some of the kids. Mikesap has started to love our kids so much that this year they have decided to give a grand party for them here on our own premises. On the 27th they will arrive with music, speakers and a band, with food and drinks and chairs and glasses and plates everything to make a very special feast. All the cooks, waiters and other staff of Mikesap come to serve the children, isn’t that in itself already an unique treat?! As far as we know something like this has never happened in Ghana history. So that needs some preparations. So does of course the last feast, the New Year’s party.
Preparations, sewing, wrapping, buying, buying, buying, storing, storing, storing (where mice, dogs, chickens and kids cannot reach the stuff). Cutting hair, studying songs, mowing the grass for the last time, clearing the last stray garbage and then… then it starts officially!
We have done the final rehearsal of the Christmas-play and so next Tuesday all will be smooth sailing and it is going to be quite a performance. There will be many visitors who will sit and watch in total awe. Many volunteers, many friends from town, hospital and school and many fathers and sisters all the way from Techiman and Sunyani, among whom the Fathers of the Don Bosco group which I already mentioned regarding their ‘birds that are ready’.
The final dress rehearsal was greatly impressive so it does not seem possible that the kids can surpass the excellence of this last performance again next week. At the last moment some changes had to be done. Kwabena was too heavy as Jesus. He could only be thrown into the air with the greatest effort and the caregivers still had muscle ache from the last performance. So the star of the play had to be changed and Ema and Bob had to choose from a new cast to be. Who will it be? Not Kwabena. Not Emanuella for she is too fearful and will not enjoy being enthusiastically thrown in the air! The kid has to be light and bold.....yes, Moses!
Moses is celebrated as the New Born Jesus.
Congratulations Moses, you’ve been promoted to be Jesus and be sure that playing the role of king and savior can change you overnight! He did. During the rehearsal Moses at first went around somewhat shyly from arm to arm but then, at a certain stage, he got into it and beamed and grinned from ear to ear. “I am being celebrated, I am the one who is ‘God among us’ this year!
An additional advantage of celebrating Jesus during the play is a Moses with an increased self-esteem! In actual fact we should take turns in letting ALL the kids play Jesus at some stage and be carried around and thrown into the air and kissed hugged and covered with love. I wouldn’t mind a fast intense round of being celebrated myself, as old age comes with frustrations!
Anyway, I wish whoever reads this a happy Christmas. Celebrate and see that you and your loved ones are celebrated this season.
Moses has become the King!
December 13th, 2006
Making Beads
Yesterday we were standing there waving them good-bye, Mr. Cedi and his two assistants Marc and Kwame. It was only four or five weeks ago that they came to teach us how to make beads from recycled glass and yet it feels like they’ve always been here and belong to our outfit. The famous and modest bead maker from Krobo is a small man with a finely chiseled face and graceful hands. All the same he radiates much natural authority.
He told me that the craft of making beads here in Ghana moves from generation to generation into the same families. In his family too that was the case. His parents and grandparents were bead makers and as a small boy he himself was trying it out, secretly on a Saturday while everybody was out and he was unwatched. Of course working with the very hot ovens and the minuscule glass powder is extremely dangerous for an eleven year old and barefooted boy. When his father returned and found out that what he had been doing, working at the ovens with his own glass-mix, he became so furious that Mr. Cedi never forgot this event and yet this marked the beginning of his bead making career. The father looked at his son’s product and noticed talent there. So, after school and during the weekends his father started to coach him and gradually Mr. Cedi developed a real passion for the color, shape and shine of the old-new recycled glass beads with their own very specific beauty.
During his workshop we witnessed how Mr. Cedi, while conversing and laughing, created the most artful little pieces of glasswork as if it didn’t take any effort at all.
Mr. Cedi.
All these weeks I followed the production process from very close, while a small selected group of activity leaders and young adults, working at the sheltered workshop under Ellen, learned how to make the beads themselves. It is a long process that needs patience and precision, starting with building the ovens themselves. The first week was spent on doing that, making the ovens. The red clay earth had to be dug from deep under the topsoil and had to be soaked and mixed with water to make it moldable. The kids loved it and one whole day was spent with them dancing on the mixture of earth and water to kneed it into clay, not unlike in former days wine was pressed from grapes. The next day, when the mix was ready, the master himself received lump after lump of clay to mould the special round shape of the oven. Then the two ovens had to dry, and dry very gradually or else the clay would crack. This took a week and in the meantime moulds were made in different shapes for the recycled glass powder. Complications can occur at any time during the process, such as the goats who in their curiosity tried to come too near to the ovens and even climb on top of them, like price-goats! Special goat-watch teams had to be formed by Ellen and James to protect the ovens from such calamities. After a week the first low grade fire was made into the oven to speed up the drying however without cracking the clay. With skill and patience the ovens were at last ready to be used.
The oven
In the meantime the first empty wine-bottles were already being grinded into powder in the steel barrels specially made for this by the welders in town. Gloves and eye protection with goggles of course. Yet little industrial accidents had to happen, a blister here and scratch there, all part of the creative process!
I do not remember on what precise day the first harvest of glass beads made its appearance out of the ovens but the event was memorable. Not only because the tension was building up and everybody was so very curious the see the ‘other end’ of the process, but also because the first beads were so amazingly beautiful already! Pure coincidence or beginner’s luck whatever but unanimously people were amazed at the beauty of these first beads. Workers and kids burst out in shouts of joy and started dancing. We have succeded, we have succeeded. We are all bead-makers now!
Polishing the beads.
The end product.
Latiff
Latiff puts his own-made beads on a rope. Proud and rightly so!
The day on which we said good-bye to Mr. Cedi started with a nice little celebration where the bead making wing of the sheltered workshop was officially declared open. Ellen and James had made a concise program with song, dance, words of thanks, cutting of ribbons and of course a drink. Congratulations to all the artistic persons who followed the course and became yet again one step more professional. Well done, W’aye adee!
December 4, 2006
Movendi-Annemiek
During the last six months she has been with us, Annemiek. Together with Merelyn,
Annemiek working with Lisa.
Marije and Jasper they formed the first group of the Movendi-Team that arrived during the middle of this year to support our project with physiotherapy and the creation and adaptation of physical aids. Later Annemiek 11 and Piet joined the team. This second team, together with Marije, will stay with us until the end of March.
Friday we celebrated (read: grieved) the leave taking of Annemiek as well as that of Merelyn and Jasper although they only leave in a week or two. (A party each week is a bit much even for the Hand in Hand Community.) So...so long to Annemiek, Merelyn and Jasper. Time goes too fast!
Fresh in our memory are their first meetings and conferences, the first classes of Movendi with our caregivers Joyce, Jerry and Ema, the slow building up of the classes in town, the daily exercises that were always playful but became all the time more effective. The Movendi Team became an integral part of the Hand in Hand Community. And then “Babe Annemiek” leaves, as the first one, because time is up! Saturday afternoon she would have reached her cold Holland and a hopefully warm family again.
The three students physiotherapy around the table. Examination time!
Much has been achieved. We now have a fixed physiotherapy area with, within the next few weeks, an adjacent resource room and store. Next year we will have our own, all Ghanaian, team with Emanuel in charge, who can independently do the necessary exercises with the children. We will then also have three or four people in town, (and at Bawku Hospital and rehabilitation Center) who can produce and repair the necessary wheelchairs and other physical aids.
But for the time being we are not that far as yet. We say again thank you and safe journey to Annemiek, to Merelijn and to Jasper.
Hey Babe, come back soon.
Solid like a rock, the Movendi team and their local counterparts.
Monday Morning
November 27th 2006
It’s Monday morning and peace has returned after a busy week and a very memorable weekend. Friday Yaw was discharged from the hospital and returned home. He survived the crisis and is now much better though it will take 8 month of intensive medication before he will be cured from his pulmonary tuberculosis.
With Sala things go well, she has neatly installed herself in a room in Techiman. Sala lives in the neighborhood of the family of one of her half brothers and that gives her someone to talk to and… an electrical line out of her brothers house and into the window of her room! I have visited the bakery where Sala works, it is a grand enterprise. I saw three large ovens, a kneading machine and other machines and bags and bags of flour. Everywhere, of course, wooden boxes with fresh smelling bread. Bread is baked in two or three shifts so the delicious smell seems to have become permanent in the neighborhood. In actual fact there seem to be two bakeries run by the same owner, one on each side of town. The woman who runs the bakery knows about her business! ‘In ten years you’ll be like that, Sala. You’ll have your own ovens, a minivan and a large bank account!’ Sala is going to be successful, you can almost see it in her eyes, the determination, despite her homesickness for Nana yaw, Amma and Joyce of course, but that will wean away.
Already for over two weeks the glass-bead workshop given by Mr. Cedi is in full swing. The first home made recycled beads have been produced, not only by Mr. Cedi and his staff, but also by Ellen, James and a selected group of the works-shop children. Meticulous, difficult work but with awesome results, already during the first rounds! Next week more about this.
Tuesday I received a telephone-call from the group ‘Bicycling for Education’. ‘Can we visit you next Saturday in the course of the day? Put up our tents?’ the voice of Hadewich through the phone ‘We have just crossed the Northern border of Ghana!’
‘Cycling for Education’ is a group formed by 18 bicyclists and a support team who rides on the bicycle from Holland to Ghana, through the Sahara desert of course, how else. During the trip, with their many sponsors, they raise money for several projects in Ghana, among others for our Hand in hand Community. They left in August and fly back to Holland before Christmas. So they were right on trek! To be honored to meet them was a very special experience. Saturday morning we received a second call: ‘we are now about ten miles from Nkoranza, we are coming!’ Our bus filled to the roof with Kwame, Ema and the kids went ahead followed by Baffo, Charity, Bob and myself. We wanted to bring them home in style. Little Amma offered the cyclists, right on the middle of the road, a bouquet of freshly cut flowers and then we all drove back as a garland of color and joyful noise! The cyclists could not be overlooked with their green-red-yellow-Ghana-color cycle outfits, their suntanned faces and their muscular legs! Everybody, child and adult, came out of their houses, stores and markets to cheer them as they cycled an extra round in Nkoranza town before coming, through the hospital-grounds, to the Hand in Hand Community.
arrival
It was quite a happening, the arrival of the team. Liters of water had to be drunk before they were ready to park their bicycles and get a tour over the land of our community. Then our kids and staff looked in utter amazement as they started, one by one, to set up their tents on the grass of our compound. Tents are unknown entities, camping is something for refugees!
tent!
To cycle for fun, or fundraising, or both, and not in order to get from point A to B, is another unheard off in Ghana. Besides cycling through the grand Sahara is near to impossible for all of us, Ghanaian or expatriates. We had a very entertaining afternoon meeting the team members and before we knew it, it was 5pm, party-time. During the party we had not only Koko the Clown and our regular songs but we had something special to do. The cyclists had given us money to construct our roads ( wheelchair and walking roads really but as the cyclists rode a round of honor over our roads we keep calling them bicycle roads). The ribbon was cut by Baffo, who made the roads and Henk, the leader of the team, and so the bicycle-roads were thus solemnly opened. .
cutting the ribbon
Sunday they moved on, at six thirty in the morning, their usual time, they had eaten, packed their tents and were on their way, to Obuase and eventually to Accra.
It made us very joyful, and proud, being with them. Not only because of the gift of the roads, important as they are, but also because the spirit these people radiated. ‘We have widened our limits a little’ one of them said to me, commenting on the experience of their journey. And we, we have widened our belief about what is possible if you really, really want to achieve it!
Bye Bye!
Figthing for Yaw Balloon
November 19, 2006
Tonight I’m sitting in the inner garden of our house, hidden, writing this story, because I can’t handle anymore looking at him in his hospital bed, coughing and gasping for air, light dwindling from his eyes. Tonight it is live or die for Balloon. He recovers again or he chokes further in the spittle or food that has wrongly entered his lungs.
This morning, while everybody was singing and dancing at the Sunday service at the rock-formation of our community, Yaw suffered an epileptic fit. Since one week Balloon lays in our front room to be specially cared for and pampered since he was diagnosed with cavernous tuberculosis. He was responding so well to the medication that his cough and fever had reduced and his appetite increased already. He liked being the center of attention and started shaking hands and laughing at people again as usual. Till he got this fatal fit this morning, despite his medication. When I returned from rounds at the hospital to our house at eleven I met him gasping and choking on the couch. He was still unconscious and somewhat twitchy. Horror! And then the reflexes, such as freeing his neck, changing his position, cleansing his mouth and drumming on his back to get the aspirated material regurgitated. Upon our calling the caregivers and kids came all running home and fairly soon Yaw Balloon returned to his normal self, the cough was less and he could smile again, though faintly. But this afternoon around five the coughing and choking started again and now sounded worse and from deeper down so we rushed him to the hospital. Whatever is blocking his airway deep down is not yet dislodged and he is coughing his lungs out with a helpless look, looking from one to the other if he does not sink away in exhaustion. Many caregivers and many nurses were around the bed when I left him and he was held from all sides while he was laying there like a little lamb. So sick. All what we have in the way of medication he is receiving, included oxygen.
Bob and I are sitting in the dark inner garden. Soon I’ll go over again to see how he is. Our child is strong but so very vulnerable as well.
May he be here still tomorrow and the day after and all the coming days and years. May he go shopping for the community again with his backpack and his purse. May he grow to be a man. Make bead strings, learn to weave maybe, and to farm. May he be many times the angel in our Christmasplay. May he live, just live a little more.
A Ghost in the Car
November 14th
Together with the final departure of Sala, last Friday, our gates also saw their last day. For some time the old and battered gates had been bungling on the few hinges that still worked but Friday, with a few sledgehammer blows from Baffoe’s workers, the gates eventually ended up as a pile of old rusty steel-dump on the roadside. All this is part of a plan to renew the entrance and the network of wheelchair-walking roads on the compound. The new gates are already made and standing to be hung on new concrete pillars. The entrance-road is being renewed with little cobblestones and we have to wait for that work to be finished before the workers can measure how high the gates have to hang above the cobblestone-street. In one word, at the moment it is a great big mess at the entrance of the Hand in Hand community, even though you can see that something very beautiful will eventually come of it.
All this was happening during the weekend and the weekends are the time that we receive most visitors, with or without cars. I work weekend-duties at the hospital so I also drive in and out a lot during those three days. Some taxis and my car were parked at the small place were the gates once hung and where the road was not yet paved with stones. Of course this weekend we had a record number of visitors and the weekend-duty at the hospital was very busy. But we managed as we always manage, barred entrance or not.
I think that the watchman too had a busy and tiring time with all the changes. Or maybe he is like some of our autistic kids and, yes, our dogs who do not appreciate any change at all!
Whatever the case on Sunday night twelve, twelve-thirty I was called for a difficult delivery and walked in the dark towards my car. I stretched my hand to grab the car-door but there was nothing except empty space. Oh Yes. So I stumbled on over the cobblestones and the sand heaps and found the car at the entrance. Door open, ignition, gear, and I backed out of the strange parking place on my way to the hospital. But than a loud shriek stopped me! Abruptly foot on the brake and the car jerks to a standstill. I look over my shoulder into the darkness of the rear-window. But I needn’t look outside on the road for the shout came from within the car. I turn my head once more and look straight into the opening eyes of a ghost that rises from the backseat. The watchman who had been sleeping there! His mouth still open, mine too, we look at each other. Then fast like a snake he lets himself fall sideways towards the door, opens and disappears in the dark.
Now, in any case, we were both wide awake for our nightly duties. I went to the maternity ward and with the help of a vacuum extractor delivered a nice little baby girl. Satisfied I head towards home again. At the gate the watchman stands fiercely erect staring in the dark sky and saluting me as if I was the Asantehemma. All the way during my clumsy backing in and parking maneuvers he kept standing gazing in the air saluting as if frozen or stuck by lightning.
I got out of the car, happy with the successful delivery and unable to contain my laughter about the awkward sleep-ghost-snake incident at the backseat of the car. So I salute the watchman in return and say: ‘Good morning watchman. How are you? Did you sleep well?” ‘Oh yes Sir’ he said before realizing what I asked.
‘Good’, I said, ‘let’s go sleep again. Oh, my God, no, you are supposed not to sleep, right? Oh dear, well have a good watch then’.
The next day he came to apologize but all I could do was giggle. Eventually he joined in.
Sala
November 1st, 2006
It’s for real, Sala is going. Today she has handed over her care for Nana Yaw to Alidya, has handed over our kitchen to me, has given the care for the dogs to Kwaku and sleeps, from tomorrow onwards, with a new girl called Dorcas in her room. Dorcas is going to learn, in the next ten days, how to care for Amma and for Joyce. Then, on the tenth, the plan is that Sala will leave Nkoranza and move to Techiman. She’ll be the apprentice to a baker and maybe within a year she herself will be an independent baker. A good one, I’m sure of that. Independence, that is the keyword for Sala at this stage of her life. As an independent baker you can find a living in any town or larger village, and provided you work hard you earn enough to look after yourself. The fact that our community grants her work at any time in the future, with or without kids of her own, may make it somewhat easier to leave but still it is hard for Sala and for all of us, especially also Nana Yaw. Nana Yaw showed this at the last moment early this morning. He had a fit and badly cut his lip. As if to say: maybe this will convince you not to leave me. We brought him to the operation room and the lip got sutured and Nana Yaw was reassured and now Sala is in Techiman to find a place to stay. She’ll be home tonight again, thank God. Ten more days to see her kind face.
It will be a hard and long struggle ahead of her, getting up at three in the morning to light the oven and kneed the dough, later on to go out to town to sell bread and cakes. Besides Sala now has to make her own little household in her small room in Techiman, included her shopping and cooking. Most of all, Sala will miss the children, and the good neighbors of the hand in hand community. She’ll have to start all over again making new friends and also obediently follow her baker-mistress and work long hours, but Sala is a fighter and used to hard work so I am sure she will learn fast and learn it well. Besides Sala has a business-side to her which is till now under-utilized.
Good for you, girl, be independent, don’t throw yourself into a marriage which may give you love and security but also the opposite if you are unlucky. It’s time to fly out.
Sala is twenty nine years old. She has been with us for over seven years, seven very good years. Her care is exceptional, so is her patience, her good humor and her loyally being there, always being there…
During her initial interview, in 1997, we asked Sala what she could do. ‘Everything’, Sala laughed. ‘Really? Can you cook, paint, swim, cut nails, fly an airplane?’ ‘Yes, or almost yes! I want the job.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I live in a room with six other people and they are talking all the time, just talking about everything and everybody. I want a job, I don’t want to sit and gossip, I want work.’
Who can resist that? It happened that we had already given out the two vacancies because Sala was late for the interview and so other people had been selected and been told so. However because of her extraordinary enthusiasm Bob and I decided to hire her for our cooking. Excellent. Then later a caregiver left and Sala was asked to take two jobs: Care for our meals and also be the caregiver of Nana Yaw and later Araba and later Joyce and later Amma! Sala said that she could do anything… and so she did, she juggled it all, with love and laughter.
And now silence has fallen in the house. It’s the silence that enters when people who are committed to each other have to separate and let go.
A few months ago her mother came all the way from the north and Sala announced it to me, nervously. When Sala and the mother had exchanged greetings and talked privately, she asked Bob and I to sit with them and listen to her mother’s words. We did. Sala’s mother said to Sala in our presence that she had to marry, that it would be a shame on the family when she would not get children now as her fertility was already dwindling because of her age. That every good daughter needs to produce children. We saw Sala getting furious under a waver thin layer of calmness. The words that were exchanged among us that afternoon remain among ourselves but it was quite a confrontation. In Ghanaian style of course with a good soft ending and embraces and good promises and wishes for one another at her mother’s departure.
What made Sala so furious? On the very day that Sala was born her mother and father divorced. And neither mother nor father took the child, no, Sala was ‘given’ to an aunt. The aunt was strict though not unkind, but most of all she used Sala to work hard from age five onwards, without giving her the opportunity to go to school. A girl-child is what we call this phenomenon in Ghana. The girl is given away to a relative. The relative looks after the child but also makes use of her like a servant. Schooling is out, there is no time for this as such a girl-child is to work and work and work. Sala became a girl-child, a phenomenon that the government is trying to discourage by way of posters, stories and TV spots: “Let your Girl-child go to School” is the slogan now. The aunt of Sala did not (want to) hear of this. Sala has no schooling and yet she speaks excellent English and can count which is essential in shopping buying and selling. Sala is self-educated and through her extraordinary willpower and drive escaped the situation that many girl-children find themselves in. Being utilized rather than loved and esteemed they usually lack self-esteem, tend to get pregnant far too early in life and to the wrong (or absent) partner and suffer all their life from being used rather than ‘raised’. Sala is extra ordinary. I heard her life story. There was not much giving to her, she had to give a lot to others, included two years of total dedication and nursing care to her aunt after an accident.
This is when Sala asked to work with us. She was 22 years old. It was her first move towards emancipation and she passed with shining banners. How Sala ever could give so much to our children (and to us, Bob and Ineke) while she herself all during her life had received so little is a mystery which defies standard psychological insights. I sometimes think that indeed God likes to live inside the very poor, like the girl-child for example! To come back to the confrontation with her natural mother, who had never even taken the time to ask about the wellbeing of Sala and now suddenly and out of nowhere came to tell her daughter how to behave! At age of 29 and for selfish purposes!? Of course it made Sala furious!
Anyway, with the bakery training Sala is now one step further in her process of becoming an independent and emancipated woman.
Ah I look forward to tonight, to hear about her adventures in Techiman, help her if she needs.
And in ten days the association with PCC will not be over! She’ll be a grown up daughter who comes to visit every now and then just like we’ll take her children Amma, Joyce and Nana Yaw to visit her in Techiman. These days we all have a cell phones, thank God. She’ll be the consultant that we can call! I told her this morning that we will send for her if needed for a fee of 100 dollar an hour. We burst out in laughter. But why not. Greater things still will come out of that girl-child, young lady, caregiver, grand dame called Sala!
A coming and going
October 25th 2006
The dust, as a side product of renovating our house, is starting to stick permanently into my nose and ears, just like feelings around all those coming and going people at times settle in the eyes for some time.
First about the renovations of our house, by far not the most important subject to write about, but still. It was my idea. When Bob and I returned to Ghana in September our house appeared gloomy, dark and neglected. It smelled of fungus and wet old clothes. We had talked about it before but now I decided to just do something. Tiles on the floor instead of that blue old paint that once looked so gorgeous but now had come off in most places. Tiles in our little inner garden too.
In a hotel in Accra, the Shangri-La, I had seen beautiful tiles and so I asked Baffo during one of his many trips to Accra to eat a pizza at that hotel while looking at the floor. He did just that and acted with dazzling speed. Already this thursday Mr. Samson, the plumber and tile-layer, turned up with three tiles as samples, of which one was a silky whitish ceramic tile, an absolute winner. ‘That’s him, yes’!
Friday morning Ellen brought her mother Nelly and friend Tine back to the airport and I also asked Bob to take refuge in a hotel in Accra to be out of the way for the chaos to come. That friday, from early morning till late at night, the floors were broken up with hammers, axes and cutlasses. The old cement rubbish (I did not know) was thrown on the main road in order to reinforce its pitifully eroded condition. (The road is stronger now, but inaccessible because of the many hills of broken stones!)
Saturday morning Pieter came to have a look at how the first few tiles were being laid and said ‘It’s okay, going well’. I did not even dare to look myself. Nana Yaw and the two dogs are absolutely against any type of change around the house and so they were most deeply affected by the ordeal. Powerlessly they withdrew somewhere and moaned. Fortunately for me Saturday and Sunday were pleasantly busy at the hospital so that I did not have chance to be in the way during the renovations in the house. Two or three nights I slept on a tiny edge of a bed that was filled up to the ceiling with books, films and things that should not get lost, like a memory stick (that up till now is lost anyway) and then….came Monday night and all was quiet and the job was done and the house softly shined with brand-new tiles on its floor. Bob was allowed to come home again and yesterday-evening we celebrated it all by simply just looking at the beauty and feeling rich and contented. We looked at the same tiles that Baffo had looked at three weeks earlier while eating pizza at the Shangri-La Hotel!
It still feels as if we live in a hotel instead of in our own house and we tiptoe over the new floors and whisper to each other! Angel and Buckley have recovered from the onslaught of noise and dust and even Nana yaw can live with the change provided it is all over now! Good and well done to us, Samson and Baffo.
In the meantime some kind of dusty grid has invaded the region of the heart as well as our ears and nose. A feeling of turmoil from the comings and goings. Emilio, our dearest friend the Cuban doctor, had suddenly and silently left Nkoranza during the weekend and now our dearest friend Dr. Pando is left by himself. Emilio, where are you? You are so much missed! We are worried. Then also Sala announced her departure after having lived and worked with our community for over seven years. We knew she would go but now it is really going to happen and how we will miss her! This November coming Sala is starting a course in Techiman, which means that after next weekend she will not be with us anymore. Sala is almost thirty years old and has given her best years to us. New horizons open for her and she should not get stagnated here, that would be wrong. So we support her move but it means hard times for us all. We are silent and sad, but mainly also very grateful. Sala has done so much for the children of our community and for Bob and me. She feels especially the pain of departing with her child Nana Yaw who she loved into a stable and somewhat contented child. Autistic children, can ever be content? They suffer too much of anxiety but Sala often could reduce that pain for him. Over and over again, seven years. Friday is her farewell party. She cries a lot and so do I. And Bob. And Nana Yaw if he knew how to. Joyce and Amma feel it too.
And then our ‘weavers’, Bertje and Jet Douwes, have arrived! It is again as if they have been here for weeks, partaking of the life of the community, caregivers and children, and brimming with new weaving ideas!
Oh and Nelly and Tine have left. What a nice time they enjoyed and how much they have done for our children! Just only contemplate this image, how they were sitting day after day in the summer hut of the sheltered workshop, with a sewing machine and piles of clothes to be repaired. Joking with the kids.
When all the tears and holes were repaired and all the lost buttons sewn on again they discovered a pile of extra large blue overalls in Ellen’s old container. One way or another they were able to change them all and make them fit our guys, from the smallest, Kwah Johnsons, to the largest , Kumih. Now they all walk around in perfectly fitting designer’s overalls. Nice job, thank you sweet ladies, and see you again soon, we hope! A coming and going. That’s why I’m staring at those tiles so often, they stay there, for sure they will not go away!
The dream temple, a church to sleep in
October 17 2006
Not many children homes will have a church where you are allowed, no, supposed to sleep in. We do! Cuddle room is the official name of the place and the cuddling is so sweet
that the children almost immediately doze off.
Between one and three in the afternoon you can see them laying there, relaxing, dreaming, even snoring! And the new wing of the cuddle room looks like a church that’s why I call it the dream temple.
That’s what it looks like, from outside, solemn like a cathedral. No one would suspect that inside there are thirty to forty children sleeping.
Except, of course, the chicken in the picture. That’s why she tiptoes lightly on her clumsy chicken feet…
Something in the air
October 10, 2006
There is a certain cheerful and purposeful energy in the air. Almost as if Christmas is around the corner, but it is clearly too early for that even though we start preparing for Christmas well over a month ahead of time!
I sit in front of my house and there they come, marching, James ahead and five large big guys marching behind him, boots, shovels and a hasty hallo. Kumih, Charles, Latiff, Kwame, Johnson. Here there’s ‘things going on’, a plan is unfolding, preparations are being made!
And look there goes the girls, cheering at a big truck arriving filled to the top with firewood and offloading it with a waterfall of noise and cracking wood right in front of their feet. ‘Hurrah!’ they shout and they laugh louder and longer than usual.
firewood
Here goes Ellen off to Sunyani with Morocco, Baffo and a large car. Where did you go to? Oh we went to find old glass, the car is loaded with it. Baffo went to some of his friends who sell glass and we got all the miss-cuts all the broken glass and loads of old bottles from them.
Bottles
This is added to the 150 bottles that are laying in a special glass store for later.
What is this later?
Of course these are preparations for the big event, the workshop in making glass beads out of recycled glass that a certain glass-master, Mr. Cedi from Krobo, is coming to conduct in the month of November.
Already Ellen has taken the participants of the course, a busload filled with youngsters from the sheltered workshop, to Mr. Cedi’s atelier in Krobo to witness and get a taste of the process of bead making. Step by step preparations are now being made here at home, so that when the ‘Master’ comes there is no more need to run around for items that should have been collected and prepared before, such as old glass, firewood, grinding stones, boots and gloves, a special workplace and a place to construct the two ovens. These ovens are going to be very hot and need to be made of strong red laterite-soil, the way you find it in the typical African termite hills. The structures are near to ready.
The next expedition will be for the ‘termite-soil’. And then the welders have to make handmade steel containers and ‘pounders’ to grind the glass. And then we need to buy protecting glasses for every course-participant.
Gloves
And then the colors to mix with the recycled glass. And then…and then…and then.
Knowing Ellen and her crew all will be ready in time and all will be a great success.
There is something good in the air as if we celebrate Christmas twice this year!
‘To be a man is not easy’
September 29th 2006
Do you remember a column of a few months ago (April 11 2006) where ‘Kojo from Chicago’ was introduced?
For over a year I have been gathering stories, here in Nkoranza, of people from Ghana who attempted to leave their country for greener pastures, always for economical reasons. Many succeeded and some didn’t but the stories were always intense and sometimes heart rendering. Once the stories started to unfold you kept listening, captivated from beginning to end. Twelve of these stories have now been published. I am very happy and proud of this book and grateful to the publisher. Most of all I am happy for the people that I have interviewed because I promised them that their stories would once be published in a book…without really having an idea of how to do that! In short I am on cloud seven! Thanks to the friendly and interested Publishing House ‘Rozenberg Publishers’ in Amsterdam, and especially Mr. Auke who guided me and made the layout of the book.
Interested? You can get a preview of the book by going to www.rozenbergps.com . At the homepage fill in my name, ‘Bosman’, in the book-search box. And there you are, the preview enrolls before your eyes, just like I copied it from the publisher’s website for you here below. You can also order it on line if you are interested. There are already two-hundred book-orders so the book is going to be printed and will be on the market soon.
Ineke.
Ineke Bosman
To be a man is not easy
Stories from Ghanaian emigrants
 |
Rozenberg |
In 1992 Ineke Bosman founded the PCC-Hand in Hand Community with three other Ghanaians. This is an inter-religious community that gives shelter and rehabilitation to abandoned and mentally handicapped children in Ghana.
"I was moved by the plight of the mentally handicapped children who were abandoned and had nowhere to stay, literally nowhere. By 1992 I started to take some in my home and later this grew into the community as it is now, in the year 2006: a large and beautiful village in Nkoranza where 41 mentally handicapped children find a home and where 15 other youngsters find a new life by learning skills in the sheltered workshop".
In the past few years Ineke Bosman has written down stories of Ghanaian emigrants. Looking for a way out of poverty, Libye, Europe, calls to them. Some are stories of success, but there are also stories of failures.
Rozenberg would like to publish these stories. However, we have decided to give you the chance to read some of the stories first. If after reading you would like to buy the book, you can pre-order a copy using the order form on this website. When we have a sufficient amount of orders, we will start printing the book and you will receive notification of the delivery date.
Chapter 3: The Good Samaritan
Chapter 12: Kojo Appiah Kubih
Bestel/Order
Website: http://www.operationhandinhand.nl/
The children of the Rainbow School
September 24
It was a sunny day and Bob and I looked forward to visit the children of the ‘Rainbow-School’. Another reason was that we were going to visit a gorgeous piece of Holland which I got to know and love so very well from the time that I was a student, Reeuwijk with its wonderful water-land. Sitting on a bench in the sun enjoying a snack in front of the station we suddenly realized that we were to meet at the back of the station. Anyway that happens to us more often and usually ends well and yes! Ab, previous tropical doctor in Ghana, found us and drove us straight to the primary school where the children were already waiting for us. Ab’s wife, Jeanette, had arranged this day together with the board of the school and the reason was to greet and thank the children for all that they had done for the children of the Hand in Hand Community in Ghana. That was and still is a lot! Among others the kids had done a sponsored walk, better called sponsored run, and of all days in during the heatwave in Holland in July. We thought it so extra ordinary that small children would do things like that and at that early age already think of the plight of those children that are less fortunate than themselves. We could not wait to see them. And there they were, all together, in two groups, on the floor, faces curious and friendly, lifted up towards us. Beautiful, gorgeous like flowers in a garden.
First a small introduction and then time for many questions. Those questions! Moving and funny all the same. First question, fingers enthusiastically raised and waving in the air. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I? Sixty-two, a little old but not so much!’ “Ooooffff! And your husband?’ ‘Seventy-five, somewhat old but also not so much, right?’ ‘Noooooo, seventy-five!? Ooooffff! Woow!’
‘Does any of you know what the word ‘handicap’ means?’ ‘Yes, Missus, I once fell off a cart. It hurt’ ‘Madam, do you know that we have a boy with a handicap in our school? But he doesn’t have to be alone, he is in my group’ (pointing to the boy who thank God enthusiastically waves at everybody) ‘How nice for all of you, so you are one large family like the hand in hand family in Ghana that you are helping!’ ‘What are you going to do with all our money?’ I started to tell the kids what is needed to keep a large family running but they only became enthusiastic when I mentioned that on top of the money needed for food, clothes, schoolbooks and all that we might organize a picnic for the children, because they had collected so much money with all their activities. We would get two buses and get all the children aboard with food and lemonade and even our drums and musical instruments and drive to a nice place and eat drink and make a very nice party. They loved that, were proud that they had sponsored such a future outing. ‘Madam, how many of your children are boys and how many are girls?’ When I said that there were fewer girls than boys we heard a loud ‘Hurrah’ and clapping from the boys. The girls clearly looked down on this boyish enthusiasm, ‘childish’ you could hear them think....
‘Doctor, what is your dream?’
How on earth does a little girl think of a question like that? Would I have ever dared to ask such a question when I was that age? Would it even ever enter my mind at the age of 5 or 6? She did and that girl really moved me with her empathy and social feeling.
‘I have no more dream because my dream has been fulfilled and then it is no longer a dream. Then it is real. Now we really have a community where many abandoned children find a home. Bob and I are happy people!
Then came the larger than life cheque which was handed over solemnly and accepted gratefully and then there was a little time left for the daring ones to talk English with that very nice very old man Mister Bob who was from America and lived in Africa.
‘Sir, do you like your children?’ ‘Yes, I have forty one children and I adore them all.’ ‘What does that mean: ‘adore’, Mister Bob?
We were right. The day started well and ended even better. Sun, Dutch landscapes, sweet people and awesome and exceptionally social children which we will never forget.
Thank you, Rainbow-children!
More Fundraising in England
13 Sept:
Hi Ineke and bob I have added your link to my website as i am raising funds for you at my book launch - if you have any friends or volunteers in UK, send them to www.maxmilligan.com and tell them to come to the lecture.
You can put a note on your website too if you like!
Hoping to raise you between $500 - $1,000
love Max
A Musical and a Sponsored Walk
12 Sept 2006
Day by day we see the network of friends of our children increasing. Take Naomi for example. Now a student in England she last year visited our project for a few days. Naomi was impressed with our work and she and her mother, a key figure in the world of autism in the UK, decided to raise funds in England to promote our work here in Ghana. All kind of fundraising takes place such as a sponsored walk this very month! At the end of the year a benefit theatre-performance, a musical, of which the script has been written by Naomi herself, will be performed for the benefit of our community! How to call all this? Awesome! It is awesome. Thank you, kind people!
Here, on the right, is Naomi:
And here is what she recently wrote us:
THE TROJAN MUSICAL!!
I visited Hand in Hand on a two month trip travelling and working in Ghana last summer. I was really inspired by the community there and was determined to raise some money for the valuable work being done once back home in England. It has been a very busy year at university for me but I have finally put my plans into action! Together with a friend on my Classics course, Danielle Trigg, I have written a play which will be put on at my university in early December. All tickets sales together with a raffle and the proceeds of a mince pie and mulled wine stall (traditional English Christmas fare!), will go to the Hand in Hand community.
The play is based on a lost Greek epic poem called the Little Iliad which was once part of the ‘epic cycle’ that told the story of the Trojan War. It covers events from the death of the great warrior Achilles, (in our play a reggae singing Rastafarian!) to the destruction of Troy by the Greeks and the escape of the Roman hero Aeneas (whose chances in our play are almost thwarted by the disappearance of the family hamster!). There will be action, music, dance and laughter and all will be very much in the festive spirit, although some of the jokes are pretty specific so we hope lots of Classics students will turn up to watch! A couple of lecturers have agreed to play small parts which will provide added humour and it should be a really great event for the Classics department at Cambridge as well as for the children at Hand in Hand!
In January of 2007 Danielle and I will be visiting with news of the play and hopefully to present a substantial cheque! Also coming out to Ghana will be my mother, Susan Hatton, who works with disabled and Autistic children in England for a large charity called autism.westmidlands. She is doing a separate fund raising event this September, a sponsored 15mile walk in our local Malvern Hills, along with a young man, Alex Calver, from one of the special schools she works in. The proceeds from this sponsored walk will be split between Alex’s school, Coddington Court, and Hand in Hand. Several other staff from autism.westmidlands are taking part in the walk and a substantial amount looks set to be made!
Naomi Hatton, England.
Yaw, the errand boy
Sept 4, 06
These days Yaw Balloon has a busy life. You could almost say that this kid has become the central figure of the Hand in Hand Community, at least as far as errands and purchases are concerned. Yes our Yaw, who used to hang out somewhere by himself, throwing kisses at you when he thinks you see him and who, if he thinks you don’t see him, sneaks into your house to stuff his pockets with biscuits, toffees, bread and other delicacies, this Yaw who would rage with anger if you caught him stealing, who once in great fury threw a garden chair on the roof when we took his stolen loot away, that sweet Yaw has now become a man with a mission! And he is sweet, just don’t interfere with his daily rounds in unguarded houses on unguarded moments, collecting for his basic needs and most of all don’t take the stolen ware away from him again for he finds that grossly unfair!
Anyway now Yaw has a daily task where his gathering-spirit, his great energy and his generosity all come to good use: to him the honor to be the errand boy of the community. Each morning at ten o’clock he leaves the premises to go ‘to town’ with Kwaku, a backpack stripped over his shoulders with a special zip for money and another one for pen and shopping list.
However the preparations for his daily shopping rounds start much earlier than that. Before breakfast in the morning, when many of us are busy walking, jogging, getting physiotherapy or doing gymnastics, you can see Yaw Balloon doing his workout on the home trainer. Shoulders, hamstrings, calf muscles and a good appetite, that’s what it’s all about with him.
Every morning Yaw Balloon works on his condition and his appetite.
After breakfast he usually disappears from the scene. Maybe he joins the football group or another game but more likely he is sitting somewhere quietly to prepare himself for the important task to come.
Getting to nine thirty Kwaku puts the backpack on his back and full of holy enthusiasm Yaw starts going around from one person to the other, booklet and pen in his hand. Words are not needed, Yaw’s ‘eh,eh,eh’ and his inviting laughter are enough to get you interested. Is there something you need from town? Just write it down. Dont forget the money. Cash please, no change available. You’ll be surprised at all the things that I can buy. I know where to find fresh lettuce and pineapples, pens and pencils, staples, rubber bands and paperclips, I know the postman at the post office and can make you photocopies if you want. If you need to cash a cheque I can do that too for all the bank managers in town are my friends. And of course I know the best places for cookies and ice-cream and all that stuff. Just tell me! Most of our caregivers, volunteers and visitors have things to buy or mail to collect in town and gratefully ask Yaw our errand-boy to do this for them.
It’s time to go, anything you need?
At ten they take off, Kwaku and Yaw, with a still empty bag and a purse still filled with money. It’s really Yaw who seems to lead his caregiver Kwaku for he walks so fast that Kwaku has to almost run to keep up with him. What else can you expect after the home training sessions in the morning and knowing the importance of his mission. Plus there are other incentives that make it important for Kwaku not to lose sight of Yaw. Most of the time all goes well and Yaw comes home with all his errands and hands them over with tremendous pride to those who asked for them. There is no question that he would think they are his own and even biscuits and toffees are generously dealt out to the rightful owner. Which in turn earns him all round compliments and applause.
One time it went wrong. That day Yaw walked away so tremendously fast and once at the market cut corners right and left so expertly that Kwaku lost sight of him.
That day they returned home late, Yaw with a amiable display of kisses and an empty bag and Kwaku with sweat running from his forehead and his tee-shirt drenched in sweat. He had raced behind Yaw but before he had caught up with him Yaw had, according to the surrounding people who actually had enjoyed the scene, grabbed an egg and stuffed it in his mouth, whisked away a pile of cookies from another table and started on a bunch of bananas.
How to discipline a child when the village and our own people were fainting with laughter? Yaw was told that this was NOT the way to do it in the future. Yaw’s hand safely secured in that of Kwaku they went back to pay for the damage and run the errands as planned.
Those hands of Yaw and Kwaku will be solidly hand-in-hand for some time to come we guess, especially outside the gates of the Hand in Hand Community.
Room-mates
28-8-06
Last Monday was the ‘day of changes’. Mary made it known that she was leaving so Aaron needed a new caregiver. Sophia already announced some time ago that she will leave in the future, which is going to leave Ayuba, Marielle and Afia without a ‘mother’. Kofi Asare was relieved of his duty to look after Boadu. Three new caregivers were hired: the twin Grace and Mercy who take over the household of Sophia plus Aaron and Amoah who will be the new caregiver of Boadu and Quinten. A lot of reshuffling- decisions followed of course by the briefing sessions with the people involved.
‘Kofi, sit down, we want to talk with you.” Kofi sits down. (In Ghana nothing is discussed while standing, or in a ‘by the way’ manner.) “Kofi, Emanuel and I want to ask you if your toe is better?” “Yes, better small”, he waits cautiously, knowing that something else is cooking. “Thank God, Kofi. Then you can go back to your own house today. But there is more. Boadu is not coming back to you because you have looked after him long enough.”
Wow, at once, after hearing this news, Kofi bursts out in shouts of joy. Is he relieved!
“Yes, I cared for Boadu too long, for ten years, for more than ten years. So it’s enough. I did enough and now I will rest! I will take a long rest!”
He is really ecstatic and dances around the room on his one foot. “I did enough, I did well, I will take a long rest now!”
It is clear that we made the right decision, both for Boadu and for Kofi. In the meantime Kofi keeps repeating the good news: “Boadu is going, I did good for him, I did enough!”
“Yes you did an excellent job. Thank you on behalf of Boadu, Kofi. Now we have more to ask you. Now that Boadu is going what would you like? Would you want to sleep alone? Like Kojo Evans? Or would you like Ayuba to join you?”
“Ayuba, Ayuba,Ayuba!!” Was he already very much relieved because of the removal of Boadu who obviously had become a burden to him, now he was positively in heaven by the arrival of Ayuba!
“For one week only, Kofi, like a summer vacation camp, okay? He will come and stay with you for one week.”
Kofi danced around the premises of the community, telling each and everyone who had or had not heard the good news yet. Then he started cleaning his house again and made Boadu’s bed afresh to make place for Ayuba. In no time, that same evening, they were together, the huge fourteen year old teenager Ayuba and the now accomplished village elder Kofi Asare.
Non stop conversations!
Ayuba and Kofi: roommates, becoming bosom friends!
They talked all through the night, they said, they had so many conversations to make, so many jokes to tell! The next night the same, and the next, and the next!
We have not yet decided how many days there are in a week for Kofi and Ayuba. Our calculations might defy those of any calendar!
Kofi and his toe
19 august
Already for over a year Kofi Asare has had a sore between his fourth and little toe that seemed to eat deeper and deeper, despite all kinds of treatment, and eventually I decided to show it to Dr. Harry Wegdam, the visiting consultant surgeon from Techiman.
That toe is already self- amputated, needs removal, he said to all of us, obviously amazed that I had not done this little job long before.
I rather don’t, is like a son, I said.
Of course! Tomorrow, okay?
Sweet old Harry! So last Tuesday Kofi’s toe was officially amputated with all the necessary ceremony involved.
Today was a second big day for Kofi Asare, after having had his toe amputated. This morning he went, escorted by a large delegation of caregivers and sympathizers, to the Operation Room of our hospital to get his stitches removed.
He climbed unaided (and not very sterile!) on the operation table, almost rolled off on the other side and then laid still for what was to follow, knowing full well that all during this morning he would be the center of attention. He wore his usual broad smile and when asked if he knew what was going to happen he said: ‘Yes’, ‘What, then?’, ‘The ropes’, ‘The ropes what?’, ‘You cut the ropes.’ ‘Yes, true, one stitch is out already. Did you feel it?’ ‘A rope?’ ‘Yes a rope, did you feel it?’ ’No.’ ‘Wow, great, only a few more.’
One by one the stitches came out and the wound really looked good. Everyone in the room clapped for Kofi Asare and gave him praises so he was more than pleased with himself and the situation.
‘Kofi, how many toes do you have now? Here on this foot?’ ‘Five.’ ‘No, what happened to your little toe?’ ‘Dr. Wegdam cut it’ ‘So five toes and one of them cut, how many left?’ ‘Five.’ Kofi laughed out loud thinking we were having fun and it was time to join in and take the lead. After all Kofi is the certified clown of the community! ‘Do you have all your toes?’ ‘No, Dr. Harry Wegdam cut one.’ ‘Okay, so one toe less, how does it feel?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘No problem?’ ‘No!’ ‘Can you walk?’ ‘Yes!’
‘Can you walk’, what a question! Kofi has been walking around for days already. After the surgery ten days ago he was ‘declared patient’ and has been laying on the large bamboo couch in our front room, leg on a chair and the TV blaring day and night. Paradise, but Kofi got soon bored with his paradise and started to walk around. Kofi, don’t walk! Kofi takes nothing serious and walked only faster. Eventually he went back in the mornings to the sheltered workshop where he loves working, and in retrospect, finding him there, I agreed.
So, he has been walking as if nothing happened, the only thing different is that he slept in our front room with the ‘ropes’ in his toe, did not have to look after Boadu and was officially declared ‘sick’, which one can imagine gives many advantages of which a few were mentioned before. The endless stream of caregivers, visitors and other children coming to express their solicitude each day was another distinct advantage. Kofi enjoyed his ‘patient-hood’ like a king! X picture Kofi asare
But now the stitches have been removed and there is one toe less and what else shall we say about it? He walks better than before and seems not to have any pain. He takes it well, the loss of a toe, so why not declare him ‘healed’ and let him return to his own room with his own Boadu? ‘Kofi, you want to go back?’ ‘No’. ‘Oh Why?’ ‘Nothing! No.’
We suspect that of late Kofi is a little weary of the company of Boadu.
Ema, Ellen and I had been debating already before the surgery if it would not be better to let another caregiver look after the depressed Boadu and let Ayuba sleep with Kofi instead. Ayuba is big and funny, like Asare, and strong. And… they are friends already, Ayuba and Asare.
But Ayuba, said another observer after the meeting, but Ayuba needs closer supervision than to live almost independent with Asare! We were all thinking and are still thinking.
Then the operation was done and Kofi moved to our house to recuperate. So now Emanuel himself looks after Boadu and with immediate good results; he at least allows some eye-contact again.
So now… back to base? Why not wait and see what we come up with next Monday after interviewing more aspirant caregivers. Ellen will be back. Baffo and Bob will be there, we will have more brains to storm from! Some better arrangement is in the pipeline for Kofi and Boadu and Ayuba, we just have to give the solution time. It will come, hopefully, maybe. In the meantime:
‘Kofi you can be sick for three more days! You like it?’
Kofi dances around the house, happy. And Bob and I have 72 more hours of blaring TV in the other room. Big deal! Look at what real parents sometimes have to swallow from their kids!
Don’t worry about Mabel
8-8-06
If anybody is still worried about Mabel then I can reassure you that she is all right. She is happy, sociable, playful and giggly like any ordinary teenager. Especially in the pool she likes to make fun with Emanuel or with Piedu or Johnson. She loves to flirt a little and gives some of her nicest food away to the new boys that she befriended. When you ask her ‘Mabel where is your house’ she points to the house where she lives with her new mother, caregiver Veronica. No sad let alone depressed face after the death of her mother. Her life is exciting. The school vacation has started and she is one of the few that are lucky enough to help Ellen in the sheltered workshop. On her first day today she has already learned to get the tiny beads onto the needle. It makes you crosseyed and giggly! Look at that face! Don’t worry about Mabel!
Promises
29 July 06
This is the third time that Angel did not come home overnight. First time was three years ago. Against all hope she was found the next afternoon far away in the fields with a giant steel trap around her leg and it took her over a week to recover. She still limps from the injury to her leg. Second time was last year. She was found the next morning at the other bank of the river, again with an ugly trap around her leg. Carried home and it took her two days to overcome the trauma. Third time yesterday night, eight pm. Where is the dog? Nowhere. We left the door open, slept uneasily and went to check every hour or so but no Angel. For the third time Bob and I were very upset. I start praying, o please God, please god let her live. Then: if she lives I will be nicer to the patients to the hospital. I’ll smile at all of them. I’ll go to the church, Sunday. More desperate: I will go to the church Sunday and sing. I’ll do anything, I’ll be a nicer person! Silence, darkness, fear. No Angel. I’ll do something special! I’ll learn how to cook. I’ll enroll in the Israeli army and fight Hezbollah. I’ll stop spoiling PaaYaw, please God make Angel come back!
It’s morning five am. Kwaku and Sala go on a search party, I sit outside. We say to each other she has survived this twice so why not now? We think different from what we say to each other and we both know that. We see all the doom scenarios. Then 6.30 am, a triumphant Sala and Kwaku return with a muddy dog in their arms. Here she is!
Oh Angel! Oh thank you both, oh thank you God!
I rub Angel dry with a towel and put her in the best chair, she sleeps at once. This time the wound of the trap is minor.
Angel
Its Saturday, I’m going for rounds and will smile to all the patients today. That’s easy.
Tomorrow I’ll go to church. I will sing somehow. If PaaYaw can sing, so can I! I’ll cook an omelet, is that enough?
But enrolling in the army of Israel, will they take me? And if they take me should we move to Israel? And if we move to Israel we’ll miss our kids too much. Have to talk to a theologian. Or a lawyer. About promises and how to wriggle out of them!
Another way to get a family
19 July 06
Joke Wittekoek, Abena Joan for her friends here in Ghana, is one of our goodwill ambassadors in The Netherlands. Joan is a banker and Bob and I first met her in a small bank in Voorschoten, the town where my parents lived. In 1999 my father passed away and left some money. I’d never had such a thing as money in the bank and the prospect of receiving an inheritage made me excited. I never had to bother about money but when it came it was very welcome! ‘Thanks Dad for living so modestly and saving money for your four kids’. So, what to do with such sudden richness? We decided to ask the bank manager and that’s how we met Joan, she was at the other side of the counter, ‘What can I do for you?’ Joan advised me about stocks and mutual funds but more than that she became close and very interested in our young community in Ghana. I remember well that one or two months after the initial encounter she called us and asked: ‘Would you mind if I come visit you in Ghana?’ No, not at all, great, when? Abena came and she came with a really enormous trunk packed with presents for the children, very thoughtful and special gifts. For example Joan had found a woman in Holland with a small scale embroidery-business and so she brought in her trunk a towel for each and every kid and caregiver in the community with their own name embroidered on it. Correct spelling and all. Those weeks with her in Ghana were party-weeks. Since then she has been back many times, does fundraising for us in The Netherlands and interviews our potential volunteers.
That’s her, Joke, Abena Joan.
Joke is active in her church in Voorburg and from the church she got to know another children project in Bangladesh, the Dacca Home, a home where street children are given shelter, schooling or vocational training.
Joke is driven by the spirit of, let me use a protestant term for it, stewardship. I think I’ve got that term right in connection with her. Stewardship and Abena Joan are a close fit. I remember when she first went to Bangladesh to visit this home. It was 3 years ago. Abena Joan returned shaken and stories were overflowing. A certain emotionally needy girl got ‘under her skin’ and the whole of the situation there seemed to burn her with desire for a deeper engagement. A year later she returned, less first impressions to deal with, more ‘stewardship’. Again she went and again. But during May of this year it was a changed Joan that departed for Bangladesh. Not tentatively finding out where to assist, no, something had deeply gone astray with the overseas management of the home and she went to find out how these changes affected the local situation. Jaw set with determination. Short emails, an sms or two, no time she said afterwards.
I bet you Abena had not time for long letters, in those four weeks she had made sweeping decisions which will change the rest of her life and that of 40-50 children. The vacuum in the international management had the expected horrible repercussions in the lives of all this young boys and girls who had no other life and future than that offered by the home. The home to be closed, how about them?!
In short Abena Joan now is the family head of a family of over forty children and manager of an extensive local staff in Bangladesh! Jaw set and eyes shining she had seen the devastating situation in which the kids would end up and taken responsibility for all of them.
Since her return in June a foundation has been created, a website made, sponsorships for the children formalized while jiggling and coping with all kind of crisis situations.
Joan got herself a family!
Eti, our child in Bangladesh!
We, Bob and I, have sponsored one of Joan’s children and are very happy that now our family is covering four out of six continents, Africa, Europe, America and Asia. (We are considering adopting a kangaroo in Australia and a pinguin in Antarctica to make our family cmplete)
Anyway, this is Abena Joan's website, www.jwsupport.nl .It deserves more than a casual glance.
Congrats, Abena Joan!
Volunteers, a new business-enterprise?
July 14th 2006.
You decide to ‘do something else’ for a change and you inquire about volunteer-work overseas. You google yourself to the volunteer sites on the internet and you find quite a number of possibilities. Volunteersoverseas. Aid Ghana. Kidsworld. Ghana-Volunteers. Hundreds of organizations which ask for volunteers, maybe thousands. You see that Ghana is ‘in’ and you notice that there are more volunteers of your country working there. You like the idea that you can exchange experiences with other volunteers and Ghana seems a safe country. Great. Ghana it shall be!
You say to yourself, ‘today, now’, and you click on a voluntary organization in Ghana, CID, that’s the one you pick. It could have been any other one as well. You fill in a form on line and your heart starts beating faster, you have begun and now let it unfold…
You receive an email from that organization and thank God it is in Dutch, your English is not so fluent yet. Nice, friendly, yes there is space during the time that you indicate, there are even several different places to work.
The email exchange between you and the CID representative goes something like this:
-You can chose between teaching street children, computer-school, maybe you want to work in a guinea-worm project?-
But in the meantime you have further decided to work with mentally handicapped children in Ghana for you believe that could really be your field. You have seen a website of a community in Ghana where abandoned mentally handicapped children live together with Ghanaians and a few expatriates. There is a sheltered workshop as well and they make nice things. That’s your choice.
You mail back to the nice Dutch lady from CID.
–I would like to work with mentally handicapped children, the Hand in Hand Community at Nkoranza. -
Oh my God, it appears from her mail that CID also represents that group, how lucky for me! But...
-However, right now we really need volunteers who teach in Tamale and so if I were you I would do that for that’s where the need is at the moment.-
-Hmmm yes but I believe that I would fit in better with the mentally handicapped project in Nkoranza, that seems so much the perfect fit for me.-
-Oh what a pity for that place is full. Very full. Even for the two next years it is full, no place for volunteers there. So come to Tamale!-
-Okay, then I’ll come to Tamale.-.
It really happened! This volunteer went to Tamale and when her voluntary work was completed, on her way back to The Netherlands, she decided to visit us. ‘Such a pity that you were full, I would have really liked to work here, you know’. ‘Full? What do you mean? Ellen asked. The lady told her story and how CID according to them also represented us and how they her to come to Tamale because we are full and even don’t need volunteers over the next two years! Ellen comes to me, ‘Do you know anything about this?’ ‘No, what! How bizarre! CID, who are they?’
Ellen wrote to Joke Wittekoek, who helps to orientate our volunteers in Holland. Do you know about this? No, God! Not trying to steal volunteers! Is that too becoming a business enterprise? Joke wrote to the organization over a month ago. No response!
So, apparently that is exactly the case!
Now we need to tell everybody who, shorter or longer, wants to stay and work with us that they therefore contact us directly. Apparently there is fraud going on with some of these organizations. Contact our volunteer coordinator at ellenseldenthuis@yahoo.co.uk.
Mabel has arrived
July 5, 2006
Yesterday Mabel arrived. She wore her red checkered school dress, ready for ‘her’ school as usual. Everything needed to be as much as possible ‘as usual’ though circumstances were of course most unusual. Mabel had become an orphan at the age of 14, her mother, cook at the special school, had died, her father already was dead since long and there were no grand-parents or other siblings. By the way Mabel had lost weight and in her checkered school uniform she looked more like a twelve year old. Emanuel went round to introduce her here and there (mostly she knows all of our kids as she attends the same school) and she was brought to Veronica who will now be her new mother. She dropped her luggage near her bed, a bucket and some bags, looked without interest at her future brothers Lazarus and Wumpini and proceeded to go to school, a safe and well-known place to be for her.
Mabel finds a new home
If in the morning she looked somewhat lost and scared, in the afternoon we saw some of the good old jolly Mabel again! In the pool she loosened up and became real enthusiastic, almost wild with exuberance. Together with Ema she shouted a song, full steam ahead, and laughed out loud each time when Ema repeated word after word what she sung-shouted. What a release and what a relief. Bre-ead! Breeaaa-edddd! Colaaa! Cookaacoooola! From there it was easy sailing, Mabel has found her new home and the transition won’t be too difficult. Thank God.
Aline our good old buddy left and four new volunteers came, two physiotherapist and two human kinetics technicians. Together they will stay for six month and help our individual children as well as transfer knowledge to the caregivers and start a course in appliance-making (wheelchairs, crutches, etc) in town, in the physically disabled workshop. The first 10 days were quickly gone with searching, brainstorming, planning and meetings, some frustrations of course arose (they always do) like people who don’t show up at meetings, miscommunications and the like, but I believe that today was somehow a turning point and that all will become more and more concrete and productive from now on. Congrats and we expect great help from those four! Welcome Marije, Annemieke, Jasper en Marilyn.
For sure there is never a dull moment here! Tomorrow a lady will visit us who wants to reproduce our concept of care for abandoned mentally handicapped children in the North of Ghana, in Upper West. Now that is good news!
Talk to you next week. Ineke.
Requiem for Mabel?s mother
26-6-06
It was the weekend before this one that I met Mabel?s mother in the hospital. Weak and feverish she was laying on her small sheet over the plastic mattress-cover and smiled at me. Her face went all out to me, opening in kindness but also in fear. ?Do you remember me? Mabel?s mother?? Groggy, not the voice I remembered. The way she looked too, not the way I remembered her, a stout middle aged woman with a gentle face. Still gentle but not so stout anymore. ?Do you remember me? Mabel, do you remember Mabel??
Well of course, I forget much but never those I love, and Mabel is a girl I have loved from the day I set eyes on her.
It was in 1997, the year that our Shalom Special School took a start, that I first met Mabel. She was maybe the first pupil, Down?s syndrome , five year old, as stubborn and as charming as they come! I remember that in the early days of the school we had hired two cooks, of which one was Mabel?s mother. ?Why do you want to work at Shalom School?? ?Because my daughter wants to go to school there, that?s why. So I can be near to her and yet earn money for us to live?.
They were hired and work as cooks at Shalom Special School till this very day. It was touching and it was fun to see them together, Mabel and the mother. Together they were great dancers, if unobserved, and Mabel?s mother was a born story teller while Mabel, leaning against her mother, was the perfect story-child. Magic, those two together. As the school is a boarding school they ate, slept and lived together at the school premises and during the vacations you would miss them. Where?s Mabel? Oh, of course, vacation?
Now Mabel is fourteen, a gentle and somewhat stout lady like the mother, and the mother is gravely ill.
I attended to her and saw her four times that weekend. She was in a bad condition. Wherever we would set an infusion she would develop inflammation of the blood vessels so eventually we had to reverse to tablets and capsules instead of intravenous medication.
As I only do weekend duties in the hospital I had pushed her to the back of my mind by Monday with the vague idea of going to see her some time in the week. I didn?t and Saturday when I started another weekend?s duty she was not there so I assumed that all was well.
Only Sunday-night, yesterday, that the other cook came running to me at the hospital and cried and asked ?what do we do with Mabel now?? What, why. Don?t you know? Haven?t you heard? The mother died. It was Thursday that she died. Mabel has been crying all the time, she can?t eat she can?t move, and we are all crying. Oh God, so sorry to hear that, so bad. Husband? No husband, dead since long. Mother? No, nobody, no other children. Oh my God. Please let Mabel live at PCC! Oh, of course, yes. I will ask the others. Home I went. Trying to remember what the mother looked like exactly and asking the other doctors why she died and experiencing once more how fickle life is. How terribly short and fickle, especially for the poor among us.
I guess we?ll get Mabel at the Hand in Hand Community, this morning over breakfast we discussed it with Ellen and Bob. She?ll be a treasure to have here in our midst, but at what a price and will Mabel ever overcome the loss of her mother? The magic couple, together day and night during all of Mabel?s fourteen years? In my mind an icon of love. Yet, mother of Mabel, I don?t still know your name. Like so many nameless heroes.
Bellyflop.
16-6-06
Our trip occasionally threatened to turn into a belly-flop because of minor but annoying sicknesses but still we enjoyed and now we are back home. Last week Sunday, packed with bags and suitcases, we entered through our own -unique for Ghana- swinging doors again. We have doors which swing in two directions, just like the saloon doors in the cowboy-films. (Because of Nana Yaw who lives inside the house and doesn't want to be locked in at night the doors should always be open. Because of the goats waiting in the evening on our veranda and ready to sleep inside the doors should not be pushed open too easily. Because of our dogs who want to move freely in and out pushing the door should not be too difficult either.) Succeeded, we got multi-purpose open doors that are goat proof.
We had fled those open doors for a few weeks just to enjoy being away from a place where problems can walk in day and night. So we relaxed and refreshed away from it all. And now we were so happy to find our home again! With thanks to Mr. Tiggelmans who rents us each year that awesome apartment looking out over the Scheveningen beach. And with thanks to Israel and of course dear friends and family.
Home!
And who is relaxing in front of our door? Moses. Moses with the shiny eyes. Arriving home, in an email exchange, I came to hear more details about Moses' story.
Moses!
Unfortunately enough we don't often hear the story of what our children have gone through before they arrive at our community. They have been found somewhere, brought to an orphanage by someone and from there, if they were lucky, they come to us. Mostly the details of the early lives of our children are completely unknown. Mother, family, where and when they are born, where deserted and found, why...But now I received this email which provided amazing details on Moses' early life. From Marjolijn Balthussen, physiotherapist, who works with among others the northern Bawku hospital. This is what she writes:
'...Yes, it was in January 2004, a policeman saw something moving in a little black plastic bag. And to his surprise he discovered it was a baby, still alive. Has sent it to the hospital. If you see the very first pictures of him, not bigger than my hand, nobody had any hope that he could survive. And yet he did. My sister was visiting from Holland and during a visit to the maternity ward it was really by chance that I met Moses. Adoption was considered but then stories circulated that the mother had found out that her child was still alive and tried to follow what was happening to her baby. He has lived his first year in the hospital. After we returned from leave to Holland in 2005 we heard that he had been transferred to the orphanage in Tamale. He still occupies a very special place in my heart and if there is anything I can do, let me know! We hope he will be well. Love, Marjolein.
From: "Ineke Bosman and Bob Maram 2" <inekebosman@gmail.com>
To: "Marjolein Baltussen" <marjoleinbaltussen@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Bawku Orthopaedic and Physiotherapy project
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 02:50:17 -0600
Has Moses been found at Bawku hospital? When? Tell me more please. Ineke.
---- Original Message ----- From: "Marjolein Baltussen"
><marjoleinbaltussen@hotmail.com>
To: <inekebosman@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:32 PM
Hi Ineke,
I know Moses very well; that is baby who came here in a black plastic bag found by a policeman, premature, so very small, incredible that he has survived! The first months we have looked after him. Many greetings and success. Marjolein.
Marjolein Baltussen
Physiotherapist i/c and Project coordinator
Bawku Presbyterian Hospital
Orthopaedic and Physiotherapy project
PO BOX 278
Bawku, UER
Ghana
If we had some near-to belly-flops during our journey than what about Moisje during his journey into this world?! With an incredible emergency landing he crashed onto mother earth. Reading his story you would think his chances for survival were less then nil but... no! The little boy is full of fun and brims with life and mischief! You look again at that Moses (who by the way we guessed to be three years, not two and a half!) and you start thinking, you start being amazed all over again! As big as a hand? In one of these little plastic bags with which the environment of Ghana is littered? In a one of these waste bags which we recycle into woven handbags? Has Moses stayed in such a bag and moved until he was noticed and has he survived all this?!
No, no comment, except thank-you-God-for-life. Soon I'll push the saloon-doors open again to sit and look at that boy once more. The one who defies with a great big smile all that we know of developmental psychology! In fact nose dives that subject into a near belly flop!
Moses dancing during the Saturday-night Disco.
klik op de foto voor een vergroting
Goose pimples and Volunteer Services.
7 may 2006
There are so very many persons who provide voluntary services for our children project in Ghana. Sometimes they are friends, sometimes family or family of family and many times these services are rendered by complete strangers.
This morning I met a lady with a Labrador dog in our elevator here in Scheveningen, where we spend a few more days before returning to Ghana. I made comments about her healthy and shiny dog. The dog was probably not too keen on me starting a conversation with his owner, he was smelling the salty air of the seaside. Nice dog, how old? Six years? We live in Ghana and have a Labrador there as well, 4 years old. Not too hot and humid for Labradors in Ghana? Isn't Ghana at the equator? Not too warm no, that's to say she knows where to find her comfort. Likes to cool off in the pool or near a little muddy river at the end of our land. Ah! Two women who our proud of their dogs. I have a son who lives in Africa as well. He just got a dog, a German Shepherd. For company and for security. It's funny, one day just like that my son and his wife departed for Africa. Good job, nice house, left it all behind to do something more meaningful they said. Now they run an orphanage in Kenya. Really, what a coincidence! We run an orphanage as well, a home for mentally handicapped children. That's why we got Labradors, because they are good with kids. No, really? Yes! My God...and so on... The lady remarked that this generation, just like the generation of the sixties, was again very socially engaged. Showing for example in the number of volunteers who engage in all kind of idealistic programs, like her son, and actually all three of her children. All three gone away, following their ideals! Congratulations, i said, that is fantastic, you must have very happy children then... Yes. But sometimes they make me very worried all the same. Their future, insurances, pensions, all that. Of course.
We had to laugh because the lady and I, while talking that way, got goose pimpels at the same time. The goose pimpels of bewonderment. We looked at each others forearm, little hairs erect. You should see how many volunteers we get, they simply come, pay everything themselves, stay short stay long stay forever! Leave their partners and their jobs, just come. Up to Ghana!
At that junction her labrador found our conversation long enough and with a polite little movement pointed towards the sea. In any case, it was nice meeting you. All the best with your children. And you too. I looked at the two some, lady and beautiful blonde dog as they walked away and went for my shoppings in town.
Later I talked with Bob about it. As we often do of course. Goose pimpels of bewonderment, amazement. How come that all these people help us and keep helping us? How did that start? How will it continue?
All that Daan has done, for example, look at Wil Huisman
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This is our oldest volunteer, Wil Huisman, 84 years old. Wil administers our funds in the Bresillac Foundation in the Netherlands. |
Joke, Nieske, Susanne and Rudiger, the lamberts
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Nieske administers our funds of hand in hand in the Netherlands. special for the selling of the products from the Sheltered Workshop. |
Douwe and his family
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Douwe and Petra, with their children. On a daily basis Douwe and his son Nick enter updates on our website. |
Ellen and Rien Matthijssen
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Ellen and Rien, who collected 6000 Euro for Abena. An amount that Philip Morris was able to double for us. |
All those volunteers, many. Many, many. Ellen! The big capital letter E for Ellen. Her family and friends. The weavers! Many who give time and effort to our project in all kind of ways, raising funds, administer funds, erect foundations in Holland and in Germany, transport goods, interview volunteers, provide information and of course...sponsor a child! Or otherwise give money to our project. Without these people the project would have collapsed years ago
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| The house from where our many volunteers operate in Nkoranza |
Now, today, and it has not always been that way, I am less afraid that our children project will disintegrate and that our children can start again from scratch. That would be too horrible. But what has happened over the years is surreal, it is not logical, it is miraculous. This increases the hope that in the future, when we are no longer there, the project will further blossom and the children will continue to be safe with us. Wouldn't that give you the goose pimples?
Jerusalem
May 28th
Often the Hand in Hand Community is called the 'promised land' by visitors who are taken aback by the beauty and serenity of our place. Each time I come home I also feel that same sense of peace and joy that seems to emanate from the land at Nkoranza. In two weeks Bob and I will be home in our own promised land but today we are here, in Israel, at the real thing!
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Our own promised land!
Not that you notice much of that serenity at Tel Aviv where we stay. Tel Aviv is a busy city with gorgeous beaches and friendly weather. No more and no less, except of course that many famous musicians frequent Tel Aviv's symphony hall. But yesterday we really went into holy territory, the holy city of Jerusalem.
We begun our day at the Mount of Olives for a view on the old Jerusalem inside the walls
View of Jerusalem from Mount Olive.
and ended up the same way, seeing a breathtaking view from a promenade terrace at another side of the city. Gorgeous stunning landscapes or call it 'city-scapes'. White stony land, dark cypresses, many buildings and churches, churches, churches. Standing on the Mount of Olives we saw the remnants of the great Jewish temple of Jerusalem, the temple that was twice destroyed. The place where allegedly Abraham was tested in his faith by having to sacrifice his son Isaac till an angel stopped him. That is where when the Jewish Messiah has finally returned a new temple will arise. Amazingly enough that exact same place is according to the Arabs the place where Mohammed has risen to heaven. The Muslims therefore have constructed an enormous golden dome right inside the remnants of the old Jewish temple. The mosque is called 'Dome of Rock'.
Then you see part of the wall around the old Jerusalem, with its many gates. After entering the inner city through a small gate we came right into a lovely ancient building where the tomb of King David is situated. The building also housed an international yeshiva for peace. Women and men had to separate as we saw and touched the tomb of the great King David. Someone chanted in Hebrew to honor him and it sounded solemn and joyful. Then for hours we walked here and we walked there, through the Jewish, the Christian the Arab streets within the inner city-wall. Smells of strong coffee, musk, mothballs, and herbs. People, people, people! Many religious sisters, many orthodox Jews with their beautiful children, many traders and a few beggars and then tourists, tourists, tourists. A kind sun above our heads and ancient worn marble stones that formed the road below our feet. Maybe that was the most impressive, these narrow paved roads where for over four centuries thousands and thousands of feet have shuffled and are shuffling, polishing the stones while wearing them down.
The were nearing the wailing wall, again for orthodox purposes divided into a part for men and for women. I went in on the women's site. A division of mats separated us and everywhere were chairs where people could rest, pray or think a bit. When I was there a celebration of sorts was going on at the male side and many women had climbed on the stairs to look over the division at what was going on. I joined them. An old man went ahead blowing the horn while other men followed in a line. At the middle of the graceful serpentine line a strangely clad rabbi carried the scrolls of the Torah. Ancient. Moving. Solemn. All the same not too solemn! Unabashed the women stood on their chairs and gaped into and photographed the other side. At times greetings and whole conversations were carried out by people standing on chairs on each side of the fence. That's Jewish, mixing the deeply solemn with the ordinary. Bob put his letter in the wall but I could not see him and climbed off my chair and concentrated on the women, the wall, the atmosphere around me. At the far end women were praying while standing or sitting in a sort of room inside the wall. Did they pray there for the 24 hours of the day maybe? The more you went towards the division the less solemn it looked. The Orthodox on the far left, religious Jews and others in the middle and the talking, picture taking and filming women near the fence. After completing their prayer the women walked backwards with their face to the wall and so did I. We all came together and then entered the part of the city where the 'Via Dolorosa' is, This is the road that Jesus had to walk with his cross on his back in order to be crucified. It's where he suffered and fell so many times before He reached the top of the mount Calvary. Tremendous narrow steep streets, same ancient worn cobblestones. We saw
the Stations of the Cross indicated on the wall. We also saw people selling gowns, dresses, underwear, Adidas-shoes, crucifixes, souvenirs, everything. Sometimes the guide had to remove a dress from the wall to indicate to us the inscription of the station of the cross. I saw a hairdressing salon very close to the place where Jesus was crucified, side by side with an internet café.
Bob said doesn't that remind you somewhat of our Ghana? The 'Only Jesus Can Do Hair Salon', and all those Jesus and Jehovah signboards in Ghana? Here too they are getting Jesus into the little ordinary life as a booster for trade... Jesus, the great Divine advertiser!
Well some people may want a haircut before entering the holy place where Jesus was killed, maybe. Getting nearer to the last stations we entered a church, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There it was cool and dark out of the midday sun. Of course this church too was packed like everything in the inner city. I went to see the twelfth station where Jesus died on the cross. I was touched despite the noisy tourists and lit a candle in front of the statue of Jesus dying on the cross. For our children.
Then we were led to where Mary and the women took Jesus from the cross and into the tomb. The archeologists think Jesus' actual tomb was there although Jesus himself might have trouble finding it back with all the layers of church building and marble floors and roofs added, and the sculptures and paintings and stairs and all these people with their camera's. The tomb is very small and I was allowed in with an Armenian family who prayed passionately with rolling tears. I too knelt down and touched the stone. It was comforting. I cried a little as well. A monk stood there to make sure you did not 'over-cry' your one minute, for the line of people still waiting was long.
Then out and away from the inner city. A glass of wine and cup of espresso on a terrace overlooking Jerusalem from another point. All was too much for one day. Too much filled with meaning and with history and all so hauntingly beautiful.
And then, once away from the religious places, there is that certain palpable tension everywhere. The many soldiers, the abundance of Israeli flags, the searching of bags and the quick penetrating looks, the burned blackened house-frames left after a suicide-bomb attack.
The holocaust museum was very hard to take. People sat there crying, or just looking lost. The horror! Never ever forget any of this it says on the building.
Being here in Israel I got a whole new appreciation of the Jewish people and the plight they have to put up with. Against centuries of Christian religious anti Semitism, against the unspeakable hell of the Nazism, against the spreading Arab anti-Semitism, Iran's desire to destroy the Jews, Palestinians who choose the killers of Hamas to run their country. Most of all against the indifference of too many people. A new appreciation. I hope we will come back to you, Israel. Our promised land away from promised land.
19th may 2006
Francis
It was in the late afternoon of the 10th of May that Alidya returned alone from the hospital. Getting to dinnertime no-one took particular interest in her for when it is time to eat everyone one way or another is involved in the 'eating act'. So it took time before she found another caregiver to tell her the bad news: Francis just died. Slowly the word went around and the kitchen sounds silenced out. Emanuel jumped into the action mode and I noticed that the facial expression of all the males of the community included the older children had changed into one of almost grim decisiveness. Before the rain, fast, we need to bury him. It was true, wild purple clouds were coming together and piling up for a real good tropical storm. Osei came into the scene and helped to find a car and two of our men with shovels and pickaxes. Emanuel took the weightless bundle of Francis wrapped in a cloth and silently and hastily showed him for the last time to all of us that were haphazardly sitting and standing together there. Francis' face surrendered as if in deep sleep.
(I have seen many dead, included children. They never impressed me as asleep, but Francis did.)
No one spoke. Hands were shaken. Alidya cried silently and the first drops of rain started to fall. Francis was put in a box and out of the box again. Apparently tradition wanted the body to be buried so as to become one with the soil in the fasted possible way.
No prayer no farewell no grieving now, Francis is whisked away from the community and driven to the churchyard by the men. Before the rain comes down by buckets Francis is home and so are the men. That was it, Francis. Thank you for your company. Soft and frail but so soulful. Thank you men of the community for knowing when it's time to go and acting so, I say it again, grimly decisive. Thank you women of the community for your earthly wisdom, your acceptance of life and death.
The next day there was a tiny memorial service for Francis, just as tiny as himself. Robert said a prayer, Charity sang a song and Ema talked about his life with us, from November till May. He mentioned the one highlight that everyone remembers: how Francis was given the role of Jesus during the Christmas play. How beautifully he was celebrated that way. How he was thrown high into the air, over and over again, caught and thrown into the air again. Hosanna, hosanna! All others singing and dancing ahead of him around him and behind him.
Was he thrown too high into the sky? Did the angels see him, wanted him?
Or was he, Francis, an angel himself who found his true nature?
Bye sweet Francis. We will remember you well. Your big sister Philomena is asking where you are and we will tell her the story of how you joined the angels. Fly little child, fly.
l
Fly, Francis, fly...