November 13th

Today was awesome, and also stricken by some difficulty. I got to
sleep in a bit, and by sleep in I mean 7:20 or so, though that didn’t
do a lot of good because I didn’t go to bed until after 12:30. Tom
and Rebecca got called down to the hospital just before midnight,
a lady who had previously had a cesarean section went into labor,
which means she pretty much has to have another one if you don’t
want to risk rupturing the uterus, which would be bad… Anyway,
we went down to the hospital at 10:30 to go to the hospital
celebration. The president of Sierra Leone was supposed to be
coming to the celebration but he was not able to come sadly. That
would have been really cool to meet him. Instead one of the
ministers came, there were two other ministers of the country
present as well, one of them being the head of health in the
country. They’ve promised that they are about to begin a project
to pave the road from Makeni to Kamakwie then on to Guinea in
order to better foster trade and increase government revenues.
The Sierra Leone government has a health program that gives free
care to kids under 5, pregnant and lactating mothers. They pay the
hospitals associated costs for caring for them. However as a faith
based private hospital they do not qualify for the assistance and so
they still have to charge them. The minister in charge health
promised that they are working on rolling out the program to
hospitals like the one here in Kamakwie. There were some other
people, including the superintendant of the entire Wesleyan
Church of Sierra Leone Reverend Osman. There were a bunch of
speeches for about two hours and then they fed us, and by us I
mean hundreds of people. It was so crazy! While we were eating
there were a bunch of women doing some traditional dancing.
There was this person with a grass skirt on and a red cloth over his
head, the cloth was covered in horns and mirrors. Tom told me
that the person was the witch doctor, which is interesting since it
is part of an pagan belief system at a very Christian event. Anyway,
I had a great time after they fed us. Took some pictures of kids,
talked with Foday, Saidu and Albert, as well as Rebecca, and just
generally enjoyed the celebration. Oh, before they fed us we went
to dedicate the new pediatric ward they recently finished in a little
ceremony then we toured the new building. It was really awesome
getting to experience and be a part of the 50th celebration of the
hospital, though they were quick to remind the people present
that it was not the 50th year of having a Wesleyan hospital in
Kamakwie, the first one opened in Kamakwie 2 in 1920, moved to
Kamakwie 1 in 1930 before the new hospital being built in 1959.
After that I headed back up to the house to get some water then we
went to call on the work team. I then proceeded to walk back and
forth between their house and my house numerous times carrying
out various tasks. It was several trips in when I found out Karen was
not doing well. She hurt her knee climbing into the truck when she
and Tom were taking Mary Lane home. So she’s not in the greatest
of shape and feeling very frustrated I think. The work team came
over and we prayed over her, it was a really awesome experience.
However, she is still in pain and barely able to walk with a walker,
so please pray for her, for healing, strength and comfort. After
that we got ready to go to a dinner also being catered by the
Africans, which meant more spicy food, yay… haha. We got there
at 7 and didn’t eat until nearly 8:3o. It’s that BMT again. While we
were waiting the “dj” people were trying to get set up and were
playing music so loud we could barely hear each other talking face
to face, Tom got them to turn it way down but they were slowly
turning it up as time went on. About 45 minutes into our wait
some sparks came flying out of all the wiring they had just pushed
under a table. This was followed by some smoke and a bunch of
fleeing Africans, however no fire started and things back under
control. Sadly they were able to fix the problem and turn the music
back on. Thankfully this time they actually played some Christian
music instead of whatever they had been playing. Daniel Turay
was there and so we spent the most of the time just talking.
Daniel is one of my favorite people here. He’s a great kid and
he’s really got a heart for the Lord. It’s pretty cool. His plan is
to go to university for banking, make some money, and then go
to a pastoral college to become a pastor. It was hot and noisy in
the room with all the people and the speakers so Daniel and I
went outside where it was cooler and less noisy, though there
were a lot of people congregated outside hoping to get in but it
was only for the hospital staff and missionaries. We hung out
there for a little while then the dinner ended and so we started
walking home and we ran into Solomon (the community health
officer from the hospital) and he walked along with us. Daniel
turned off first and as Solomon and I continued walking I asked
him about his name. Many people here seem to take a new
Christian name when they become Christian, especially if they
were a Muslim. He said to me it wasn’t his birth name but I never
got to ask what it was because we got to the place where we
went separate ways. But he did tell me he was born into a Muslim
family before moving to Kamakwie to be with family. They were
Christians and he became a Christian. I thought that was pretty
cool. Anyway, so now I sit here at home getting ready to go to bed,
I had a really good day, but it was also the last day for the visitors
staying here, they are coming to church tomorrow but then they
have to leave to head home not long after that. I’m going to miss
having them here, it’s been crazy but enjoyable getting to meet new
people with such cool experiences from their past in Kamakwie.

Blessings from Sierra Leone, Africa
Ryan Brooks

P.S.
I was on Sierra Leone tv apparently, the Asher’s driver Steven was
here tonight, the poor man has run back and forth to Freetown
and Makeni so many times in the last week, and he said he saw me
on tv. Apparently they were showing some of the video from the
school celebration last week. I’m hoping to get a copy of it, Daniel
Turay told me that Principal HB might have a copy.