February 27, 2008: Sierra Leone Assessment

SIERRA LEONE

Sierra Leone Is Very Mountainous and Very Breezy, Not Like Liberia. Praise God!

Our time in Sierra Leone has been different than what I expected. Since there war has been over for the last 11+ years, secret cults and organized crime has risen up amongst even the poorest community. In comparison to Liberia, it is a much darker place with evil acts

One community has only 3 out of 16 wells working. We found the 3 working wells under control of sub-chiefs who were extorting money from families to use the well under the notion that money recovered would be used to maintain those wells. As usual I am very suspect of these things so while my team was talking to some previous Mercy Ships employees I went on my own walkabout to see what I could find. I’m not sure if it was the Holy Spirit or God simply using my previous lifestyle as a tool, but I quickly found a palm wine party going on. The party was in the house of one of these sub chiefs. They were suspicious of me at first, but they offered me a drink of palm wine and I took it (faked drinking it). They invited me into their party which included the thugs who guard the wells and a couple of ladies-of-the-night who seemed to be plying their trade in the day as well.

Local "Poro" Mob Chief and his entourage

A local well controlled by the "Poro" who charge locals for water, even thought he well was built by an NGO for the community

It was here I found that these chiefs were members of a male secret society called a “poro”, the women’s societies are called a “sandi.” These societies are based on witchcraft and organized crime and are

responsible for the demonic hold on these people of west Africa. It is the “sandi” societies that force girls to have circumcisions in tents where many die from infection; they even force the girls to eat their own body parts.

Life is hard for children most walked an hour to school with no shoes

The traditional medicine men are brutal witch doctors. They use spirits to heal or curse people and are rich and important due to the fear they bring. One man, Numu, even showed me papers from the government saying he was licensed to cast evil spirits. We have heard from western health workers that these people have repeatedly killed any child with a deformity. What they tell the mothers is that their child is not “mortal” but in fact an evil spirit. They walk into the bush with the child and come back later with a viper, saying here is your child’s true form. Unfortunately, the child is never seen again.

This child was treated by a witch doctor and has a green paste and talsiman. He has Burkets Lymphoma and could be treated by our ship with a chemo treatment that has a 95% success rate, if we can get there in time.

The devil does not walk here, he dances! This country is held more in the demonic reigns, in my opinion, than even the home of voodoo, Benin.

I cannot emphasize the need for Christians to pray for the workers here, we are facing extremely dark powers as we try and help these people. At times I wonder why God has brought me here but when I see Him use my old lifestyle as a tool to find out what is going on under the surface I realize he has been leading me up to this my whole life. The chief had former military guys working as thugs fro him, they respected that I was ex-military with “powerful” tattoos on my arm to show what a great warrior I was. It was through this strange bonding that allowed me to win their confidence and learned what was really going on in the community. My role as Security Officer has honed these skills to allow me to approach them as a peer and find out what is going on so that we can effectively counter the works of the enemy.

My suspicions were confirmed when the sub-chiefs told me that they drink their profits from the wells every day instead of trying to maintain them. We must be sure to build wells only in safe places where the wells are controlled by religious schools or churches. This won’t guarantee they won’t be taken over by the “poro” but at least we will have a better chance at keeping them open to the public.

My meetings with the government officials have gone well and the Minister of Health for Sierra Leone is a former US doctor so we could really sit down and honestly address the scope of the problems here. I do not wish his job for anything. They are able to get the important supplies to clinic HIV and TB test as well as treatment, especially for pregnant mothers because the World Health Organization gives it to them.. But they can not get them basic antibiotics or ibuprofen. Most child deaths that we saw recorded was from respiratory infections because they had no way to treat it. We must see what we can do to assist this. If we build any clinic, it must be in cooperation with another NGO, because we have shown that the government s alone cannot support these clinics appropriately.

We have been eating sardine sandwiches while in the bush. On hot days it take a lot to choke one of these down along with our water that is the temperature of tea. The roads here are really rough as we have to travel through the mountains everyday. We have found a lot of cataract and max-facial candidates. The boy below has berket's lymphoma and will require chemotherapy. It is awesome we found him, this tumor has been noticeable for 2 months and is growing rapidly.

Sardine Sandwiches Are Tough To Choke Down In Heat

I have been blessed with meeting two former African crew members who are married and now living here as they try and start ministries here to bring light to such a dark place. I am actually going to a wedding today for one couple. The wedding was planned for last week, but they postponed it because it was clean up day. A day where all the roads are closed and each family must clean the area in front of their house. Well after all that the government also postponed the clean up day to today, so the weeding is on and we will need to take a 2-hour journey in the bush to get around the city to get to the weeding. It is guarantied to be a long hot day, especially for a big white guy like me. I will update tonight after I have returned from wedding.

The second married couple is Festus and Jessica. Jessica is a Mennonite woman from Pennsylvania who fell in love with Paul and the desire to reach his countrymen with the Gospel while on the ship. I have a great deal of respect and love for these two and the difficult task God has laid before them. I hope to continue to update you on their progress as they seek to engage the enemy on his home turf.

May Christ meet each of you every morning with a sense of purpose and joy of being in His will. Thank you all for being a part of our ministry, we could not do it without you.