Books for Africa Library Project, Inc.Establishing libraries in rural areas of West Africa |
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A Busy Month--- November 30 2006 Greetings friends, Hilda and I have been in her hometown of Kukurantumi for almost three weeks now. We’ve had our adventures and work and “experiences”. But life is good. Hilda is suffering from a cold these past five days. It is harmattan season in Ghana which is the dry and hot season. There is a lot of dust in the air since the prevailing winds are off the Sahara Desert . The air tends to irritate the throat and many people get colds during this season. I had my bout with Malaria already and I thought I’d share a few reflections about it Malaria kills over a million children in Africa every year. Most deaths are due to extreme dehydration when the gastro-intestinal system is affected and vomiting and diarrhea take their toll. Young children don’t have the resiliency to withstand much dehydration. If the parents can get the children to a hospital or clinic there is hope. We sent Hilda’s sister’s one year old grandchild to the hospital last Saturday. They attached an IV to her and we were able to restore her electrolytes. Very often in adults malaria debilitates rather than incapacitates. That was my case. All last week I felt weak and tired. I dragged myself around and would occasionally plop down on my bed and wonder why I had no motivation to do anything. Last Friday I had a slight headache and felt a little warm, but I went through my activities. I traveled to the capital Accra attended a few meetings. It was four pm when the meetings were over and I realized I would spend part of the return trip driving in the dark. I didn’t think I had the energy to make it and I especially don’t like driving in the dark in Ghana . Fortunately a friend asked me to stay the night with his family and I thought that was the wisest course. On the way to his house I stopped at a pharmacy and picked up the latest malaria medicine. It is made from a Chinese herb artemisa annua. The parasites which enter the body through a mosquito bite have not yet developed a resistance to the new medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the artemisa is combined for therapy with another anti-malarial drug so that the two actually increase the other’s effectiveness. The only trouble is that China cannot produce enough of the artemisa drug to bring the cost down and treat the hundreds of millions of victims in Africa who have malaria. I finished the three day course of tablets and I have more zip this week. Imagine how many people are “walking wounded” with the malaria parasites? The work output of the mother and father is severely decreased when malaria attacks. With HIV/AIDS and TB, Malaria is the scourge of Africa .
I have some exciting news to share. We have started up the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings again in Hilda’s hometown. While Hilda and I are not afflicted with the disease of alcoholism, it has affected our families. Alcoholics Anonymous is the most successful treatment used anywhere in the world and it is coming to Ghana . I tried to start some meetings five years ago but they collapsed. In part that failure was because I was not an alcoholic and couldn’t effectively share the program. Now I have partnered with an AA group in Accra , the capital. We have arranged for an alcoholic form Accra to come up and live part time in the Treatment Center I build last year. He will come into town for the meetings; the treatment center is two miles outside of town on farmland I bought. Furthermore, my friends in AA and I have arranged with several professionals to translate AA literature into three Ghanaian languages. It really is exciting. Hilda has been busy during the past two weeks hunting up the people she knows in town who have a drinking problem and asking them to come to the meeting. She is really getting into the outreach to alcoholics. We will also have a panel of people from AA in Accra that will speak to all the librarians and Library Board members from 34 libraries that come to our annual in-service in January. Oh yes, one more item on this same subject. The two meetings I attended in Accra on that Friday were an open AA meeting and an Al-Anon meeting. The meetings were right after each other; many of the attendees were the same, since as you may know alcoholism is a family disease and many alcoholics grew up in homes where their parents were alcoholics. Al-Anon helps family members and friends of alcoholics to deal with the effects of alcoholism in their own lives. The Al-Anon meeting that Friday was the second gathering of the first Al-Anon group in Ghana . I have been privileged to attend the both the first and second meetings of the group.
How did I get the time to come to Accra and be busy with the ministry to alcoholics? Well, if you remember the past few years Hilda and I were being driven to distraction running around the ministry and the port clearing the goods. This year we have a better clearing agent. We did the preparation work in a trip to Accra on our fourth day in the country. From that time onward the agent has been running around the capital getting signatures from appropriate authorities and he hasn’t needed us. Great news for us. We can focus on other things. Hilda is spending a fair amount of time with the planning of our annual in-service. It’s going to be a big three day affair with a parade, panels on HIV/AIDS and alcoholism, reading contests and reports from the 34 libraries on their work.
On our mission. Before leaving for Ghana this year I began to ask God for a vision for our mission this year in Ghana . It has been helpful to me over the past two years to have a sense from the LORD as to what to focus on. This year I sensed that the LORD was asking us “to serve the people with love.” I knew I was going to Ghana to serve, but the leading from the LORD to serve with love meant something to me. It will mean serving with patience, and endurance and kindness and self-sacrifice. Not as easy as just “serving”. Upon our arrival at Ghana ’s airport on November 9th Hilda and I were able to collect our luggage readily and pass through customs without a hitch. I had my two suitcases in front of me on the luggage cart and I proceeded down the ramp to exit where we would meet Hilda’s brother. Halfway down the ramp I was overcome with enormity of what we were going to be doing. I felt overwhelmed. I quaked and despaired, but then was caught up in God’s Grace as I realized that all this work wasn’t my responsibility alone. It was God’s work and it was God’s resource of love that would enable me to do it with love, and all I had to do was to be present each day and do my best. The big picture is God’s work; my part is to love in the day. Well, that’s how I worked it out over time. But on the ramp I had the relief of knowing that my part was just for the day. And God would help me do it.
We send our warm greetings and prayers to you all, Kirt and Hilda
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