June 2009 Issue
by Lucretia Humphrey
Venturing away from our families over the Christmas holidays, Blake Lipsett and I, as Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR) board members, traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa—one of three countries where RSWR maintains a presence. Blake and I were staying in Bo, a town about 150 miles from the capital city of Freetown. We were making “pastoral” visits to some of the projects that are funded by RSWR in this small country. Pastoral visits are a way of letting our Sierra Leone partners know that we care about the work they are doing with the micro-grants that we have given them. We listen to the women who work together in cooperatives, we walk to their rice fields, and we join them in meals.
The rest house we stayed at had a toilet down the hall and a washroom consisting of a bucket of water, which brought back memories of my long-ago Peace Corps days in Sierra Leone. In the rooms, mosquito netting no longer surrounded our beds, as the windows now had screens, but the scene was familiar with the musty smells of people, earth, and a humid climate in the dry season.
Getting up one morning I wandered out to the small verandah attached to the common room of the guest house. The plaster walls of the guest house made up three sides of the verandah with the fourth side, the front, consisting of an open doorway and a short wall that made a good place to sit. The shadow of the roofline protected us from the sun which had already risen into the haze of the Harmattan morning. (The Harmattan are the winter winds from Europe that blow across the Sahara, filling the sky with dust.) The welcoming freshness and coolness of the night had not altogether dissipated. Women’s voices came from behind the rest house in quiet chatter as pans banged and water ran.
In front of the doorway sat one man conversing with another who was getting his head shaved. There was just enough room for me to join them. After the social greetings—who we were and where we were from—one of the gentlemen asked a very basic question.
“How do you know that what you are proposing is of real use to the Sierra Leonean?”
He went on to say that Sierra Leoneans are so polite that they will say yes to anything suggested by the white wealthy Westerner, rather than counter what is being done for them, even if it is not wanted. His thoughtful question made my thoughts jump to Quaker history: stories of reaching out in love and care to others, while calling them our equals and letting them tell us what it is they think they need.
As Roland Kreager, Director of RSWR, said recently in the RSWR Newsletter, “The heart of RSWR…is a partnership. One member of the partnership is Quakers and other persons of faith seeking to live more justly, providing capital to help support micro-enterprises, and experiencing jubilee justice. The other member of the partnership is a women’s self-help group who, with the guidance of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and by their participation in the self-help group and the micro-credit project, are living Sabbath economics in their own community.”
As we know, a woman’s income goes for the betterment of her children providing them with food, medicine and an education, thus raising up the whole community. We want to empower the women we help to make their own decisions for what is best for their communities. These women will decide how to plant the rice, when to make the vegetable gardens, how to distribute the food and ultimately how to re-invest the small amount of money to make an ongoing enterprise. Making trustworthy connections is a continuing and evolutionary process that ultimately links people of vastly different life circumstances in a mutual step of faith.
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With the luxury of my three visits, I have seen a change, an evolution of need and desire. Looking back to my first trip, I know that money was well used, but used for relief from starvation, clothing children, and providing the means of survival for a small village. Dollars from RSWR sustained villages that were thrashed by civil war. We made it possible, for example, for the community of Hungbo to make it through. We created a relationship in that area of Sierra Leone that taught us, the Americans, about war and peace and about how even simple acts of development, such as supporting farm co-ops and farm infrastructure, lay ongoing foundations for peace.
As RSWR has continued to fund grants in Sierra Leone, the leadership of women has emerged. Men have stepped back. When I first visited in 2004, our projects were managed by men, with women helping and providing support to the men. Perhaps a woman would be named as the organizer, but men were the ones that talked to us, only bringing women in as an afterthought. Speeches honoring our assistance and partnership were conducted by men. Women were not the ones speaking up and describing the work that was being done. It was even difficult at times to speak to a woman. It was clear that our grants were helping a village and the women in the village, but it was not clear what real leadership the women were able to take.
On my second visit, the projects were beginning to recognize that RSWR wanted to see more women in leadership. More projects introduced women as the people who were leading efforts that benefited the entire village. Madam Sallay at Mile 91 was running an orphanage for children left parentless by the war. Oversight of this project was totally in her hands, although the procurement of the grant funds through the application process probably came from men in her community.
On my third and most recent visit, women were in the foreground. Women were always there to greet us when we began a pastoral visit to a project. The purpose of these visits is not to judge projects, but to show that we care about the lives of these people, to listen to their stories, and to hear of their great needs. The purpose is to build relationships across immense distances, both physical and material. I might find myself traipsing after the project manager down bush paths and over small creeks to the eventual project site, while the women, children and men tagged along on the way to their farms. Speeches were a time for the women to come forward and tell us about their plans and desires for their lives and the lives of their children.
On the side women would tell us what they went through during the war. One woman told how her husband separated from her and the children so the rebels would treat them more humanely, giving the family a greater chance of surviving. Today both this woman and her husband are involved with NGOs that help the local community grow food and help with youth justice. This same women also told me how women became prostitutes just to feed their children. They did the act, they got paid, and they used the money to buy food for their children and to make a fresh start. I found myself almost unable to take in this concept, looking at these women of such dignity. I could hardly imagine how their lives had been.
At one project, I asked the project manager, Sophiatu, how she had come to know about RSWR. She had found us on the internet! Sophiatu was finishing her degree in agriculture. Her RSWR project was then noticed by Adama Bundu, who was visiting a relative in Sophiatu’s village. Adama then decided she needed to do the same for her community, which is on the outskirts of Freetown. This area is on a hillside that was forested 30 years ago, but after the war, is covered with homes, sheds, and huts built every which way. During the rainy season the soil is literally washed to the estuary, turning the sea to reddish brown. Their farming helps protect the land as well as provide food and income for another group of women.
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During the thirty years stretching from the time I was a Peace Corps teacher until today, there has been a hunger in my soul to connect to those I had felt so at home with despite the vast differences in circumstance and setting. I do not want to be a missionary. I do not want to tell someone else how to live. Still I am curious what it is that pulls me back to this small country. It is partly that God calls us to share some of the material abundance that we enjoy in America. But it is also the admiration I have for many of the people I meet in Sierra Leone. I admire the Sierra Leoneans who are helping desperate people and doing so with calmness and assurance that attracts me to their ways. I admire them and want to be more like them back home in my own community; I want people to appreciate the gifts of these folks so far away.
Three times now I have met with Muckson, a community developer. He continues to amaze me with his insight into what needs to be done next in his community. What has resulted from the efforts of this community as shaped by local vision and planning? The list is long: a radio station, a peace and reconciliation program, plans for nurturing and healing children orphaned and traumatized by the war, a plant nursery to encourage planting of oil palms for oil used in cooking, a plan to bottle fruit juice to use the local pineapples, oranges and mangoes. The list continues to grow. In each of these projects people are empowered to find a way to better themselves and the lives of the children.
Muckson sees this as a way to make peace so that war does not again visit his small poor country. People able to engage in their own betterment will not need war. Quakers in their various ways try to walk paths of peace. As a Quaker, it is fascinating for me to observe this Sierra Leonean man lead his community on the paths of peace. I feel honored to know this man. My own life is enriched by his example. This is what brings me joy and energy.
Much is possible for Sierra Leone. Women are learning that they can organize and do more for themselves and their children together than they can do separately. Women are gaining strength by learning new skills and competencies. Women who have long been the small shop keepers of the market can now move into larger arenas.
Here is a place where I have come down just right. I am so blessed. The hunger in my soul is filled by the tasks at hand.
Lucretia Humprey is a member of Heartland Monthly Meeting in Billings, Montana. Portions of this article appeared in RSWR’s 1st Quarter Newsletter in 2009.