The Trapani's in Liberia

We have been given responsibility to help with a program in the church called, the Gathering Place. The church has organized different vocational training classes on the subjects of electricians, beauticians, tailoring, entertainment planners, pastry baking and computer skills. They meet at the church. The church provides the instructors and the training equipment and supplies. In the case of pastry baking the church supplies the oven, utensils and food ingredients. In the case of tailoring the church supplies the sewing machine, thread and materials. In the case of the computer class they supply all the computers. Because of the poverty in the country the church is supplying everything or else many people would be excluded. The classes are once a week and last for 4 hours. At the end of the class the church provides a meal. The picture above is the students in the electrical class. The day I took all the pictures there was a heavy rainstorm and a large political rally which cut attend...

This is an above average cafeteria at a public school.  The government supplies the ingredients for the meal and the PTA prepares it This is the stove. You can see the wood for the Heat on the right These are the volunteer cafeteria workers. The students are lining up for the meal with their own bowls. The menu today was pea soup over rice.  Changes in the type of soup that goes over the rice is the only variety each day.  Meat is never included. Hand washing station. This is needed because most of the students don't have eating utensils. After the meal they use the hand pump to clean their bowls and to fill their water bottles. Our project at this school is to expand the size of the kitchen and to create a covered eating area to protect from the sun and the rain.  We were at the school to get our contract signed so we can commence work. We were invited to participate in vocational training graduation of a project that we funded.  The young women in the project ...

We are pursuing a project with the National Hospital to provide neonatal equipment and to renovate their neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We had a tour of the area today and it was shockingly sad. In the picture above there are two babies in this incubator that is built only for one.  In this picture the small premature babies are lying in these warming units only that the warming units do not work. Our project will supply more incubators and warming units. In addition to equipment we will completely remodel the neonatal Intensive Care Unit so that it will look like new. We will also remodel two operating rooms and build a new operating room in the delivery room so that mothers in distress can have surgery performed quickly without having to be transported to another part of the hospital. Never have I felt so strongly that our money will be well spent. The pictures do not do justice to the general infant care area. The walls and floors and ceiling are all deteriorating. One of the ope...

We were in this area over a month ago to visit a village about a water project. While in the area we dropped by a nearby private school to speak to the founder of the school who had requested some humanitarian help. The bridge leading to the community where her school was located had been washed away and the remaining footbridge was so bad that it was dangerous for pedestrians and motorcycles to cross. Because of that attendance at her school had dropped significantly. She asked if we could fix the bridge. We turn down the project but it was picked up by some of the school founders ward members that live in America. They were interested in contributing.  I put the founders in connection with a trusted local contractor and he built this footbridge. Even though we we're only slightly involved they invited us to the bridge dedication. It is national election season and so all of the politicians in the area showed up for the dedication of this little footbridge. Speeches lasted for wel...

This is a village that is on reclaimed swampland. The residence dig up mud out of the waterways and then pile it up onto Islands to make their property. We have a project here to bring water to several distribution points in this community. Getting this program started has been a great lesson on the African culture having a different perspective than the one I brought here. For a lot of reasons some of which are poverty and culture, things go much slower here. Before we start a project we have to have a legal contract to make sure that everyone is in agreement. It has been painful working with the attorneys in Ghana and the staff that supports them. What probably should have taken a few days took a month. Although, now we know. We'll just slow down our timetables on getting certain things done. The man in the red shirt in the picture is standing in the place where one of the water tanks will go. We had to get a legal document from the landowner to donate their land for the tank. Th...