Information!! Woo Hoo!!!

Dec 12, 2010

As this trip so quickly approaches I want to have a basic background of Sierra Leone.  Also, I always need to practice with my blogging skills, so you get to learn with me.

The Republic of Sierra Leone (official name) hosts 5.7 million citizens and is in West Africa on the Atlantic Coast.  The capital is Freetown. founded in 1787 as a home to many repatriated slaves.  (Names communicate a lot, don’t they?)  English and Krio are spoken, along with many other African languages.  Islam and Christianity are the main religions (I think I read 30% Christian somewhere) The GNI per capita is $320, and life expectancy is 46 (men) and 49 (women).  To put that in perspective, I would, statistically speaking, have one foot in the grave.  Wow.  While Sierra Leone has had some economic growth in recent years, and would like to develop in the tourism industry, it still ranks at the bottom of the UN’s League for human development.  Just this year (2010) the UN Security lifted the last sanctions, establishing that 8 years after a brutal, decade long civil war, the government has established enough control over it’s territory and disarmed rebels.  Diamonds are a major export, still, and the human desire for the wealth they bring helped fuel the war in which rebels hacked off hands and feet of their victims.
 I am really going to try to watch the movie Blood Diamond before I go in an effort to grasp a glimpse of the trauma many of those I will meet have endured.  This kind of movie is not my usual fare as I have an over active picture archive in my brain, and I cannot imagine the reality of such evil.  I watched the movie Amistad, years ago (about a ship commandeered by slaves that landed in America) and can still see it in my mind.  Perhaps you would watch either or both of these movies in the next month ‘with’ me???.
On the bright side, cocoa and coffee are also major exports, so maybe my hot chocolate fix will be met.
On the interesting side, in June 2009, there were 13,900 internet users in Sierra Leone.  That’s .5%.  I plan to be one of them while I’m there..... :)
Well, school is cancelled tomorrow, so there’s your educational moment.

Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am that you are with me in this?
Dawn

Ambulance to Atlanta

Atlanta, here we come!

The Ambulance of Adventure

 9 December 2010       

“The Lord said, ‘Leave your country, your people...your household...and go to the land I will show you.’” Genesis 12:1

This is the scripture that kept coming to mind as we drove from Alma toward Atlanta...without specific directions of our intended destination.

Why do people shudder a bit when they hear that Sue Stack and I drove an ambulance to Atlanta?  We only used the siren and lights when we arrived at my friends home in Nashville, which I’m sure she (and her neighbors) appreciated.  We might have used the bullhorn to gently remind freeway drivers that they were WRONG to text behind the wheel.  Other than that, we were the very picture of responsibility....except maybe when we wore the antlers provided by Stephanie Benn in our fun little care basket.    Let me regress in my story.

An ambulance was generously donated to the Sierra Leone project by MMR.  It was filled (and I mean to the brim) with medical supplies and equipment and parked in the church parking lot to await shipment.  Dr. Cujo (and I might be making up stuff here, but this is what I understand) knows a man in Atlanta who ships stuff to Africa regularly and is willing to help us.  We only needed to deliver the vehicle to him.  Other, less scary, drivers (Jeff Smith and Dean Wilson) were unable to make their schedules work to do the deed, so Sue and I found ourselves with keys, title and a gleam in our eyes. 
We decided to leave on Wednesday evening.  It seemed a good idea to ease into this long drive as the ambulance had probably not been driven more than 20 miles at a stretch.  Just before we left, Dean assured us that someone would pick us up at the airport on Saturday, so we didn’t need to leave a car at the Flint airport.  YEAH!!  That saved us more than an hour and no little stress.  So we headed for Anderson, IN to tick some hours off the trip and spend the night with Savas and Olive Joannides (my adopted parents).  Since they are in their eighties we asked them to warn their neighbors of our peculiar ‘car’ which would be parked in their driveway.  They are wonderful people who are hospitable at any time of the day.
Thursday morning we met Sage and some of her friends for breakfast at Anderson University, and to show them our fun ride.  There’s nothing quite like yelling of your love for your child through a loud speaker as you drive away. 
Our destination dujour was Nashville where my Phoenix  friends, Kim and Lynn Smith, now live. Now, I’m telling you that little diesel fed engine can get going!!  So we found ourselves with a little extra time as we fueled up in Bowling Green, and there was a Lost River Cave right there on our exit, so Sue and I decided to do a little tourist-y excursion, and we went and found that Lost Cave!  After that, we found our way through Nashville rush hour to the Smith’s where years melted away as we explained our mission and heard of their life adventures.  What a beautiful gift to have this oasis of welcome from missed friends!

The tires were looking a little low, so we thought we’d check the pressure before we left Tennessee, but we couldn’t even find the tire stem, so we trusted that we were low riders because of the great weight of gifts we were carrying and headed south again.  We wanted to avoid Atlanta traffic and make sure we could find the address that had finally arrived in a text from Dean.  As we followed the GPS which we finally plugged in, we were led through more and more....’interesting’ places.  Doors locked, sirens at the ready..... and we arrived at the gates of.....a chop shop???  Wrecked cars littered the lot in front of a metal warehouse.  A man whose name I wasn’t sure of came and greeted us, directed us to pull into the quagmire of cars and park.  Before we had our stuff out of the ambulance, there were guys measuring and rearranging items and talking about taking off the bumper and side lights.....  It was a bit unsettling.  Sue, quick, called her friends, Jen and Micheal Dickey, our mooching point of the night.  In the hour that we waited we were engaged in a fairly intense conversation about the Muslim Faith and Jesus, and I am reminded that it is important to know who I am, what I believe and why I believe it.  Not so that I might present an iron clad argument to another, but so that I will be filled with gratitude of the love of God and his desire to be in relationship with me, His creation.  A desire so profound that he would wrap His holiness in skin and walk before, beside and behind me.  Even in this ridiculous Atlantic Adventure any good deed done is only in response to the goodness of God.  How lucky Sue and I are to have journeyed together!  What a gift!!!

(P.s.  Thanks to the leftovers we packed for lunch, Stephanie’s goodies in our surprise basket and the generosity of our friends along the way, this trip cost us diesel–about $250- , airfare to return- about $200, and a few blessed days of our lives–priceless!!!)

Savas and Olive Joannides

Sue's friends in Atlanta

Sage and friends...breakfast

Lost River Cave has been found!

Lynn, Dawn's friend

So, where do we put in air?

welcome sight?

will the ambulance be shipped or sold for parts? (jk)