RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA
​dispatches from kolahun
ABOUT LIBERIA
DISPATCHES FROM KOLAHUN
URGENT: END-OF-YEAR APPEAL
There is no greater gift that we can give than to assist communities in grass-roots development, empowering them to rebuild the healthcare, water & sanitation, education and economic development systems that will take them into the future.
Dear Colleague,
For the past 12 years, I have worked as a physician providing humanitarian aid in response to complex emergencies — war and post-conflict contexts, disease outbreaks, natural disasters — in settings as diverse as Liberia, the Sudan/Darfur/Eastern Chad region, Ethiopia, Libya and Afghanistan. I have come to admire and love the people I have encountered for their courage and resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges and suffering.
These challenges test the capacity of every humanitarian worker to meet the needs of those they serve. And for millennia this work has challenged the healer, as it challenges me now, with the question, "How shall I respond to the suffering in the world?" The work you are learning about now is, in part, my response.
Through my work, one thing has become abundantly clear: When the emergency is over, there is no greater gift that we can give than to assist communities in grass-roots development, empowering them to rebuild the healthcare, water & sanitation, education and economic development systems that will take them into the future. This is not "aid" in the traditional sense, which often fosters dependency and corruption. Community development is transformative, giving people the ability to become their own agents of change. Such communities are healthy, productive, equitable, secure and peaceful. The capacity and potential of every human being is maximized. Every life matters.​
That is the vision of RESTORE HOPE and our flagship program, RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA.
Who do we serve? We provide essential support to the most vulnerable — children and their caregivers — to help ensure access to healthcare and education. We also provide economic opportunities beyond school, providing a way out of extreme and enduring poverty. And we're doing it village by village through community mobilization and by giving the people the tools and means.
But we need your help. Because we do not rely on government funds, we depend on our donors to sustain this work. Whether you can give $10 or $100, or more, you become an important part of the team that is needed to carry on this work.
In the next three weeks, we need to raise $50,000 to support our life-giving work in Liberia in the coming year. From now until the end of the year, gifts to RESTORE HOPE will go twice as far. Thanks to a generous donor match, your contribution will be doubled. That means that your gift of $50 can equal $100 – enough to send two kids to school for a year and provide after-school tutoring.
If you pledge $10 a month - the cost of a cup of your favorite morning brew - it will be matched and you can send 4 girls to school, provide them with school uniforms and after-school tutoring.
​For a year.
If you and 3 friends each pledge $25 a​ month - less than the cost of one date night - you'll cover the cost of well repair, providing clean water to an entire community and affecting the lives of hundreds. Lives will be saved because you'll prevent the next outbreak of dysentery or cholera. (Kolahun Town currently has 17 broken wells.)
A gift of $500 will support our emergency fund to assist with emergency needs at Kolahun Hospital, including fuel assistance to keep the emergency generator running when needed for surgeries, or to keep the flow of oxygen to critically ill children. Your contribution can directly affect the survival of these children, or of a woman needing an emergency Caesarian delivery of her baby. Here you see 4 infants on oxygen in the ICU. Two of these infants survived - you can help give them all a fighting chance!
The needs are so great… I can't begin to tell you about all the ways your gifts save lives. You can learn much more on our website.
I have seen firsthand how our donors' contributions change lives. The work is challenging, but together we will meet our pledge: Healthcare & promotion to save lives. Education to provide knowledge. And opportunity that builds communities and a nation.
Please join our team now and give what you can. We are grateful for your support.
We wish you and your family the Blessings of the season.
​Robert M Rufsvold, MD
Co-founder, Senior Advisor, President of the Board, RESTORE HOPE
Dr. Bob Rufsvold and James Kpangbai, RHL Field Coordinator, hold clinic under the mango trees in Nyokolitahun, Kolahun District, Lofa County, Liberia.
Native Sons of kolahun join RHL
native sons of kolahun join
​restore hope: liberia's advisory board
When people leave Liberia, whether they were born and grew up there, or lived and worked there for a brief period of time, they leave behind a little piece of their heart. They take with them the heartfelt memories of another life, of people, family who are gone, and a place that cannot be forgotten, though some of those memories are difficult.
Some were forced to leave family behind in times of bitter struggle. Some left to pursue education, some because of war, disease, or to seek a better livelihood. Some left at the end of their work or volunteer assignment.
Though many do not return, many do, the attachments and memories bringing them "home" to Mama Liberia. They return to provide continued support to their families, their communities. Others to be of service to those communities that "adopted" them.
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA has been organized as a community of support by a number of those "returnees" who will always love Liberia and her people.
We're very pleased to announce that two very prominent Sons of Kolahun have agreed to join our Advisory Board. Dr. Andrew Cole, M.D., and Vamba Sherif will be known to many and their stories may be familiar. We share their short biographies here.
And, as a special bonus, Vamba Sherif has written a short account of his very vivid memories of Dr. Cole, carried in his heart since he was a young boy in Kolahun, for many years and across thousands of miles. We're grateful that Kolahun and RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA have brought them together again.
dr andrew cole, MD
​Dr. Andrew Cole is a native son of Liberia, born in the village of Fangalahun, in the Kolahun District of Lofa County. He came to the US as a teenager and pursued his education here, always planning to return to Liberia one day.
​Following his undergraduate education at
Gonzaga University, Dr. Cole studied medicine and received his medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington, in 1972. He completed his internship and residency, training that included medicine, surgery and pediatrics, in Youngstown, Ohio.
Dr. Cole provides RESTORE HOPE with extensive, deep, pre-war history and knowledge of health care in Liberia and Kolahun. Following two years of post-graduate medical education in medicine and surgery, Dr. Cole returned to Liberia in 1974. For the next three years he served as the Medical Director at Curran Lutheran Hospital in Zorzor.
Recognizing the need to improve pediatric care in Liberia, Dr. Cole returned to the US to complete a full pediatric residency, learning skills he knew were so needed back in Liberia.
Returning to Liberia once again in 1981, he served as the staff pediatrician at Phebe Hospital in Bong County until 1983. His work then took him full circle as he returned to Lofa County where he served as the County Health Officer for Lofa County, and as Medical Director of Kolahun Hospital from 1983 to 1990.
​Dr. Cole's professional experience has also included Lassa Fever Control efforts in Liberia (1982-1990), planning and evaluating community health and financial programs in Lofa Co., and participant in the WHO World Health Assembly (1983-1989) and as WHO Board Member (1988-1989).
The outset of the Liberian Civil War forced Dr. Cole and his family to flee Kolahun and the country, leaving behind a beloved community. Though he returned to the United States to live and practice medicine, a piece of his heart remained in Kolahun. He and his wife have returned to the community on numerous service missions over the years.
Currently Dr. Cole provides Family Medicine and Pediatrics services for the community of New Castle, Pennsylvania.
Vamba Sherif
​Vamba Sherif was born in Kolahun, Lofa county, Liberia. In his early teens, he moved to Kuwait, where he attended high school and wrote his first story. During the First Gulf War, he fled Kuwait through Basra and Bagdad to the border with Jordan. There he was forced to stay at a refugee camp where thousands of refugees lived. There were hardly any facilities. For months, he suffered deprivation, and the heat and dust of the desert. The experience marked him forever.
On leaving the camp, he arrived in Amman, where he stayed for a while before settling in Damascus. He could not return to Kuwait or go home to Liberia, and so he sought asylum in The Netherlands. ​
Vamba lost his mother in the Liberian civil war. His memories of her and of his boyhood in Kolahun remain vivid today. His family kept a library full of ancient manuscripts which were handed down from one generation to another. His father, a great scholar, was the custodian of these manuscripts. These manuscripts were burned in the war.
​While living in a refugee camp in The Netherlands, at the height of the war in Liberia, Vamba decided to attempt to explain the complexity of his country's history to himself by trying to write about it. He wrote Land of my fathers, a novel about the founding of Liberia with the return of the freed men and women from America to Africa in the 19th century.
Vamba Sherif is a lawyer by training and has written many novels and edited the anthology, Black: Afro-European literature in The Netherlands and Belgium.
Besides his love of writing and his collection of rare books on Africa, Sherif has developed a passion for films, which he reviews. He's ambassador for the Dutch Refugee Council. He has written for The New York Times, Long Cours in France and Kulturaustauch in Germany, and many other newspapers and magazines. He divides his time between The Netherlands and Liberia.
how i met dr. cole - by vamba sherif
I met Dr. Andrew Cole in my early teens in Kolahun, Lofa county, Liberia. It was not so much a meeting as a glance from the distance. I was standing in a long queue along the main road in Kolahun, together with students from other schools who had turned out in droves to welcome him. I saw Dr. Cole alight from the car, and I felt at that moment that he was the sum of my dreams. At no time did the profession of medicine become so attractive to a child than at the sight of a man who had been educated in America and had returned home to help his people. I wanted to be like him, to know him and to learn from him. It seemed a far-fetched dream for a child of my circumstances, but not impossible.
My daily life in Kolahun consisted of waking at dawn in Sherif Quarter to sweep the compound, fetch water from the well nearby, and then head to the school up the hill, in the direction of Halaypo.
My brother, Vamuyan Sherif, and the people of Kolahun had built the school after his return from his studies in Egypt. The role my brother would play in my life would help bring me closer to Dr. Cole. Through his efforts, I won a scholarship to attend high school in Kuwait. From there, I began to correspond with Dr. Cole, who was generous enough to respond to my letters. I remember presenting him with a special pen which I had won in a school essay competition in Kuwait.
It was clear that one day I would become a doctor and follow in the footsteps of my hero. But then war broke out in Liberia and in Kuwait, almost at the same time, depriving me of the possibility to pursue my dream. The war left me only with memories of a place and a land that had been altered forever. My attempt to hold onto those memories and onto faces like those of Dr. Cole and many others, including my family, made me a writer. Writing for me is primarily an effort to keep those memories alive.
Dr. Cole succeeded in transforming a small hospital into one of the best in the country. People came from far and near to be admitted to the hospital. He was and still is one of our greatest prides.
where healthcare is scarce
How our health program is growing
Healthcare is scarce in Liberia.
How scarce? The populations of the city of Los Angeles and the country of Liberia are roughly the same size, around 4 million. Los Angeles has about 30,000 physicians, Liberia 300.
Imagine caring for a chronically ill or disabled child in such a place.
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA understands these challenges. We support the most vulnerable children in the Kolahun community, a rural village in northern Liberia. Many of these children have significant health needs. So, we have a full-time registered nurse, Gladys Zarbay, RN, BSN, MPH, on staff to monitor their well-being. Gladys, as our health and nutrition coordinator, is based full-time in Kolahun.
Gladys' busy days are filled with making home visits, assessing, counseling and comforting, advocating for and making sure that our Kolahun Kids receive the health care they need. And she can still have time to play a game with one of the kids. Good luck with that, Gladys — He's a champion!
Leaders and other respected members in the Kolahun community identify which children and households need support, based on our enrollment criteria: orphaned, Ebola survivors, chronically ill or disabled.
An integral part of our health program is home visits, which allows us to assess the children's physical and emotional health, as well as an opportunity to consider their home environment and their relationship with their caregiver. Psychosocial support is offered when needed as well as referrals to the local hospital.
A core component of our model is coordination with local systems. We don't build separate clinics; rather we find ways to strengthen the existing healthcare system. We coordinate care with the hospital and ensure that follow-up appointments are made and that medications are properly administered.
We are also growing our efforts to offer preventive health education within the community. Last year, at the request of education authorities in Kolahun, RESTORE HOPE organized a workshop for young adults interested in teaching sexual and reproductive health sessions at local schools. Liberia has a very high teen pregnancy rate. By the age of 19, three of every five girls are pregnant (UNFPA).
We want to see these girls, along with all the vulnerable children in Kolahun, become healthy, productive leaders of change. These children, whose lives have been greatly challenged by adversity, deserve the opportunity to thrive.
sharing hope
sharing hope - what does hope look like?
What does hope look like? To get an idea, take a look at the children in Kolahun, a small village in northern Liberia.
Children like Helen, for example. She is a high school junior, president of the student body at School of Faith and mother of a 20-month-old son. Helen's father died suddenly of a heart attack six years ago. Her mother has suffered from severe depression ever since.
Helen plans on becoming a doctor. This summer, she marched in the U.N. World Hand Washing Day parade in Kolahun.
After the parade, Helen attended a panel discussion on hand-washing at Kolahun Hospital. When a U.N. representative asked if anyone had comments or questions, Helen stood up and spoke eloquently to a crowd of about fifty professionals on the importance of hygienic practices.
Helen is curious and thirsty for knowledge. She has inspired her friends to pursue academic excellence. One evening, a few days after the parade, Helen and another RESTORE HOPE beneficiary, Hassan (who is also determined to become a doctor), came to the RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA office just as the two doctors at the local hospital, Dr. Raphael and Dr. Christian, arrived.
Along with James, the RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA Field Coordinator, we all sat outside under the mango tree and talked until the sun went down. Dr. Raphael recounted his experience at Foya Hospital (about 11 miles from Kolahun) in early 2014 when he began to see the first Ebola cases. He arranged for the first blood tests to confirm Ebola in suspected cases.
Helen and Hassan listened intently. Dr. Raphael encouraged them, asking thought-provoking, scientific questions. The two young people were ready with possible answers. For example, they knew about ribonucleic acid.
Soon the air was filled with the language of antigens and antibodies. And as the sky turned from blue to orange to dusky purple, and swifts fluttered and soared above, you could almost feel the hope riding on the breeze that touched our faces.
Lives were changing because of courage & hope. Thanks be to God.
TRADITIONAL CRAFT REVIVED
​WOMEN'S WEAVING COOPERATIVE supports emerging Female Entrepreneurs
It was a sultry Friday afternoon. A group of women, taking a break between lessons at their literacy class, were talking among themselves about ways to generate income to improve their household finances. A few of the older women mentioned their skills as weavers, a traditional craft in Kolahun dating back centuries. The craft has been slowly dying in Kolahun, primarily due to dwindling demand for the Country Cloth these women weave. The typical casual dress of women across Liberia today is a t-shirt and wrap skirt, both imported.
The other women were interested in weaving but most didn't have the requisite skills. In the heat of the afternoon, they decided to form the Women's Weaving Cooperative (WWC). They established a 6-month apprenticeship program that would give graduates the option to join the WWC. Each cohort would have 12 apprentices with the two skilled weavers as the instructors. They would meet every Friday and Saturday before their literacy lessons.
​The WWC's first dozen apprentices have graduated; a second group of 12 apprentices is currently enrolled in the program. RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA, with additional funding support from the Friends of Liberia, is supporting the WWC with seed capital to purchase the weaving supplies and underwrite a 4-month business skills training course. As these women embark on their long journey to economic independence, we are also working to secure markets, both in Liberia and internationally, where the Country Cloth would be sold at a fair price to ensure the profitability and sustainability of the venture.
The women of Kolahun have begun weaving an exciting new narrative for their future!
turning the page on literacy
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA Begins a New Chapter with Reading Campaign
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA is currently working on two fronts to address the issue of illiteracy in Kolahun.
Fifty seven percent of adults in Liberia are illiterate, according to UNICEF, primarily due to the disruption in education during the civil war (1989-2003). The literacy rate in Kolahun, a rural village, is likely even higher.
Kolahun's adult women are eager to improve their lives by learning to read, which they know is the gateway to knowledge. They are serious students.
These women are the caregivers of the vulnerable youth that RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA supports. Many of them are fostering orphans or have taken in children of extended family. They are exceptional, though they are not the exception.
On a typical Friday afternoon you will find them at literacy classes taught by RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA staff. In the sparsely furnished classroom (which is often a shaded space under a mango tree), the blackboard will be covered with simple words; students will be practicing their reading and memorizing new vocabulary.
Though they may not know the history of Frederick Douglass, the former slave and American abolitionist, they do share, instinctively, his belief in the power of literacy. When they learn to read and write, they will gain the ability to create their own story, and to shape their lives and the lives of their families and surrounding communities.
​Underscoring its commitment to literacy is RESTORE HOPE's belief that books should be in hands, not on shelves. Thanks to The Desai Family, Ray Clark and Family, Darlington Martor and his team at Anything Is Everything, and other donors, RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA has acquired a significant collection of books.
Children of all ages are devouring them! For a community where books are rare, these are real treasures for the children. During story time, they sit fully absorbed and captivated. It is all so magical.
Starting from the preschool years, the children enrolled in RESTORE HOPE are encouraged to handle books, turn the pages and read as much as they can. Some caregivers will be able to read along with the children, while other caregivers will be strengthening their literacy skills in the process.
At a recent caregivers' meeting, the RESTORE HOPE team stressed the vital importance of regular reading as the foundation to academic success.
The books are currently available to any RESTORE HOPE enrollee or caregiver to check out. Children are encouraged to take them home and read them as much as they'd like.
When the Vocational Education & Training Center is completed, the community library will be set up there to ensure access for all.
The books are also strengthening our tutorial program by giving tutors additional material with which to help students. Tutors will be spending a portion of their afternoons in one-on-one reading sessions with students who need extra literacy assistance.
Meanwhile, RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA is collaborating with local Peace Corps volunteer, Carson Stacey. He and RESTORE HOPE's Field Coordinator, James Kpangbai are planning an upcoming reading competition event for the children.
The ability to read infinitely expands one's world. It gives a depth and fullness to one's life. We are working to make sure each child masters reading, ensuring a lifetime of greater opportunities.
BREAKING GROUND
Construction begins on the VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
​& TRAINING CENTER
The land before construction began.
We believe that something as simple as a roof over one's head significantly increases one's opportunities. In the case of Kolahun, it's a community need, one that RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA aims to meet.
There is very little infrastructure in Kolahun. Most everything happens under the mango tree, as they say. When the weather is fine, this is a pleasant way to work and convene. When it's the rainy season and every day a downpour, the usual work becomes difficult, sometimes impossible.
With a generous donation from the Germany Embassy in Monrovia, a Vocational Education and Training (VET) Center is being built in the district, on a one-acre lot recently purchased by RESTORE HOPE. The site is a short walk from the RESTORE HOPE office on the main road in Kolahun, and thus easily accessible to the community.
The VET Center will be multipurpose. It will be used to hold skills workshops and business training for community-led economic development projects. There will also be a space for small business activities supported by RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA. One such project is the Women's Weaving Cooperative, which produces traditional Liberian Country Cloth. Since their weaving must take place outside due to the size of the wooden looms, the women have been unable to weave during the rainy months, May through October, which has severely limited their productivity. The VET Center will change that.
The Center will also serve as a community space for meetings – the monthly Caregiver Support meeting, for example, where caregivers of vulnerable children, many of whom are serving as foster parents, can meet with RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA staff to discuss challenges and receive support. The VET Center will also house Kolahun's first public library and will be the site of a 4-month business skills training course, to be held this Fall, for women in the Women's Weaving Cooperative and other female entrepreneurs in the community interested in starting or growing their small business.
If the rainy season doesn't slow construction, we hope to finish the VET Center by the end of the year. Look for news of the Grand Opening!
under the mango tree
Many of you are seeing our new logo for the first time. Perhaps you're wondering what inspired the image we chose.
With so many daily activities occurring under the mango tree in Liberia, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to call it the Tree of Life.
The tree helps feed the village. The fruit of the mango – Liberians call it a "plum" – is plentiful.
Its shade provides children a place to play or read a new book, while adults often gather there for literacy classes. Or you might find the Kolahun Women's Weaving Cooperative at work on beautiful Country Cloth or mentoring new weavers.
Meals are often cooked there, and the community gathers to share. Or the sheltering branches sometimes serve as a morning clinic where parents bring children for check-ups. Neighborhood chickens scratch out subsistence among its fallen leaves.
At daybreak, Action, the Yoga Dog, practices his morning routine, downward facing dog, ready to nap in the midday sun, replacing the ever-vigilant lion-dog who stood watch under the tree all night, keeping us safe from every terror, even the imagined ones.
Some nights, women gather there to mourn the death of a child, their wailing songs of grief filling the valley. Some terrors seem unavoidable.
​Laughter, songs, dance, tears – the mango tree bears witness
​to the full cycle of life of the village.
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