Trees are only a link in the chain

I made much adoo about the tree planting project for Taiama farm in advance of my trip. There was some justification for that effort. Trees produce fruit, fruit produces income, income produces empowerment. In addition to the production of fruit, some of the trees are there for their soil enhancement properties, and still others (in addition to that) are to be consumed by humans and animals for much improved nutrition and production. The concept of alley farming between rows of these soil improving trees is going to be promoted, thus fulfilling the vision of Taiama farm being a model of modern agriculture for the region. The most important part of the tree planting effort is not in the fruit produced, the fodder created for animals, the improved nutrition that the Moringa trees bring, or the modern agricultural practices displayed. The true value in planting trees is the investment in the future.

By planting a vegetable seed, the planter is looking at the season for relief from hunger and for short term income. By planting a tree, the planter is putting his hope in a few years down the road, and into the next generation. I can see how difficult that might be for the people of Sierra Leone who lost half a generation to a Civil War that they had no hand in starting. Can another Civil War be that far away? Can an investment in trees payoff before some other devestation is laid on the land and the people? Only time will tell, but we must make every effort to lift up a down trodden nation so that it will see that it has value, it has vitality, it has hope. The planting of a tree is a tangible manifestation of hope. Good Lord willing, that hope will come to fruition.

Sierra Leone Sojourn

A sojourn is defined as "To stay for a time in a place; to rest." Such is a mission trip to Sierra Leone. For all the work, all the lack of comforts, all the strain being on "Africa time," and all the food issues, each a story unto itself, it is still a sojourn.

This time around, my third trip to Sierra Leone, I spent time on the farm and in the Pharmacy. Pharmacy time is, for me, a simple effort of counting pills and packaging them up for whomever is acting pharmacist. In most cases, the pharmacist was my friend Robert Hill. He is given the task of reading the short hand of the doctors prescriptions and calling out what needs to be filled. That is the hard part. Anyone can count pills, and when you put your head down and just do the job, the time eases by proportionate to your energy level dropping. I took this picture one day as things were beginning to ease up in the pharmacy. With a point and shoot Nikon Coolpics, it isn't bad. A little better framing and a little better handling of the light and it would have been fabulous. Aren't these girls just beautiful? They were quiet and not very engaging, sick I suppose. But their mother struck me deeply. She is a typical Sierra Leonean mother, young, pretty, and quiet. I see her quiet suffering in her gaze toward her daughters. There is a story behind her eyes; a story that we may or may not want to hear. Maybe she is normally an energetic, engaging, funny, or gregarious, but today her countenance is showing the wear of living in a hard, poor society. Today she is showing what life is really like in the most impoverished nation in the world. Today, she is Sierra Leone.

Hopefully in the days and weeks to come, I can blog about the days I sojourned in Siera Leone. So many stories to tell, and so much left to decifer in my mind. Certainly a lot of enlightenment yet to come. So, I will leave it here for now. This picture is of a decaying mural painted on the outside wall of a girls secondary school where one of our Sierra Leonean friends, Samuel Kangaju, is a teacher. It is just a glimpse of that culture and how difficult things are to change.