The 321st good thing about Lagos: organizations that help girls in trouble

During my time in Nigeria, I have been blessed to associate with a great group of Christian ladies.  We meet for Bible study each week.  This last spring our group leaders organized an opportunity to put our Christian values into action.  We had previously done some support and fund-raising for Genesis House, a shelter and rehabilitation home for young girls who had been involved in the sex trade.  Their stated mission is to "re-orientate, rehabilitate, educate and empower displaced women and enable them to fulfill their potential."  It is a really good thing that places like this exist.  We had earlier watched a video that had been produced about Genesis House, and it left us all in tears as we saw the depths that these girls had come from and the way their countenances changed when they were able to live in a place where they had some hope for a better future. 

 

 

 

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We decided that our efforts this year would be to do some remodeling and painting of a room that was going to be used as a study room for the girls.  My husband's employer was downsizing their offices about this time, so I was able to get some donations of office furniture and shelves and assorted storage furniture for the facility in general.  I hope it has come in handy for them.  On this day, we traveled to Genesis House to do some painting.

This sign was taped up in their entryway.  A good reminder!

 Here's a "before" picture. 

We said hello to the girls, who were in a classroom next to the room we were painting.  I didn't take pictures of them to preserve their privacy.

 We moved the wall shelf and table leaning against the wall,

 and got to work cleaning and scraping the walls.

 We painted the room a bright green.

 I always enjoy painting a room because it's such a quick and dramatic transformation of the space.

We had a bunch of other ideas and plans for furnishings and decorations.  I'm not sure what was done later in the spring, as I left town shortly after this work day.  I'd like to return for a visit to see how the room looks now.  I hope as the girls in Genesis House spend time in the room, they are able to feel our love, concern and hopes for a better life for them.

The 304th good thing about Lagos: a school and clinic that are going to get some help

I posted recently about a visit I made to Ife Oluwa just before I left Lagos for the Christmas holidays.  The women that came with me for that visit have joined with other expat women and I now have a big group of women that are really interested in getting involved with this school and clinic.  They've delivered school supplies and ordered more.  They have purchased items such as cleaning supplies, medical supplies and solar powered lanterns.  They did some fundraising with a jewelry sale and some of the proceeds will go to supplies for the school. They are going to get some fabric to make curtains to brighten up the school.  Some teachers are planning to go over regularly to do some supplemental activities -- reading, art, etc. with the students.  A nurse went and sat in on the weekly prenatal checkups and got ideas for how we could help them with their clinic services.

I didn't get pictures of the clinic, but it is in need of a makeover.  We are trying to find a new delivery bed for them -- there's is rusty and held together with string.  When my nurse friend spent the day with the expectant moms, she got a list of the prices the clinic patients pay.  For the equivalent of about 30 cents, they can have their urine tested and get prenatal vitamins for a week.  If they want an ultrasound scan, it is under $10.  They saw around 50 patients that morning and the head nurse was very excited to get 9000 naira in proceeds -- about $57.  Apparently having a white visitor prompted many to pay up that normally would have pleaded that they didn't have the money.  So it is clear that they operate on a shoestring.  The staff frequently are behind a month or more in getting paid because they see a lot of patients who are unable to pay their bills.  They work pretty much on a cash in/cash out basis.  The staff is paid each day by the money that they receive and they have a hand-written log book where the doctor keeps track of how much each of the staff has been paid toward their monthly salary.  We will try to help them get up to date with their salaries and also work on getting them some donations of things like rubber gloves and basic supplies.

I did get some pictures of the school:

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 All the women, many of whom are educators, have been really impressed with the learning going on in these classrooms.  Though they don't have much in the way of supplies or books, the teachers seem competent and not stressed and the children are learning.  One woman tested a classroom of 4-year olds and they were working on counting by twos.  They were able to count to 80 by twos!  Pretty amazing!  And they were reading as well.  This expat got information on the tuition fees and staff requirements and found that they are running the school with $79 per student per year -- and that is if all the tuition was paid up, which it never is!  And the children are learning!

 You can see that they need some kind of curtains.  The sun gets bright.  But they need the light to see, because most of the day they don't have any electricity.

 They could also use some general facility repair.

 The headmistress is a beautiful and friendly woman with a big smile.

 The kids are always friendly.

 I would love to find a company wanting to do community service, or Scout looking for an Eagle project or someone with some time and some money to take on fixing up this playground.  There are 114 children at this school and this is their playground.  Two swingset frames with no swings.  A basketball backboard with no hoop.  A slide tower with no slide.  There's no functional play equipment at all.  Wouldn't it be great to come up with a real playground for these kids?

 We always go upstairs to visit Mama when we go to Ife Oluwa.  She has turned over the running of the school and clinic to others now.  She is 84, I think.  Her mind is still very sharp but her body is slowing down.  Her feet hurt so she has a hard time getting around.  She is still grateful for the wheelchair we were able to get donated for her.  She had these kids come up from the school to meet us.  She is taking care of them.  Their father recently died and their mother is absent for some reason.  So she is taking care of them and giving them a home and they go to her school.  She said having them there makes her happy and she loves them.

 I liked these handwriting practice sentences!

It is amazing what this school and clinic are able to do with such limited resources.  I'm glad that we are generating some excitement and interest by the expat women in helping them improve their facilities.

The 302nd good thing about Lagos: Small World 2012

When it's February in Lagos, it's time for Small World, the biggest expatriate run charity event in Lagos.  The preparations for this event run almost all year -- there is a very dedicated group of women in the general committee who give untold hours organizing the evening.  This year there were over 30  women's organizations, representing different countries, who set up and decorated a booth, prepared a sample of food representive of their country to serve around 1500 people, and many also prepared a portion of the entertainment.  I helped a bit this year with AWC's booth.  The theme this year was "Circus Spectacular."  The entertainment and decorations were supposed to celebrate the circus tradition within each country. 
We had a group of very talented and creative women working on the decorations for the American Women's Club booth.  I came to a work party and spent a bit of time following their instructions -- something I am capable of doing when someone else is doing the creative thinking!

We made some cute clown costumes for our booth workers.  I tried one on so we could see how they looked.  Pretty fun!



On the Saturday evening of Small World, we entered the area on the grounds of the British school, passing down a road lined with posters highlighting the participating country groups and the charities they had nominated to receive their portion of the proceeds from the event.

Here's the USA's poster.  Our nominated charity was an organization that is renovating a building in a crowded market area.  The building will be a center for occupational training in the arts.  They will train people in lighting, makeup, dance, music and related fields.  The building will hold a community library and they will have classes to help those that need literacy training.

The circus theme led to some fun costumes, booth decorations and dances.

The American booth was really fun.  I sewed all those stripes on the tarps for our tent.  It took a lot longer than what I had expected when I volunteered for the job, but I was glad to do it to help out.

Our decoration team was good at recycling:  the stuffed figures that became the clown, ringmaster and trapeze artists were used in previous Small World booth decor, and the line of wooden little people cutouts that here represent children going to the circus, in a previous year illustrated the international nature of the United States.

This year our booth served food we might eat at the circus:  mini corn dogs, popcorn and caramel corn, lemonade and other drinks and an assortment of candy.  We also had a supply of red clown noses to hand out.  Over 3000 people come to Small World, so it's a big event.  Brent and I took a shift serving food at the booth, but we had plenty of time to sample food from many of the other country booths.  We always end up with full stomachs before we've made the rounds.

The program at the end was fun and nicely done by many of the countries.  My camera doesn't do well in the dark, but with this picture of the American performance, you can see that we had a team with some great costumes.  They did a good job and said they had a fun time practicing for it.

Best of all, Small World this year earned over 37 million Naira (around $235,000) for Nigerian charities.  That's a really good thing!

The 301st good thing about Lagos: A street boy got a life-line

I've written before about Child Life-Line, a charity that has a residential center for boys that are rescued from the street and also a drop in day center for street kids.  We visited both centers on Valentine's Day, brought them some cookies and brought a couple of new American Women's Club volunteers to see their facilities.

I took more pictures, but there's not a lot different from my earlier visits, so here's just a couple: 

Here's their dining area,

 and some boys looking at the the fish tanks, which they had recently restocked.  They will use the fish for food when they get bigger.

We had an interesting discussion with one of the older boys who was there during our visit.  I won't mention his name for privacy reasons.  But he told us how he came to live on the street.  He was 8 years old and he wanted to go to a friend's party which would be going very late.  His father said he was not allowed to go to the party and said that he if went he would beat him so hard he would kill him.  I guess this father did have a history of abusive behavior and the boy believed him, but he still decided to go to the party.  The party was over around 2 in the morning (yeah, I'd be pretty angry if my 8 year old was out till the middle of the night at a party without my permission!) and he decided that he would just run away from home rather than go home to have a beating.  So he just left.  He migrated to a different place in Lagos and started working as a bus conductor (at 8!).  The "bus conductors" ride on the mini buses like the one in this picture, usually hanging out the door, collecting money from the passengers as they cram inside the bus.  It's really kind of a dangerous job, as many times they end up falling out of the bus.  I can't imagine an 8-year-old doing this job.

He slept under the bus at night and every once in a while would pay a little money to wash up at a public bath house.  He lived like this for 3 years and when he was 11 he got tired of this life.  He had heard of Child Life Line from somewhere and he was able to get a place there.  They sent him to school, helped him get in touch with his family.  He talks to his father regularly now and says they have a pretty good relationship, but he doesn't want to go home to live with them.  He says he has better opportunities living at Child Life Line.  He is currently 16 years old and is working at an apprenticeship for a printer.  He enjoys his work.  He has another year and then he will have to move out on his own, but he feels he will be ready.  He seemed like a good young man and I'm glad that this charity organization was there to give him a life line to help him get off the streets.

The 295th good thing about Lagos: a day center for street kids

Before I left Lagos for Christmas, I visited a new facility that serves the needs of kids that live on the street.  The Child Life Line Reception Center at Gbagada is a drop-in day center for street kids.  They have another center in Ibeshe, near Ikorodu, that is residential for street boys, which has been in existence for a number of years. This new facility, just opened a year ago February,  gives street kids (boys and girls on alternate days) a place to come during the day. 

They wash their clothes and have a place to clean up, sleep in the morning (since they can't sleep much on the streets at night) and have some classes or training on life skills or literacy and they get a free meal.  The center is just open from 7 AM to 4 PM, so at 4 they go out to their life on the streets -- most have some kind of jobs.  Some boys work as a bus conductor, for example.  Child Life line's staff of social workers try to get kids reunited with their families wherever possible, or to get some that are willing into residential centers that have openings.  Some of the kids are fine with living on the street and don't want another life, but this center gives them a quiet, secure place to spend part of their day. 

 These boys had been awakened from their morning sleep to greet us.

 They sleep on mats in this room.

 Laundry draped on the wall to dry.  The Reception Center is trying to organize locker storage space so each of the regular attendees can keep a spare set of clothes at the center so they can wear that set while they wash the clothes they came in wearing.

The children that use the center vary each day.  They tend to have around 15 kids there each day, but it varies widely.  They separate the sexes they allow in each day, as there were a multitude of problems that arose when they were there together. ;o)  But occasionally when something special is going on, they allow both boys and girls to come use the facilities on a certain day, and attendance always goes way up that day.  The staff track the attendance of the kids, but can do nothing but make the facilities more useful or appealing to encourage the kids to come there.  

This is the kitchen where the cook fixes lunch each day.  There isn't much working equipment here, but getting a free meal is a real plus for these kids.

 Below is the bathroom building.  Getting another one built is a priority for the Center and I'm working on some angles trying to help them get funding for this.  The kids line up to use the one toilet and shower each morning.  They have plans for another building next to this one that will have two toilets and two showers.  It is really needed!

 The shower looks like it's almost in the toilet....

 I'm sure having the foosball and ping pong games are a real draw for the boys.  The concrete tanks in the background are fish tanks.  They have similar ones at the Residential Child Life Line Center.  The tanks had recently been stocked with small fish and they will be great to use for their meals when they get bigger.

 The boys we met seemed to be quite happy having a quiet and safe place to stay during the day.

Living on the street is sometimes appealing to children who have left home to get away from rules.  For a time, many enjoy having a job that brings them in a dollar or so a day and the freedom to do as they please.  Some street children have been thrown out of their homes for various reasons.  Whatever reason they are on the street, I know that it is a good thing that they have a safe and quiet place to spend part of their day.

The 294th good thing about Lagos: cute school kids at Ife Oluwa

Before I left for Christmas I made a stop at Ife Oluwa, a charity that is supported by the American Women's Club.  They serve the community with a clinic and a school.   I was delivering a baby scale that had been donated by a Girl Scout group in the States.  The nurses in the clinic were thrilled to get the scale, saying that they didn't have one that worked. 

 I stopped in and visited the school and caught the kids at lunchtime.  The school provides a lunch for them every day.

I've been making some repeated visits to this charity recently.  They are having some hard times making ends meet, especially with the clinic.  The school generally can keep up with paying their salaries, but the clinic often gets behind on their salaries, as the clients of the clinic don't always pay their bills and Mama insists they treat those who come to them even if they haven't paid what they owe.  The AWC approved the use of some discretionary funds to help them with the clinic salaries last month, and the doctor who manages the accounts is hopeful that by March they will be up to date.  I'm visiting Ife Oluwa tomorrow with some interested women and we will be asking questions and assessing how we can help this charity meet the needs of those they serve.