Vocational Training

Many of our older children are just not suited to going to school. The classrooms are over crowded, inaccessible and children who are slower to learn really have little chance of getting much attention from an already over stretched teacher.


Both Mamusu and Basiru live in an area we work in called Sima Town, and both have been given a wonderful oppertunity to gain more practical skills at a Vocational Training Centre we have managed to link with. They are the youngest, and the only disabled people there, but both are eager to learn.

Basiru started about a month ago and has already come home proud with some of his accomplished work helping in carpentry. He sure is the talk of his friends!!

While Mamusu hopes start in the tailoring class as soon as possible. There was a slight hitch with Mamusu as the center is a long mountain-path walk away. Basiru is able to walk easily, but Mamusu unfortunatly would not make it in her wheelchair designed for nice smooth pathways. Thankfully, I have contacts with a project funded by Rotary who make PETS - Personal Energy Transportation Systems. These hand propelled carts are much sterdier and able to manage african terrain. Mamusu however had some arm muscle building work to be done. So after a month she is now the proud owner and skilled driver of her own PET. She will need some help on the steep slopes, but otherwise her mum and family are happy to send her off. It's taken some hard work but hopefully she's now got her chance.

People often ask where my office is....

I'm often asked where my office is or where people can find or contact me....

it's a bit hard to give them a definate.....

Abu and are are found...

scaling mountains,

trekking though grasses,

dodging traffic,

ducking under corrugated iron roofs,

turning corners,

scrambling into ravines,

jumping rivers....

you name it, where-ever the families live,

that is where you will find us!!

Though I have to say with temperatures reaching the 30's daily, walking around or in a very hot car, and little shade to be had, sometimes I get to the patients house looking like this:

This particular patient was off with her mum getting water so I took a well needed bit of shut eye...Abu thought it be very funny to 'snap' me!!

Umaru's special chair...

I promised in my last newsletter that I'd post some photos of Umaru's chair so here they are...

Doesn't he look great? The table encourages him to use his hands to not only play, but to support his body too.

Abu is especially proud of this chair since it is the first one he has measured, designed and fitted for himself, with me just double checking the details. So well done Abu too!

The chair can be tilted back to allow Umaru a better chance to keep his body and head upright. This tilting mechanism is hard to make, but our skilled carpenter Allusan does a great job balancing the tilt and safety.

Umaru's family are happy to finally give their son a chance to sit upright, and Umaru will even dance with a huge grin to show us just how much he loves his new chair too!!

Vez's Adventures in SL Feb 09

Dear Friends,

If you asked me how the last month of life has been here in SL, I would say: 'Tell God Tenki', (I give thanks to God) - a Sierra Leonean way of describing just about anything from good thanks, to it's been challenging, or even it's been a disaster but I give God thanks anyway!!
You'll be pleased to hear that it has not been the latter, generally the first, but right now as I sit here writing having been unwell for 4 days and have just tweaked my back, I could say it's been somewhat challenging. I ask God why has it been one thing after the next??

It's a times like these that we get a chance to sit back and wonder....what am I really trying to do here? Well, one great comfort that I have is that even though I'm feeling rather useless to my patients, our work has still continued....Abu has been going out on his own and I have confidence that he has been doing a great job. It has been a growing time for him to use the skills he has been building on, and although he has worked without me to maintain treatment before, he now has more skills to clinically justify what is needed more independently and therefore provides a better service. So although I feel purposeless, I'm happy that Abu has this opportunity without me taking control. Maybe it was the only way to keep my big nose out!!

At the beginning of the month, I had two UK Physiotherapists come out to help. Jenny and Caroline are good friends of mine from a hospital I worked at in the UK. I often find myself very isolated with few other trained therapy professionals around, so it was refreshing to have others to bounce ideas off. They were a tremendous help giving ideas for some of my more complex patients who I had started to run out of ideas for. We also took some time off to enjoy old friendships and see more of this beautiful country. We camped on beaches, ate fresh fish, walked in jungles, and wandered through colourful markets. Sierra Leone could really be an amazing tourist destination, if only it's infrastructure was a little more solid. The new government are working on it.

From time to time people ask about individual patients that I have been working with for a while. It's hard to know who to update you all on since we work with so many families now. But this month let me give you an update about Amara.

He is a 12 year old boy who we have been working with for over a year and a half now. He sadly got a Spinal Cord Injury from falling in an open ditch while playing with his friends. This left him paralysed from his chest down and in a bad way. When we first met him it had only just happened and at that point his fracture was unstable and his spinal cord damage not total. However since the roads are so bad and the hospitals so far, it was impossible to move him to a hospital for treatment. Instead, with liaison from doctors at an NGO hospital, we decided to teach the family how to nurse him at home. When I say home I mean a room with a straw mat on the floor shared with others, mud bricks and corrugated iron roof.
The first 6 months went well and although Amara had to learn to move again, he had soon mastered rolling himself, sitting up on his own and even getting from the floor to a bench (which I challenge you to have a go at without using your legs to push). Due to a generous donation, we had also been able to make his hut wheelchair accessible, as well as the route to school. There were complications like dizziness and pressure sores, not having enough arm strength to push his wheelchair on the rough ground around his house, severe painful spasms in his legs and as you can imagine a very low mood. Then another terrible thing happened. He was getting a persistent cough and despite sending him to several doctors in local medical facilities, nothing appropriate was being done. This is when it gets very frustrating. Eventually, I decided that if drastic action was not taken, I was afraid we'd loose him altogether. So we took him on a 2 hour journey across the city to an NGO hospital, who after some X-rays and investigations diagnosed him with TB Spine. Due to his health vulnerability, and his crowded and unsanitary living conditions, Amara was an easy target for this rapidly spreading disease, and for him it was a double whammy, one spinal problem on top of another.

Treatment for TB is free in this country, but to see the Dr to prescribe it is not. So we delved down the depths of the government hospital systems to get the TB medicines, and despite the normal route being admission (another great expense), we worked out with them a way for a social worker to follow him up at home and eventually he is now on them. The course takes over 6 months daily, but we are really encouraging Amara's Grani (we have never seen his parents) to be diligent at going weekly to get them.

It has been a long rough road for Amara, but since January life does seem to be settling down for him. He has finally returned to school, which is the biggest achievement for him, his Grani and us. Now at last he has something to occupy his mind and time again. His friends come gladly in the morning to push him to school and he returns, tired, but I can't help but think happy and proud. And so he should be! Amara is my most sad story and clinically most difficult to manage patient. He still has bad spasms in his legs though they are no longer painful, and we have not been able to prevent him getting contractures. But we can say without doubt, that our support of this family has made a difference in his life, and although I think Amara used to feel like we were the enemy, now he can see that we are true friends after all.

A new patient that I will tell of briefly is Umaru. He is the young son of a tailor who works in a small busy workshop in Freetown. We squeeze through the hot bodies and roaring sewing machines to get to a small room at the back where Umaru, his mum and 2 other sons are waiting for us. We have only seen them a handful of times, but they warmly welcome us each time. Umaru has quad Cerebral Palsy, which he acquired after his brain was damaged during some severe convulsions at 1 year old. We dont know what caused the convulsions, maybe malaria, maybe another virus, who knows he never saw a doctor, but sadly although sitting and standing before his sickness, he can now bearly hold his head up. Umaru does not like 'white man' (yet!) so I actually do not even touch him, but Abu has started well, and has even fitted him with a special chair. This the first chair Abu has taken the lead in - measured, designed, liaised with our carpenter and final fitting with straps. He looks great...photos to follow on website shortly.

Please pray with us for :
Thank God for the honour it is to have the freedom to work in
faith for these disabled children (this is from Abu)
Thanks that Amara is doing so well and pray for continued progress
Thanks for Bertie the Landrover who's had a good month, only 2 problems!!
For Abu's continued learning and taking clinical leads
To cope with the heat in march, the hottest month
for my health to improve
Continued success (and patience) in our working with other organisations
For our new MercyShips home – we moved last weekend and

are having many teething problems

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

With Love, Vez

In it for the wrong reasons? Not me!

Why be a therapist?
Why work with patients?
Why bother?

Well, all my answers for these questions are as you'd expect if you know me at all.
I care for my patients, I want to show Jesus' love in all that I do, I enjoy the challenge of medical situations are are all different, and find that using my creativeness I can make a differnece in many a child's and family's life.

Thats why.

So when I working with other people / organisations whose staff are only in it for the status it gives them, the money it pays, try to get away with as little work as they can, don't keep deadlines and promises, and take 4 hours of me waiting with children to tell us so...i can get VERY annoyed.
Sometimes it seems they think I am trying so hard for my benifit, but it is the people, in fact the children of their own country that I am trying to advocate for and get the benefits for. We are not talking extras or luxaries, no we're talk about being able to walk or going back to being wheelchair bound, which they had worked so hard over the last year with me to be able to walk their way out of.
Arrrgghh...

One day the world will be a fair place.

Jen & Caroline Visit...

What do you get when you put 3 physios who all lived and worked together in the early years and dump them in Freetown?

Fun, hard work and ...run belli!!

So we visited a few beaches too...

And then some more work...

The hard bit was saying goodbye :o( but it was great having them here for a while.

Thanks friends.

Vez's Adventures in SL January 09

Dear Friends,

Many, O Lord my God, are the wonderful works which You have done;
and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to you in order;
if I would speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.
Psalm 40:5

This New Year started from me by thinking back over the past, acknowledging all the good things God has done for me...too many to be counted. I am living a dream to be working with disabled children in Africa. A dream that God put on my heart since long, a dream that is full of adventure, a dream that brings me to tears often and a dream that it is an honour to play a part in. Whatever you are doing right now in this life that God has given us, make it count, enjoy the moment, and don't forget to give God the glory.

So the year has started well with old patients progressing, and new patients still finding their way to us. I used to describe finding new children like finding treasure, it seems that this treasure chest is bottomless, and so we continue to do what we can for them.

We have spent much time liaising with and partnering with other organisations. It seems that we are having a role matching appropriate patients together with the people who are trying to help, whether that be people who are in country or visiting specialists from overseas. Being in SL a while now and knowing many patients, we are in a good position to do so facilitating success for everyone. For Jamestina above, we are hoping for some club foot surgery from a visiting orthopaedic surgeon. She is a fun and determined girl but several different problems with both her legs and her L hand. She had been told that she would not walk, however she is already doing so with support and we hope will continue to do well.
Then there is Hawanatu and Sheku from SOS, who both have had TB of the Spine in the past leaving them with bad hunch back postures and leg paralysis. We were able to facilitate their assessment by a team from USA called FOCUS who are able to do spinal stabilisation surgery on some of these cases in Ghana. X-rays and assessments have been completed, so we'll see what happens next.

We have been working much more closely with Handicap International (HI), the only other NGO offering rehabilitation services. They are in the process of advising and handing over to the government the Rehab Centre they set up. This is a risky journey as when they pull out altogether, the government will really have to continue to make rehab a priority for this country if it is to stay open. I have recently heard a statistic that 1 in 5 people in SL have some kind of disability. I hope this truth is not ignored.

Our working with HI has been to work together on difficult cases since they are my only place to refer now for Orthotics and Prosthetics after the sad closure of Mercy Ships New Steps programme. Hamza is one such case. His walking is affected by a shortened leg caused by a badly dislocated hip that he still weight bears on as it's his only option to keep mobile. He also has neurological problems causing tightness of his legs and poor balance, as well as other bony abnormalities. It's a wonder he is still walking, let alone with a smile. So we are liaising with HI and Orthotists in UK to find the best options to keep him on his feet, especially since where he lives (down the side of a steep mountain) would not be accessible by wheelchair even if we could get one!

Abu, my assistant, continues to learn and is now getting more involved in measuring and designing specialist equipment that we have made. He is also on a steep learning curve regarding Orthotics and Prosthetics. I keep having to take a step back and not assume that he should know stuff, it is all very new to him after all. So slowly he is getting more exposure and taking in what he can.

Bertie, my sometimes not so trusty Landrover, has been the cause of many a frustration and the expenditure of big money (not good when the value of the Pound is crashing). This month it has been the gear box and clutch. I get cross at how much it keeps costing to buy parts, and how often things go wrong. But I learnt the hard way this week what it would mean not to have it..... back in the early days I was using public transport, and this week I have reverted back to that. Yesterday, we were working on the same side of town that I live, and we walked in total for 4 hours in the sun, and only saw 3 families!! Most of this was to find one family who we had not visited at home before, it turns out that we were waiting for each other on different bridges!! By the time we had met, it had taken walking for an hour up a dirt road, which would have taken maybe 15 mins in the car. So it is worth it to be paying the money to fix the car, I could not be as effective without it.

Over the Christmas time, I travelled with some Mercy Ships friends out to a village on the far east of Sierra Leone called Koindu. This village was severely attacked during the war times as it is on the Liberian border. I had been there 2 times previously with the New Steps team, and this visit we even found one man we had given a pair of crutches to back in 2005. They were still going strong and were being well looked after as in his words ”there would be no where else to get new ones if they did break”. We experienced much of village life from kids galore, playing with traditional games, seeing where they fetch water from a natural spring, picking greens to be cooked, washing clothes on stones by another bigger river and seeing schools in burnt out buildings. We were going primarily for a break but did end up getting involved in a very sick 12 year old with meningitis, who despite our efforts sadly died.

So to end this newsletter, I ask you again that if you pray,
please remember us,
# the families we work with and our treasured children
# our safety as we travel around
# Abu's learning and my teaching of him
# Bertie's health and the cost of it
# my sanity in the depths of often long, hot and frustrating days
# success in our working with other organisations
but most importantly
# for GOD's GLORY TO SHINE THROUGH US IN ALL WE DO.

With Love and thanks, Vez