BEING A WOMAN OR WANTING TO BE A LADY
DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO LOSE YOUR INNOCENT APPROACH TO MEN
WE ARE YOUTHFUL AND REFRESHING ; YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND VERY SWEET
YOU ARE A WOMAN AND VERY SOFT AND IT WOULD BE A GREAT LOSS FOR YOU TO BE HARDENED
AND SOPHISTICATED TO THE WORDS OF MEN
BEING A WOMAN IS GREAT.
-By Sandra Amoah
Recently, I was contacted by someone who had stumbled upon this website as a result of a Google search for “Adullam Orphanage”. This person emailed me to let me know that she was very much enjoying the photos and stories being posted about the orphanage, as she had volunteered there some years back. She recognized many of the faces of the children and commented on how much they had grown since she had last seen them in person. She also let me know that she had donated mattresses and sheets for the school 2 years back (a bit of a pity to see how quickly they deteriorated). Due to a car injury, she has been under doctor’s orders to not travel, so this blog became her window to seeing a place that she missed and that meant a lot to her.
About a week later, another person contacted me, who had also found this blog while looking for Adullam on the internet. She told me that she is in fact in the process of adopting a 7 year-old girl from the orphanage! She shared the girl’s name with me and I was able to find the girl and send some photos of her to her prospective new parents. It turns out that these photos were the first they had seen of their prospective daughter wearing girlie clothes! I was able to put a smile on someone’s face with the photos we took that day. What a treat to be able to do such a thing for someone so far away, who is bound by ties of love to Adullam.
I am currently out of the country so my posts will be less, but I do hope to continue the Kinky Foo-Foo project into the future. It is such a pleasure to work with children, as they are so very generous with their love and affection.
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I spent a few hours at the orphanage today settling the accounts for the donations raised for the orphanage, and also to play with the kids a bit. The newest addition to the orphanage is a tiny infant girl. Her mother had her “too soon” after her first child and she felt like she would [...]
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Eric Gaetin
Editor’s note: My husband and I met Eric at the Adullam Orphanage in Obuasi, Ghana. Eric used to live at Adullam and is one of numerous older kids who rely on the orphanage’s financial support as they are “re-integrated” into society. He is currently attending Senior Technical High School, which around here basically comes in the form of a boarding school. Kids such as Eric take their education very seriously, because they know it’s their best hope out of the vicious cycle of poverty and despair that they were born into and struggling to get out of.
Both my husband and I were both very impressed with Eric. He is one of those people that you just feel somehow calm around. My husband told me later that Eric had told him a little bit about how he had come to needing crutches to get around. Later that day, I was able to make get a brief but poignant life story from Eric via text messages from a borrowed cell phone. Here it is:
“I was born on 14/12/1992 and when got 12 years I got sick and I was taken to the hospitel and the doctor ingected me on the wrong place and I have been like this for 7 years.
I was once taken to a hospitel and we had operation. The doctor told us to came on the year so he [could] do for me to be who I am but when we came back my father was sacked from the conpany he was working for so he had no money to take care of me again.
I became a beger when my father say because of me he lost his job because he think I am cursed so he was not going to take care of me agaen [anymore]. So one day I was beging and I met the owner of the orphanage and I went to her 4 her 2 help me and she told she [would] help me 2 the orphanage.
I need your help in my education if only u or u can get someone to pay my school fees for me I will always pray 4 u. god
I’m in high school so I need to pay my school fees* and my mother has no money because she work to take care of the rest.** I don’t live with my mother I’m with a friend. And for dreams I want to be a produser in music.”
-Eric Gaetin
* Eric’s quarterly school fees are 400 GHS ($244 USD)
** Eric’s mother works at a palm oil processing plant. This is considered to be some of the worst work of all in Ghana. It’s back-breaking labor under deplorable conditions, which is done almost exclusively by women. I imagine the laborers must all have respiratory problems from the constant oily smoke they inhale. The day wage for these laborers is about 5 GHS ($3 USD), which is pathetic even by Ghanaian economic standards.
Although at the moment Eric is primarily concerned with staying in school, he has shared with me that there is also a surgery that can revert his atrophied leg condition and make it possible for him to walk without crutches again.
If you would like to help Eric and other kids like him, contact me directly at kinkyfoofoo@gmail.com.
Palm oil production site
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Today we went back to the orphanage to give away the last remaining gifts to the kids who hadn’t gotten something yesterday. We also got some nice photos, as well as some that really depict the existing situation at the orphanage more effectively than words can convey. Here you go:
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We did it! Each child got an appropriate gift. The bigegest hits were the football jerseys and the footballs for the boys, and the necklaces for the older girls. I wish we could have gotten better and more photos but the crowd control was intense and it was an “all hands on deck” thing, once [...]
I apologize for having been offline for a while, but I have been ill with a cold/flu/cough and have spent the majority of the last 3 days in bed trying to get better for the big gift-giving day at the orphanage.
It has not been super easy to find appropriate gifts for all the orphans. There were a number of factors to consider and work with: (1) they don’t exactly have toy stores around here and toy selection is extremely limited, so everything was purchased piecemeal at different marketplaces; (2) the gifts had to be of a similar value all around so as not to create undue jealousy or animosity; (3) we had to purchase age-appropriate gifts for children from age 3 months to 19 years.
In spite of many attempts to do so, we were never able to determine exactly how many children there are of what age ranges. So please keep your fingers crossed that we have enough for every age range.
In order to ensure we don’t inadvertently create World War III at the orphanage on Boxing Day, we are going to have the orphans file into the cafeteria one at a time and give them their gifts that way. So please do not expect to see photos of all the children opening their gifts at once, because we won’t be able to make that happen, as much as we would like to.
Here are a few photos of gift-wrapping preparations…we leave in a few minutes to give the orphans the gifts that your donations have so generously paid for!
More soon…
The youngest child at Adullam Orphanage. His young teenage mother died giving birth to him.
Parents are fond of putting their children into child labour. Because of poverty some parents are fond of not working but putting their child into this kind of act. The children rather fo in for rugs, teenage pregnancy. Oh Mother Ghana, what a bad habitat we have.
-By Sandra Amoah
Elizabeth, Benjamin, Najact and Ebenezer
I recently asked our readers what they would like the Kinky Foo-Foo writers to write about. In this way, I assembled about 15 questions and then turned these over to Ebenezer and his crew. They then chose a few questions which they wrote their answers to. If you haven’t noticed by now, Ebenezer doesn’t work alone. He and Najact collaborate on everything they submit, often with the help of other children as well. In this case, all 4 collaborators are pictured above.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Ans: United. State of America (USA) because they are hard-working people, respectful, kind-hearted people and you can earn a living there when you are hardworking person.
What makes you happy?
Ans: When Ghanaian girls and women are dancing out cultural dance Kete and Adwoa on Television and chatting with my friends, playing with them and singing, reading and riding bicycle and playing football, etc.
When you think about Anja’s life in America, how do you imagine it to be?
Ans: Very cool, wonderful, fantastic, nice and beautiful because when we go to her house in Obuasi she is very neat so we think her life in America is fabulous.
What is your favorite subject in school? Who is your favorite teacher and why?
Ans: Ebenezer likes RME [Religious and Moral Education] and Twi, Najact also likes English and Twi and Elizabeth also likes citizenship, RME and Maths.
- By Ebenezer Boadu, Najact Abdulai, and Elizabeth and Benjamin Donkor
