Reading, Writing and Rabbits
Can you make sense of the following?
Of course not, it's gobbledegook. Was it baffling to try? Frustrating? Scary even?
Being locked out of essential information, directions and understanding is the suffocating daily experience of thousands of illiterate women. Exacerbate that despair with hungry children, no means of income, and economic paralysis, and the lonely void is dark indeed.
Samaritan's Purse Project Manager, Joni Byker, working in Liberia, West Africa, explains: "Between 1989 and 2003 brutal civil war tore Liberia apart. Survival became more important than school. Today there are thousands of women who are struggling to survive and feed their families. 80% of Liberians are both illiterate and without adequate jobs to sustain their families."
37-year-old mother of two, Sao Jallah, lived through violence, looting and 14 years of war which left her own mother to bring up six children alone. With an ache in her voice she recalls: "I wanted to learn. I really wanted to go to school. The war came and it just spoiled everything. And nobody was there to help us."
Through Samaritan's Purse, working in partnership with enthusiastic local churches, about 300 bright, industrious women like Sao are beginning their journey towards a sustainable future. They are taught literacy, basic business skills and animal husbandry. The church embraces their families and strengthens them spiritually... and this is just the beginning.
Kelvin Lawrence, a teacher with the Samaritan's Purse Church-based Livelihood Programme (CLP) enthused: "Some women now take active part in church activities, lead devotions and attend bible studies. They are having a great impact and making a contribution to the church."
Each woman is practically empowered to support her family by receiving some all-important livestock...either 20 snails, two rabbits or a dozen baby chicks. The animals soon produce many young which can be used for food or sold to provide income. Each student returns twice the original number in order to replenish stocks for next year's students.
Today, Sao and her husband care for around 30 orphaned children along with their two biological children. Through the Samaritan's Purse programme Sao has acquired useful literacy and numeracy skills and can tell the time. And Sao beams with delight as she proudly shows off the living proof of her competency in animal husbandry - five rabbits and 20 snails!
Sao added: "My dream is that my children will learn and be somebody. I say thank God that CLP opened. God answered my prayers."
"Some of us we don't know nothing...but God made way out of no way." Bendu, CLP student
Ambitious and bright, young Bendu, wanted to earn a degree but sadly her family couldn't afford to send her to school. The days on her family's rice farm quickly turned into years. When the opportunity to learn through CLP came along she jumped at the chance. Bendu has learned literacy, numeracy and husbandry skills.
She said: "Today, I able to write my name, it make me feel good. I want to learn more and more. I want to be a teacher, to be teaching the small, small children one day. What I'm learning, let me put it in them too."
Sitting outside her simple mud hut Bendu reads aloud from one of her favourite books:
"I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart, I will tell all of your wonder, I will be glad and exult in You, I will sing praises to your name O Most High."
She adds with a smile: "What God did for us is very fine."
