A collection of news, updates, information and personal stories from trips to Sierra Leone.
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Freetown
We visited a small one-bedroom clinic in Wilberforce, Freetown. Hope for Lives has been providing medical supplies to this clinic called, Hope Life Savers Clinic. During our visit to the clinic, more than a hundred women and children waited to visit with us. I was in tears the entire time. Looking at many of them, you can see hope from their eyes.
Connaught Hospital, in Freetown, is the main referral hospital in Sierra Leone and the only public hospital providing care for patients who cannot afford a fee-for-service facility. Hope for Lives visits the hospital on EVERY visit to Salone, delivering donated medical supplies and providing meals to hundreds of patients and staff.
On the day I was to return to the U.S., my ferry to the airport experienced mechanical issues. In the time it took to repair the ferry, I missed my flight. I rushed back to catch the same ferry back to Freetown as it was the last of the day. The missed flight must have been an act of divine providence. It meant that I had to stay an extra few days in Salone.
When we visited Sierra Leone in February of 2011, we met two brothers, Umar and Alpha Jalloh, who own the Hill Valley Hotel in Freetown. The brothers used to live in the United States. Umar was in the U.S. military before returning to Sierra Leone. They have been funding the construction of a high school with revenue from their hotel. The public high schools are really bad in Sierra Leone so they trying to build a school more like the those in the U.S. Progress on the hotel has been slow but steady.
