City of Refuge Orphanage

        On our way to the orphanage, our tour guide told us about Ghana.  He told us about how they believe that people are made of three things: soul, blood from the mother, and semen from the father.  The soul comes from the day of the week you were born on.  So part of your name would tell someone what day you were born on.  Our guide was born on a Friday gaining the male name of Kojo.  We also found out that most of southern Ghana is Christian and northern Ghana Muslim.  About 70% of the industry in Ghana can be found in Tema and Accra, which are only 30km apart.   The currency is the Cedi, and on all of the bills are 6 people known as the Big 6.  They are so called because they are the men that founded the first political party in 1957 when they gained independence from Britain.

          The orphanage we went to is for orphaned children, rescued children, and community children.  The rescued children come from a local fishing village on Lake Volta.  The families there are so poor that they resort to selling their children to fisherman.  The children are overworked doing dangerous jobs and are only fed once a day.  One 12 year old girl was raped and impregnated, but the fisherman provided a dowry meaning they were married.  Because they were married, regardless that it was after the incident, the family would not do anything for their daughter. The sold children work 14-16 hours a day, to ensure that the fisherman send a small amount of money a month to their families at home.  It is crazy. 
   
        City of Refuge (the rescuers) go in and save the children in peaceful ways and provide them food, shelter, and education.  They have around 30 children living on their land, and 80 children that come in from neighboring villages for school.    The work they do there is incredible for these children.  They currently have two houses for the children, but they are in the process of building a new two story home for the teenage boys.  The building is about the size of the dorm I lived in last year.  They are also building a playground, church, science lab, and computer lab.  The group has also just started farming on the land and found it very beneficial.  They hire local farmers to do the work, and had so much extra last year they could provide it to the community.  The gardens they are making this year are much bigger.  It was started about 5 years ago, but has really grown in the last 2 years.  The woman that started it is from the States, and she is married to a Nigerian man who also has a passion for the children. 

        While there, the SAS students did volunteer work.  I washed walls with Heather, while others moved dirt, helped students study, or shelved books in the library.  In the last hour there, I became close with a young boy named Joel, pronounced like Noel.  He was only two years old and so energetic!  Heather, Joel, another young boy, and I played games, and they had a great time with our sunglasses.  It was very hard to leave the young ones.  I can easily see myself returning here in the future for more volunteer work.

        The boy on the right is Joel, and the boy on the left is Heather's little 3 year old, Marvin.