I’m often asked how I ended up in Accessible Hope in the first place. Well, the short answer is, I didn’t really have much choice in the matter. God compelled me. But of course, there is a longer answer than that. I wrote this story years ago, at the urging of a then board member. I am grateful for that urging because while I don’t imagine I would forget something like this, details fade with time. This is the story of how God compelled me into this ministry over 10 years ago.
In October 2009, I went to Sierra Leone with a group of women to assess the needs of women with disabilities in Makeni. I was only there as a consultant. There were other women there who felt burdened to start a ministry for women with disabilities – but I had a very full plate, 3 kids (being homeschooled) and enough to do. However, I grew up in Sierra Leone, had worked with 2 other health related NGOs and had a lot of first-hand experience with Sierra Leonean culture, not to mention being fluent in the language. So, I agreed to take this group of women to SL to help them determine how to start a ministry for women with disabilities. Then I would return home and continue with my very full life.
During the time we were there, we spent many hours in focus groups with women affected by disability. We listened to their stories. Heard their heartaches. Visualized their rejection by society. Cried with them. Laughed with them. Hugged them. Loved them. And tried to understand their world. It was grueling and heart-wrenching. I had worked in Sierra Leone during the 10-year-long civil war. I had heard and seen horrific things. But even that, did not prepare me for this.
The last of the 6 focus groups we facilitated was the “polio” group. These women, about 10 of them, were all affected by some sort of crippling problem. “Polio” is the term given to all of those women, whether they had had polio as a child, were born with a withered arm, or received an injury that left them with a limp in one leg. They are all lumped together, and even they don’t see any distinction between their disabilities. The last story we heard, after 2 ½ hours of stories, was from a woman named Martha.
Martha, neatly dressed in a bright pink dress, had been staring at me the entire afternoon. It was rather disconcerting. I didn’t recognize her, but she seemed to recognize me. I kept trying to place her, in the myriad of times and places that I may have met her in my past – but I couldn’t. Finally, she began to speak.
“I am from Tambiama,” she started, still looking at me.
“I’m from Tambiama, too!” I exclaimed. (Tambiama is the small village I grew up in.)
She stared at me during a pregnant pause. “I know that. I know you, and I know your family.”
Oh, I thought. That must be why she’s staring at me…
Martha continued. “I was born with this leg,” she continued, tapping her weak right leg. “My parents thought I was a devil. I never learned to walk, and I didn’t go to school. When I was 7 years old, they took me to the sacred cottonwood tree outside the village. The mori-man was there too. They covered me with a white cloth. The mori-man began to make sacrifices. He slaughtered animals and chanted incantations. They were trying to call out the devil in me. I sat under the white cloth feeling very afraid. Finally, I was so hot and so scared, that after 2 hours, I threw off the cloth and came out. Everyone, including my parents, screamed and ran away. I was left alone, outside the village. I was so scared. I couldn’t walk, so I crawled back to the village by myself. No one spoke to me. But when they realized that their attempt to expose the devil in me hadn’t worked, they decided to try something else.
“They took me out to the sacred bush…”
That was right behind my house!
(The sacred bush was a forest on the edge of town where all sorts of traditional ceremonies and occult practices were performed. It was down a short path from the back of my childhood home. When there were things going on in the sacred bush, we knew not to go into it. When there was nothing going on there, however, it was a nice place to walk and explore – cool from the shade of large trees and full of flora and fauna.)
“…where they dug a deep hole and buried me up to my armpits. I couldn’t move. They left me there, alone, day and night. For 3 days, someone would come each day to see if the spirits had carried me away. The family member who came to check would leave a plate of rice for the spirits, hoping to please them so they would take me back where I had come from. I remember trying to stretch my arm to reach the plate of rice and flip it so that the rice would scatter near me and I could pick it up off the ground to eat it. They never left any food in my reach.
“On the third day, a man was climbing a tree nearby and he saw me. He never spoke to me, and he must have known why I was there, but I think he felt sorry for me. He left some bananas near enough for me to reach them and went away. The next day when my family members returned, they saw the banana peels and demanded harshly, ‘Where did you get bananas?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘A man left them for me and I ate them.’ ‘It’s because you have too much food to eat, that is why you refuse to die!’ they yelled, and then they left – and never came back.
“I was in the ground, alone, in the bush for 7 more days. What I did not know was that someone had gone to my auntie in a village 5 miles away from Tambiama and told her what had happened to me. She was desperate to save me. She ran all the way to where I was. When she found me she wept as she frantically dug the dirt away with her hands to free me. I was hardly conscious when she found me. She took me out of the ground. She carried me to a stream where she washed me off. Then she carried me on her back all the way home. She hid me and cared for me for 2 years. She took care of me like her own daughter and taught me how to walk. She never let anyone from my family know that she had me.
“Two years had passed and one day she fixed my hair really nice and dressed me in a pretty dress. Then we walked the 5 miles back to Tambiama and we went to church. After the service, my auntie took me up to the pastor and told him my story. He talked to me. And the white man took my picture…”
The white man…? That was my dad!!
“We went to my family’s home and the pastor told them what my auntie had said. They denied it. They said I was not their daughter, because their daughter was dead. My auntie said I was their daughter. They denied again and said that I couldn’t be their daughter, because their daughter couldn’t walk. So I walked right up to my parents, and I looked them straight in the eyes. And they knew.
“My auntie took me by the hand, and we left. Shortly thereafter, my family sent a representative to my auntie. He said that my family sent him to get me. He said since I had not died, they wanted me back. My auntie looked at that man and she told him, ‘God brought her into my house, and only God will take her out.’ The man went away, and we never heard from my family again. My auntie raised me like her own daughter. She put me through school, even through secondary school and computer school.”
As I listened to Martha’s story, my mind was whirling. Where was I while this girl was buried in the bush behind my house? She looks to be around my age. Did I know her? I quietly asked her, “Do you know the year that you were buried in the sacred bush?”
She responded, “I don’t know the year, but I know how old I was. I was 7 years old.”
“How old are you now?” I asked.
“Forty-one.”
Time froze. I was forty-three. I was 2 years older than her, making me 9 at the time of this horrific drama. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. My world came apart.
At the age of 9, my family moved into our village home in Tambiama. My world was idyllic. I figured there was probably no better place to grow up than Sierra Leone. Quiet, peaceful, serene – that is how I would have described my world at the time, had I known those words or their meanings. Reality crashed in on my memories, shattering the fantasy I had believed. This was not a world of serenity and peace. This was a world where terrified little girls were buried in the ground because one of their legs didn’t work right – left to the spirits, and the wild animals that roamed the bush at night. Only a couple of days earlier, another friend had told me that she was raped at the age of 7, the same year that Martha was buried in the ground. The same year I moved into my quiet, peaceful lie-of-a-life.
I managed to close the session, hurrying from the room, driven by a desperation and horror that mocked me. Reaching my room I threw myself on my bed, screaming through sobs at the only One who could hear me. “God, WHAT IS THAT?? A little girl is buried in my back yard? And I am living a peaceful, carefree life in my newly adopted home?? Why would you do a thing like that?!? I was happy! I thought life was great there! I didn’t know it was filled with horrors like that!!”
There was a pause as I sobbed and panted in frustration and anger and confusion.
Then He spoke. It was nearly audible. I will never forget what He said, or how He said it.
“Yes, Kim, I know.
“I saw Martha when she was buried in the ground. I preserved her. She should have died. But I was with her.
“And I looked down that short footpath to that other little girl – just a little girl, Kim – who was just starting her journey in this land full of darkness. I saw them both. And I had a plan. I knew that one day, 35 years later, those 2 little girls would be sitting in that room together. And I was preparing one of them to bring hope and healing to the other. I knew, Kim. It was my plan.”
The silence was deafening. “NO!!!” I screamed in my head. “No, God. You’ve got the wrong girl! I can’t do this. It’s too big for me!!”
“Yes. It is. But it is not too big for me. I can do it. And I’ve chosen to use you to do it. I’ve prepared you for this time and this place. You see, Kim, you had to love this place. You had to think it was a wonderful place. Because then you would desire to see it restored. You had to live here as a girl and walk through all your life stages in this context, so you could understand a woman’s life here and become fully fluent in her language. You needed to be a nurse here, to see their worldview in a health context. You had to see the horrors of the war, first-hand, to know why minds, and hearts and culture have changed in the past 10 years. You needed to see the before, and the after. You needed to work with amputees, to begin to see the desperation of people with disabilities. You needed to marry into this culture, to gain an insider’s perspective that you would not have been allowed if you hadn’t. You needed to cut your teeth on community development here, in this place, to see the nuances that will be so much more pronounced in the realm of disability. I planned it. I prepared you for – THIS.”
Deep breath…. Peace, in the midst of despair… Settled resolve, despite fear…
“Here am I, Lord. Use me.”
Postscript:
I never saw Martha again after that day. She never participated in the programs of Women of Hope Sierra Leone. She preferred to not identify with women with disabilities and to use her computer skills to forge a self-sustaining life. A couple of years ago, my friend and colleague in Sierra Leone told me that they had gotten word that Martha had died.
I was hit with grief. I wanted to see her again and talk to her and tell her what a pivotal role she had had in my life. To tell her how God had used her for the sake of others. To know more about how God had transformed her own life, and what her side of our shared story looked like. But that didn’t happen. I don’t know anything about Martha’s faith journey. I pray that in His mercy, God redeemed her before her death. I pray that I will see Martha again in glory, and together we will praise God for His sovereign working in both of our lives. I can only trust that a God as merciful and purposeful as ours, would not rescue Martha from destruction at the hands of her family, only to let her go into eternity without knowing Him. I rest in that.