The wheels hit the runway at Lungi Airport at 3 PM.  I step off in the African heat that is now such a friend to me and sweat begins to drip off my nose and down my back.  This is my first step on Sierra Leone soil where we began Young Life work 10 months ago.

 

It's another great, Holy Spirit story: James Davis and Zinnah Yallah--two of our staff from Liberia--rode a bus 38 hours from Liberia to the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, to meet with some friends at Sierra Leone International Mission School to pray and talk about beginning Young Life. (SLIMS was started by Richard Wernicke and some friends in Atlanta who met our African staff last January when they came through Atlanta after the All-Staff conference.  Richard opened the doors at the school and invited us to come.)  The team in Liberia has been praying for kids in Sierra Leone for almost 5 years now. James and Zinnah also led an initial training and vision casting to a group of teachers and staff from the school.  From that group the Lord directed James and Zinnah to Maurice Koroma and Patrick Lavahun as two men equipped, called and willing to sacrifice and help lead the work in Freetown.

 

I'm greeted at the airport by a mob of people wanting to help me: carry my bags, arrange a taxi, drive me, find a room for me.  All call me "friend". All hustling in worn out, but well-cared for clothes.  A young man on crutches sidles next to me with an infectious smile and makes sure I see his left leg chopped off from the shin down, and the scars on his arms--obviously a victim of the gruesome civil war that engulfed the country for 10 years.  If you've seen the movie "Blood Diamond" or watched Oprah recently or read books on the Starbucks book shelf lately you know the war I am talking about. "My name is Ali," he says through the smile and he waits with me as I wait an hour for Maurice and Patrick--it's hard to be on time in African traffic.  A number of other amputees pass in front of me and smile, show me their handless arms and hold out the other hand.  Patrick and Maurice arrive with big smiles and they laugh as they hug me.

 

They have come with an American couple --Allen and Patricia Morrell from Virginia--who have poured their lives, sweat and resources for the last six years into the lives of kids (mostly orphans or displaced from their families in the war) in the remote city of Bo.  They have a residential home for 70 kids, provide school assistance for another 150, and have created "foster" homes for another 45.  They want these kids and thousands more in Bo to know Jesus, and have contacted us about how we can begin Young Life there.  We meet and pray and are excited about what the Lord might do there.

As Maurice, Patrick and I drove off, I thank God for the doors he is opening for us to partner with other people, missions, and organizations who love Jesus and kids.

 

Our driver Suleiman rushes us through villages towards the ferry.  You see, for some reason, the airport was built across the bay from Freetown and requires a one-hour wait for the ferry, a one-hour ferry ride, and about an hour of loading and unloading the ferry to get to town.  As we rumbled to the ferry port, the motorcade of the president Ernest Bai Koroma speeds past to pick him up at the airport.  As we arrive at the port there are long lines and a series of check points--and at each point a stern-faced uniformed man or woman (reportedly there are 7 women to every one man in Sierra Leone now because of the war) comes to the window and Suleiman slips them some cash--"kola" as it's called in parts of west Africa, a "tip" for their services.  I see "kola" changing hands everywhere.

 

We arrive at the dock and join the large crowd waiting for the ferry.
Vendors work their way through the crowd selling fish, fruit, chewing gum, plastic bags of water.  Guys in ridiculous clothes with their faces painted white work the crowd telling jokes and dancing--people laugh and dance with them.  Finally the ferry arrives, and as it comes in to dock it crashes against the concrete buttress and sends hundreds of passengers hurling across the deck as chips of concrete break off and fly into the crowd on shore.  The crowd roars in laughter.  Maurice assures me that this doesn't usually happen, but the dozens of dents in the boat and the multiple chunks of concrete missing in the buttress indicate otherwise.

 

Hundreds of people pour off the ferry, then the cars and trucks have to back off the boat as there is only an entrance on one side.  The crowd watches expectantly as drivers maneuver over a moving target of two metal planks to make it to shore.  As each car gets off safely the crowd cheers.

Then a large, blue passenger bus begins backing over the planks as the boat drifts in the water. When the bus hits the shore it is so low that the back bumper smashes into the ground and the bus gets stuck, unable to move backward or forward.  The crowd roars.  The ferry crew begins to unload the bus--some distinguished looking men in suits and ties and women in colorful African dresses pour off the bus and they laugh and wave at the crowd and the crowd cheers wildly.  It turns out that the bus is full of almost the entire Sierra Leone cabinet--the Secretary of State (Foreign Minister), the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Communication, Minister of Education and many others. They were on the bus on the ferry coming to greet the president on his arrival.  Can you imagine Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, and Janet Politano riding a passenger bus on a ferry?  The driver then gets off the bus and rips what was left of the bumper off the bus, throws it into the crowd then backs the bus up the ramp. The crowd laughs again. The cabinet loads back onto the bus and the bus weaves it's way through the crowd and heads to the airport.

 

We now load the ferry and begin our slow trip across the bay.  I listen to Maurice and Patrick share their stories as we rock and sway toward Freetown.  Maurice is of the Temne tribe--mostly Muslim.  His given name is Alhaji (a Muslim name meaning "God's Friend") but his mother was a Jehovah's Witness and his father was a Methodist.  "But I started at a Catholic Church because I went to a Catholic school--but most of the students we Muslims." ( A reminder of the confusing checkerboard of the spiritual landscape in Sierra Leone, so much determined by what missionaries went where and who provided what services.) Maurice switched secondary schools five times because of displacement from the war which included living for 2 years in a UN refugee camp with 500,000 refugees in Guinea.  They finally had to escape from the camp after the war (as the UN would not let them leave) in the middle of the night, walk to the Guinea capital of Conakry and board the very same ferry we were on now along with 3,000 other refugees to sail home to Sierra Leone.  But this ferry was not made for the open seas of the Atlantic Ocean and it almost capsized many times before it finally arrived in Freetown 24 hours later.  Maurice became a believer when a youth pastor in his town invited him to come and play music with him and some others at a church. Maurice got his college degree in education and began teaching soon after that.

 

Patrick is a Mende from Bo, a son of a college professor and a school teacher.  They left Bo and moved to Freetown during the war and survived the many assaults on Freetown that happened in those years. He looked down as he talked about literally seeing blood run in the streets during one of the most violent offensives.  Patrick got his degree in education and teaches Social Studies at SLIMS.

 

Patrick and Maurice laugh as they explain to me how odd their friendship is in Sierra Leone.  As Temne and Mende, they come from the two largest  tribes who traditionally do not get along and currently dominate the membership of the two largest, rival political parties.

 

It is 8:45 PM and dark as the boat grinds into the port.  We unload into a sea of people selling things, cooking over open fires, and waiting to get onto the ferry to go to the other side.  Soldiers canvass the crowd and a man with a bullhorn yells out "Watch out for thieves--they are everywhere."

As we huddle together in the crowd waiting for Suleiman to back his car off the ferry, a number of men start yelling at each other and fighting ten feet from us. The number of men yelling begins to grow and three soldiers with AK's move in.  We quickly shrink back away from the melee. The men begin yelling at the soldiers and one soldier is pushed.  Just when it seemed like the cork was going to come off, the soldiers broke out in laughter. The crowd around them laughed.  The men dispersed and the soldiers drag off the man who started the scuffle.  Suleiman finally backs off the ferry successfully and we jump in the car and drive out of the crowd.  I say my goodbyes to Patrick and Maurice as they live on this side of town and my hotel is at the other end of the city.

 

Suleiman and I then work our way through the congestion of traffic, the narrow roads, and hundreds of people on the street. Each section of town we pass through--Congo Town, Kroo Town, Maroon Town, Bambara Town, Kossa Town--reminds me of the many different peoples from all over Africa and even Jamaica who had been resettled in Freetown as "freed" slaves (Freetown was originally set up as a place for freed slaves to be resettled in Africa, but the experiment failed and the transplanted former slaves and the indigenous people under colonial domination have suffered a history of division and ethnic strife.) The current conditions and the history show that different chains are still on many of these people. We drove by the garbage dump where a few people were still foraging. We drove by the amputee camp. Streets were full of people and everywhere we went I was struck by the energy and the hope, the smiles and the laughter--incredible laughter.

 

After one hour and fifteen minutes of "light" Sunday traffic, Suleiman drops me at my hotel--an old government hotel that had been used by the rebel group RUF as a headquarters when they took over Freetown in 1999, and had recently been bought and renovated by the Chinese.  I hit my pillow at 11 PM.

 

I thank God for Maurice and Patrick and pray for them.  I pray for Ali and Suleiman. For President Koroma and the cabinet. For each  group of people in each neighborhood--the Mende, Temne, Limba, the Kroo, the Congo, the Bambara.  And I think about the laughter--Maurice and Patrick's gentle laughter when they greeted me. The laughter of the crowd when the ferry smashed into the wall or when the bus got stuck. The laughter of the president's cabinet and the crowd.  The laughter of the soldiers. The laughter in the streets. I thought about the power of laughter: how it welcomes and puts people at ease, how it brings people together, how it deflates frustration, how it diffuses conflict. How it opens hearts and gives hope.  I thank God for laughter.  I thank God that Dyan, the kids and I can laugh so easily together. I thank God that in Young Life we laugh and laughter is in our essence. As I pray I choke back tears--but then I think about how funny it is that I am crying as I think about laughing.  I laugh.

Then fall asleep.  Day One in Freetown.

 

Pray for Sierra Leone.  Pray for real freedom.  Pray for Patrick and Maurice and their 25 leaders.  Pray for leaders to be raised up in Bo.  Pray for wisdom and courage.  Pray for me as I visit Mali, Ghana and Liberia--for wisdom, discernment, anointing. Pray for laughter--for much deep, healing, unifying, peace-making laughter all over Africa and in your own homes, your communities, and churches.

Thank you friends.
Amen.
--
Steve Larmey
Vice President
Young Life Africa