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Below is an update from BWC missionary Sue Porter, who is currently a nurse serving in Liberia.

Dear All, Greetings from Ganta!

This is to inform you of my change of residence.  I am moving from my house to ‘The Hostel’, the boy’s dorm.  The students have arrived back for another semester, and, again, they are back to living in substandard housing. Even though it is getting to be the end of the rainy season, there are still many hours of torrential rain still to come. When the rains come at night, I waken thinking of the students in buildings where the roofs leak and I can’t get back sleep. Besides the leaky roofs, The Hostel has no indoor plumbing, and only a few rooms have electricity. It houses 20 students. Besides the leaky roof, the girl’s dorm has plumbing that works sometimes, and scary electrical wiring. A third dorm that is included in an Advance Number for the renovation project has no roof and the interior has been striped.

You wonder why the students don’t stay in private housing in town. They want to be near the school, the library, and the hospital where they have to stay until 10 p.m. when they are doing an evening shift of their clinical practice. They have study groups which they have already formed by the time they arrive in Ganta, and they want to maintain them. They can easily do that in the dorm setting but not if they are in scattered houses throughout town. They are very determined and focused.

United Methodist University to which the Winifred J. Harley College of Health Sciences belongs has provided funds for some renovations, but what the dorms really need is to be razed to their foundations and rebuilt.  As mentioned, I have an Advance number for this and was able to raise some funds when I was on home assignment. Unfortunately, the donations to this Advance have significantly slowed down since then, despite reminders in the newsletters that I send out. I know there are many difficulties with raising money at this time. We are all aware of the difficult economic conditions people are facing. Also, there are many organizations and worthy causes that compete for people’s donations - the disaster in Haiti, natural disasters in the US, and even the Ganta Hospital building project.  But it is also important that the students who come to ‘Winifred’ have a decent place to live – a roof over their heads, indoor plumbing and electricity.

There is a quaint custom in Liberia to call a person by a family relationship name such as ‘Ma’, ‘Pa’, ‘Auntie’, or ‘Sis’. I am called ‘Ma Sue’ by many of the students. Well, Ma Sue needs to be with her children. So, while I continue to follow different leads and strategies of fundraising, I’ll stay in the dorm with the students until we can start the renovation project. At least I have a separate bathroom and the roof only leaks in the alcove and the bathroom shower! If anyone has any ideas of organizations or foundations that can be approached for donations for this project, please let me know. Once the buildings are under roof, they may provided opportunities for VIM trips for people to help with painting, laying tile, wiring or other finishing tasks.

The Advance Number for the Winifred J. Harley Dormitory Renovations is #3021119.

Attached are pictures of ‘Home Sweet Home’.

Blessings and thanks for all you do to support ‘Winifred’ already.

Sue

These pixs are the inside of the 'Hostel' where 20 male students have set up 'camp'. It has an old asbestos roof that has been patched with some zinc sheeting. It is easy to imagine that this was once a beautiful building until the war damage, looting of fixtures, and then exposure left its marks. In 2004 after the war, the UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) troops stayed here. The agreement was that they can stay if they do some improvements. That didn't happen...they put a tarp over the roof that was completely missing and they took down some walls that separated some of the bedrooms.