insecticide spraying 2004

insecticide spraying 2004
Originally uploaded by Ted Ernst.

Beatrice, Alvin, Chris and others

Sampson Nugba

Sampson with No Dumping signboard 2004

I took 51 photos on my recent trip, mostly of Sampson's team. I'm just showing one here, but they're all in a flickr group. They're not broken down by team yet so this will have to do for now.

Christopher Flomo

This post is a combination of a couple of posts from my personal blog where I've added the photos for completeness.

Chris’s team is now acting without him present as he has left for Liberia to put documents in order so that he may exercise his option to move to the US as he has won the annual Diversity Visa Lottery. Boimah Sombai is one of Chris’s team members and he himself orients a council with at least 6 teams and some 100+ members. Chris’s council has a total of 11 teams with over 160 members. Boimah submitted this email:

Dear Ted,
peace, force and joy we do greet you and chicago humanist. we the members of chris team continue towork effectively on camp recruiting people into the movement. we are also undergoing a sanitation project,educating every residents of camp buduburam.ted, the camp is presently occupied with approximately 45 thousand liberians refugees and other nationales.about 95% of the said number are not yet being inform of sanitation education in the camp.owing to this predicament comfronting them(better health), inorder to meet better healththere is a ned and cost of living on camp. at this time we deem it necessary to implement the sanitation project which will eventually give rise to better and healthy community. sanitation educationinto the community that will help to minize the said if not eradicated. with the help of this project which aims of providing better health in camp buduburam, aleast of the 95%, 80% will be provided sanitation knowledge.we have alread y begun the project by ourselves volunteerly by sprying drainages, bathrooms toilets etc. we are also educating people about the humanist movement how to surpass those endeavour. for more encouragement and evidence to yuo and the chicago humanist, here are some of our works photo graphs:


Therefore, we plead to the humanist branch of chicago to please compensate our team with the following materials inorder to speed up our works. materials they as follows:

sprying cans .............4 @600,000 =2,400,000
wheel barrows...........5 @600,000= 3,000,000
shovels................10 @ 40,000 =400,000
rakes..................10 @ 40,000 = 400,000
gloves...............20pairs @20,000=400,000
masks ...........20 pairs @20,000 =400,000
rain boots.......12pairs @55,000= 660,000
TOTAL: 7,660,000 cedis
convertion in us dollars: 859.00

Beatrice Brown

Since the time of this post, Beatrice has emailed me quite a bit and has registered over 80 members. The post below does not reflect that growth.

Beatrice has never sent me an email, and on this trip I found out why. She has no typing experience and hasn’t used a computer before. We made arrangements with her team for people to help her communicate with me and learn to use the computer herself over time.

This is a small team, but they have started a garden project and have already harvested some items. Beatrice has 6 members working directly with her and 16 total members in the council in 4 separate groups. They submitted the following:

Brief History & an Appeal

The six members of this project started in the month of July 28, 04 gearing toward been self sustainable In view of the foregoing, we started by molding mud bricks and renting of tools, such as shovels, diggers and rake. In this direction we were able to mold one thousand two hundred (1,200) mud bricks at the rate of five hundred cedis per bricks which amounted to six hundred thousands cedis (c600,000) [ed: ~US$70], but due to the hard labour involved, we decided to look toward agriculture production. We got in contact with the land owner (Ghanian) who land is situated between the estate and the refugee camp. A six feet well was dug to water the garden in two hard working days to complete. This include corn, pepper, beans, palava sauce, okra and etc.

To get our project started, we spent the c600,000 this way:

Seeds (corn 15,000, pepper 15,000, beans 15,000, palava sauce 13,000, potatoe greens 10,000, okra 10,000, pumpkin 5,000)	83,000
Tool Rental (mostly once per week) wheelbarrow 1x 6,000x7days =42,000 hoes 4x3,000x7days= 84,000 shovals 2x3,000x7days= 42,000 diggers 2x3,000x7days= 42,000 rakes 3x3,000x7days= 63,000 cutlasses 3x3,000x16days= 144,000	417,000
drinking water 4,000/day x 7 days	28,000
food (rice/oil) 10,000 x 7 days (once per week)	70,000
Total	598,000

Due to the hard cost of renting tools, we are therefore appealing to your organization to please help us to purchase our own tools to extend the garden to a full farm. The tools needed are:

tools	Qty	unit price	amount
wheel barrow	2	500,000	1,000,000
Cutlasses	6	35,000	210,000
Hoes	6	20,000	120,000
rain boots	6	100,000	600,000
Hand glove	6	35,000	210,000
Rakes	3	25,000	75,000
spraying cans	4	680,000	2,720,000
Shovels	3	50,000	150,000
water cans	4	120,000	480,000
grand total			5,565,000	[ed: ~US$630]

The spraying cans will not only be used for the garden, but also for sanitation purpose like spraying the drainages, bathrooms and toilets to help prevent some diseases like diarrhea, cholera and malaria on the refugee camp.

In view of the above, we are appealing to your good organization to help us get our tools so as to make our dream come through. We are at the verge of harvesting our crops and we are expecting to hear from you as soon as possible to enlarge the garden to a farm. We will be very much glad to see you come visit us on our farm in the future.

Beatrice in Garden 2004-1
Beatrice in Garden 2004-2

Thanks,
Sincerely Yours,
Six Members
Attested by Beatrice Browne (signature)

I took this photo of Beatrice's team at garden 27 November 2004

Once I get all of the current round of fundraising requests organized, I need to decide goals for each one (how much I'm willing to ask for each one). This one is way high given the number of people involved, but even a small amount will go a long way with this team.

team specific information (all)

As I make specific posts about each team, I'm going to replace this information with links to those posts. To start with, this is copied from my personal blog. This idea is that I will aggregate all the information and fundraising proposals that I have here (in public) and then will decide on a new fundraising campaign that takes into account these requests, numbers of people involved in each team, and total do-able-ness from a short-term fundraising standpoint. Depending on what it looks like, perhaps it could be in stages, building upon one another.

There are seven people in the camp working with me directly. Each of them has a team. I will go through them one by one to tell what I know about each team as well as what I saw during the November 2004 trip to Ghana.

Sampson Nugba

Sampson’s team was the one to send me the photo of the clean-up campaign that led to the Tip Jar for Shovels & Wheelbarrows. I sent them US$250 and they bought various tools (see budget). I visited this team’s Saturday action where they had about 25 people cleaning up a certain area of the camp. See photos. One point that really struck me was the fact that there were many more tools in evidence than what was purchased with the $250. We bought one wheelbarrow, for example, and 3 were in use. Same with rakes, shovels and cutlasses. This tells me that not only did they begin the project without financial help from the outside, they are continuing to maximize resources brought to bear on any particular day. Sampson’s council has at least 7 teams and at total of at least 130 people.

Chris Flomo

Prince Eric Yengbe

Since I’ve known him, Prince has had a lot of health trouble and thus has not been very active. He did not have any active projects for me to visit during this trip. He did register more than 100 members in at least 13 groups while I was there, however. These teams would like to carry about a campaign to clean up a certain area of drainage in their zone.

Beatrice Browne

Oretha Johnson

Oretha has been working more or less alone with a group of children in her area. She tutors them and has organized them into a choir that is much-sought-after to perform for special events. They have also won performance awards. She seeks to mobilize more members to expand these activities. She registered 12 members while I was there.

Benjamin Witherspoon

Benjamin is the Zonal Head for Zone 10 in the camp. He is very highly respected in the community and finds himself involved in all aspects of camp life. His influence was instrumental in Sampson’s team’s ability to secure tools to begin their campaign even before any fundraising. He has at least 41 members in at least 4 groups.

Alvin Zweh

Alvin has 13 members currently registered.

What's happening on this blog?

There are seven people (Alvin, Boimah representing Chris, Oretha, Benjamin, Prince, Sampson and Beatrice) in the camp working directly with me. In the next couple of days, I'm going to attempt to get information about each team here, preferrably in it's own post, but focusing on getting drafts up so as not to waste any more time thinking I need to "find enough time to do it right." Then as I revise, I'll simply put the new versions in as new posts and the drafts will live forever, providing that history for anyone interested in looking. I'm also going to post a few personal histories and/or appeals from some of these people and some people in their teams. These might take a bit more time to get up.

Here's a bit of context:

1. How do you see your future? How and when will you leave this camp? Where will you go? What do you need to do in the meantime or to make this happen?

Answers ranged in time on the camp from 2 to 14 years and since my last visit, two of them have departed (obviously not any I met with), one for Minnesota on refugee status and one to Liberia to put everything in place for a move to the US on a Diversity Visa that he won in the annual lottery.

Answers ranged from, "I'm leaving as soon as my current schooling is finished, by June 2005 at the latest," to "I will go when my name is called for the voluntary repatriation," (going on now, but very, very slowly) to "Because of my family's connections it is not safe for me to go back until everything changes quite a bit in Liberia so I will be the last one to leave this camp," to "I am working with my relatives in the US to find any means possible to get a visa."

Does anyone reading this know anything about this process? Is there anything that I could be doing to help organize the Liberians that are already in the US to help their relatives if that's what they want to do?

2. What's happening with your humanist team? What do you need help with?

After Sampson sent me his team's information about their clean-up campaigns and need for tools of their own, people responded very quickly to raise money for this purpose. Now the other teams are more motivated to communicate with me about their own projects and what help they also need. I will be posting answers when I get them from the teams, hopefully with photos as well.

Tip Jar #1 for Shovels and Wheelbarrows

On the 25th of August, I started a fundraising campaign with a goal of US$250. This is what I wrote to get it started:

In the Budaburam (Ghana) Refugee Camp for Liberians, many people have started working together as volunteers in a Humanist Movement campaign for Non-violence and Fight Against Malaria. Part of the campaign is to clean up the environment so as to eliminate breeding grounds for mosquitos. They've got plenty of
volunteers, but need shovels, rakes, gloves, wheelbarrow and other similar equipment to do this clean-up work. Thanks much!

On the 11th of November, we reached that goal! Here is the report of how that money was spent.

This campaign was for the council organized by Sampson Nugba. I visited this team’s Saturday action at the end of November where they had about 25 people cleaning up a certain area of the camp. See photos. One point that really struck me was the fact that there were many more tools in evidence than what was purchased with the $250. We bought one wheelbarrow, for example, and 3 were in use. Same with rakes, shovels and cutlasses. This tells me that not only did they begin the project without financial help from the outside, they are continuing to maximize resources brought to bear on any particular day. Sampson’s council has at least 7 teams and at total of at least 130 people.
Sampson with No Dumping signboard 2004

First Post

I live in Chicago, but I'm a volunteer with the Humanist Movement. For the past two years, I've been periodically traveling to the Budaburam Liberian Refugee Camp outside of Accra, Ghana. I have seven people there working with me (as volunteers) in the effort to Humanize the Earth! They in turn have their own teams and some of those people have their own teams and so on. It amounts to something more than 400 people total, at last count.

All around the world, volunteers with the Humanist Movement are engaging in personal and social change. In the camp, this is a Campaign for Non-violence and Fight Against Malaria.

In the near-future, I'll be posting information here about what's happening in the camp and eventually, I'll teach my members in the camp how to post here as well so you can get it straight from the source.

Thanks for reading!