I arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone at night. The airport was small, packed with people and hot.  I took a van to the beach where I had planned in advance to board a water taxi to the city, but when we pulled up at the dock, all I could see in the dark water was a couple of small boats bobbing around frantically like beetles in a pool. I soon realized that I was meant to walk out on the dock, which was also bobbing and climb down into the cabin of a tiny 12 man boat and set out into complete darkness and high seas. My fellow passengers were a couple of Dutch government workers and a retired navy guy, from I don’t where who was coming to manage a hospital. It was the navy guy’s calm demeanor that made me believe I may live through the long trip across the bay. Once the boat had been moving for a couple of minutes, I could feel that it was in fact stable and relax my currently tensed body. Not before, however, I had already text messaged my boyfriend to say that I may be taking my last breaths in the warm Atlantic waters of Africa. We arrived the on other side at a dock where I was whisked away in a car to my hotel, accompanied by a young man I would come to know well, Alieya. The city was mostly dark, but I could tell that I was climbing up a hill to the very top, passing spooky looking wooden clapboard colonial houses that were relics of an era past, to my hotel.

I woke in the morning and went to the restaurant to have coffee outside overlooking the city. The sky was not blue, but grayish, blue and brown, choking from the morning cooking fires and the fires set by farmers to prepare their fields. My contact there is a woman named Hawa, whom I had spoken to on the phone and knew would have a big personality. When she arrived to pick me up, she looked exactly as I pictured her. We immediately hit it off and I was surprised she had gotten her  education at Ohio State. She is one of the not nearly enough Africans that go abroad for university and then choose to return home to use their education to help their own country and people.
We started our drive to Bo, her hometown and the location of her project, a school for orphans, the Haikel Academy. The drive was magnificent.  It is a hilly country, very green and tropical. There are streams and beautiful little farms in private valleys and small terraces. We came to a long dirt road that was as peaceful and picturesque as any I have ever seen. Hawa wanted to stop at a tiny place that she knew had a grilled chicken that was spiced and then smoked before grilling and she said it was amazing. After being told they were out of it for the day, they sent us down the road to their house nearby to get some chicken that was fresh off the grill. It was definitely worth the trouble, delicious! The topography changed and became more flat and arid and it was HOT. Finally, we arrived in Bo, where Hawa was kind enough to invite me to stay at her house.

She wanted to take me to meet her parents, whom we had also bought some chicken for. Her father is an amazing person. He is 104 to start and that well exceeds the life expectancy in Africa. He had 4 wives ( Sierra Leone is predominantly muslim), 27 kids (10 of which were sent to universities in the UK, USA and Canada) and now has 30 orphans living in his compound with he and his wife. He made a living as a diamond minor and invested in properties. He is also helped out by his children living abroad, who send him support. I was amazed when I met him, because he did not seem even close to his age and sits much of the time in a corner of his living room that has windows on both walls, so he can hand  money to beggars who walk up. To see all of the teenaged orphans moving about his compound, all of which he keeps on the condition that they go to school and then he sends them, made me have so much admiration for this couple. What a truly amazing thing to do for kids that would otherwise be left to fend for themselves. Sierra Leone’s orphans come from a combination of AIDS and a long civil war, so there are many.

The next morning we set out see the school. First we visited the primary school or what we would call elementary.  I could not help but to look into these beautiful little faces and think about the fact that they had no parents, as I often find myself doing in Africa. Then we moved onto the secondary school.  We entered a very large, wide, open campus, complete with garden for growing foods eaten by the students, 2 water pumps, a mosque and a clay oven for baking bread. The kids are given both breakfast and lunch there, as some will have nothing to eat at home.  Hawa has even purchased 2 small school buses to pick up the kids form all over the area, so all orphans will have a chance to go to a school with a top notch curriculum and complete scholarship. I was shocked and amazed when we entered a classroom to find a chemistry lab, an English class studying grammar, a computer lab, a physics lab and a small library. These are not things you normally see in rural schools in any country in Africa.

When you hear Hawa’s enthusiasm for giving these kids a fine education, you cannot help but be excited too. She says, “ I am not raising villagers here. I am raising educated people that can function and succeed in any place they choose.” This includes having them eat with knife and fork, something not traditionally done in most places in Africa, and they have flush toilets, as opposed to latrines, so they will know what to do when they leave. A group of students from the debate class is going to Canada this summer to participate in a debate competition and the students will all be sponsored by a Canadian friend of Hawas.  This school is only a mile or less from the refugee camps that were constructed during the war that ended 7 years ago and some of the very diamond mines that helped to start the war.
Hawa is looking for scholarship sponsors for the secondary students. Five hundred dollars per year will provide each of 200 students with school fees, uniforms, books, and 2 meals a day. This commitment to the educating of and, one could even say, raising of orphans seems to fit perfectly into the idea of the pilot light concept. Haikal Academy is educating children well, so they can function and prosper in modern society.