23-12-2014 How this rescue is progressing and what we were able to achieve till now
As you all know, we are working for months now to rescue the many children in the North of Nigeria who had to flee from the terrible attacks of Boko Haram. Hereby we want to give you report about how this rescue is progressing and what we were able to achieve till now. (including pictures)
After we brought the first set of 34 children, the second set who were about to come were 70. They arrived to a certain city in the middle of Nigeria. We found a house for them there to stay and they were very happy. A Christian brother was ready to happily help them to bring them to Benin City from there.
But before we knew, the government of that state stepped in and said that Pastor Solomon needs to come to that place and establish this kind of home. Because they said it would be much easier to gather all of them there than to bring them to us.
The government rather wants to keep them there and give them food. But the children are not happy.
Even another 40 coming were also added to them there making 110 children stranded in that place.
With this situation we changed tactics and found out that it is easier to take them in smaller groups to our International Centre. So when they come in smaller groups like 4, 5, 6 or 8 children with two elderly or matured people, it is much easier than to bring large groups which might be held up by the government again.
Right now we have rescued in total 94 children who now live with us at “Home For The Needy“ in Benin City and many more are on the way.
This children told us all kind of horrible things: How some of them were trekking barefooted for 17 days, some for three weeks. Some ate leaves, grasses and they told us how many thousands of children died of exhaustion, hunger, thirst, disease like cholera etc, how their mothers could not burry them but threw them away in great pains and tears.
When the children describe these horrible stories, you hardly can comprehend it.
A lot of them came to us without pants, without shoes, without clothes, just what was on them because they said they had to run just with what was on them. One girl narrated that she was having her shower when Boko Haram came and she just took a piece of wrapper and that is how she ran for 3 - 4 days till she even could find her way to escape.
Trauma/ disease ....One of the biggest issues we have to contend with is that sometimes it just happens that the children have a break down and suffer from trauma when they remember the horror of the killings, blood shed, and how they lost everything they ever had. Several of them are falling sick because of the bad water they drank, the leaves, the different things they ate, some of them even had to eat sand to survive. So these things are having effect on them, so we take them to the hospitals in Benin City and give them medicine that were brought from Germany.
So we are dealing with their health issues, with trauma, with feeding etc.
Accommodation
From the time we have started getting funds, we started building.
We started with the bathrooms for showers. Now, we completed 10 bathrooms for the boys with soakaway. Also, we completed 10 bathrooms for the girls. They already started using it. Praise God!
Apart from that, God just dropped the idea in our hearts to convert the old bathrooms and toilets that we were using before to housing spaces.
In the old bathrooms we broke the middle wall, we added some pillars to make it strong and sealed it with cement. We threw up the walls and roofed it. Now it looks very beautiful.
Then we filled the pits of the old toilets properly with sand. They have concrete floors with iron rods in it, so it is never going to collapse. After that we sealed the floors with cement and put in windows. It is so beautiful - the old toilets are now rooms, where people can stay.
We also worked on the school buildings. Right now we have completed 10 rooms with walls and pillars. Now we need to roof these 10 buildings so we can take in more children.
How the donations were spent
Sincerely we thank you for all your mercy in giving to these needy children. Your support is of great help.
Most part of the donations went to transportation to bring these children from the place in the North to Benin City. Also, when we camp them in different places in the North, where they are safe, we have to send money for their food and money for their accommodation.
A big part of the money went to food because the population at the International Centre has increased and they have to eat. We try to make sure that the rescued children eat at least twice a day, and sometimes three times a day. Because after people have been in so much hunger, we wanted to make sure that they recover quickly by giving them good food.
Another part we have used to buy cement, woods, nails, sand, rods and fuel for the generator to pump water. We also paid workers who are professionals to work on the buildings.
Also we spent some of the donations to take the children from the North to hospitals as some of them have problems that we could not treat.
Then, we bought some few clothes and things for them, but that was not really enough.
We were also able to pay the teachers for two months, October and November.
What is needed
For all the children that have come we have paid a lot. Now we need help to be able to bring more, we need help for food, we need help for their books and teachers, and we need help to be able to continue the building projects.
So what we need right now is help for:
- most of all food
- mattresses, because now most of them only have mats to sleep on
- clothes
- shoes
- school bags
- school books
- pens, coloured pencils, usual pencils
- socks, pullovers, slippers
- body lotion
- medicine: different kind of cough medicine (e.g. dry and wet cough) and for skin diseases
Right now we want to move ahead, we want to do more things, we want to roof the 10 class rooms. For that, we need funds to buy wood, nails and zinc. We need doors and windows, concrete sand, cement to render the walls and to put electricity in the house. Then we can take even more children.
Also we plan to build more wooden houses to accommodate more people.
So far so good we have been able to manage those children we have gotten. But we still need much more funds to press forward and rescue many more as thousands are suffering.
With all our heart we thank you for your support in finances, prayers, for your efforts and concern.
Let us continue to join hands together to rescue those who are still in danger!
