The City of Rest

The amount of new informationa and experiences that have come and gone here for me would be impossible to write about. Aside from an entirely new culture and language I have also had other sorts of responsibilities laid on my head, which are the basis for the rest of my time here until June. My interest specifically? My eyes have laid rest on a small community amoungst the bustling, trash-strewn streets of Freetown, known as the "City of Rest." It is a place for the mentally disabled and recovering drug addicts. When one thinks about these categories in the states one might think about spotless, white-washed anemic rooms, nurses coming to and fro, patients going through the program of rehibilitation. The "City of Rest" is something else entirely. It was started by one woman sent from Germany into the town after the Civil War. She was initially sent in order to do traditional mission work but found a special calling for herself in a building that had been set aside for another purpose but ultimately ended up in her hands. From her small amount of resources she engaged the community in the most loving way possible: by taking those stricken with mental diease off of the streets where they had been thrown, where they would remain in debilitating poverty, without friends or family. But the woman brought them in, one by one, using the rooms there to shelter them and her own friends from Freetown to watch over them and serve them. The staff is paid less than $30 a week in return for their full-time service and dedication to the "guests."

It is a small two-storied building with an enclosed compound area no bigger than a basketball court. In the rooms both d0wnstairs and up there are men and women (separately) in bunkbeds, cramming each room without reserve. The trick about the whole facility is that it has no medical staff. There is a severe lack of health professionals in Freetown and even if one could be acquired would be far too expensive to pay. A doctor does come when a new guest arrives and puts them on a non-specific cocktail of drugs to put the patient to sleep to wear off any drug-affects. After this there are no psychiatrists, no nurses, no therapists. The staff is composed of two pastors, the woman Helaina, and some other minimally paid workers.

The basic program for drug addicts is to let them go to personal counciling sessions for a certain prescribed periods of time, usually months. These recovering addicts cannot leave the building or the compound their entire time of rehabilitation. For patients with serious mental problems it is even worse. Some have been living inside the facility for years, with few or none opportunites to be outside. Programs? Not enough money or resources. Relationships? These people are outcasts from their families and friends because of their special needs. Counceling? The woman Helaina and the two other pastors are overworked and have responsibilites also outside the compound. Psychiatric medicine? Those specific kinds of meds are not available in-country and cannot be shipped in with current international trade laws. It is all that can be done to simply take these people in and feed them, provide them a space to live in off of the lonely streets.

As I entered into the compound with my teammates in order to be briefed on the needs there there was a flock of people, ready and desperate for new friends, new relationships. They need someone simply to talk to, simply to tell their story to. They need music, laughter, love and a listening ear. In the States I have these things and more, comfort with my family and wealth, complete with dependable air conditioning and ice cream (it is reported that with all the money that Americans spend on ice cream each year, you could cure world poverty). But here there is no reprieve for those born in the streets of Sierra Leone. Within that compound Jesus lives there, forgotten and passed by, the poor suffering man who knows brokenness and true humility.

Do I have the arrogance to pass Christ by, as he sits in his overpopulated room craving some semblance of friendship and connection with the outside world? Surely it can't be so. I have spent my time thinking and praying, and here is where I will attempt to act and be Christ for someone else. These people have weighed heavily on my heart and mind, a weight that will only get heavier as I go amidst them and experience brokenness and rejection, even maybe their rejection of me.

I think my music may have a place here among those who have the least cause to sing. We'll see if a guitar can help, I am not sure. What else can I do but invest my meager talents where there is the least to go round? Please be praying for me as you read this, and understand that people are suffering in ways that we have walked passed in disdain and ignorance. I feel that the service I offer here will only cause me to be broken as well, humble before God as I find that I may not be so different than the "poor" that I serve.