Mama Laadi

I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about where I’m staying while I’m here in Bolgatanga.  I live in a Foster Home which is run by an amazing woman called Mama Laadi.  Afrikids met Mama when she was living off nothing and had a one bedroom shack full of children from the streets or orphans that she had taken in to care for.  AfriKids and Mama are now in a partnership called Operation Mango Tree.  There is 35 children who live here and she also cares for another 85 in the community that come to visit her regularly for money or food.

She is such an amazing women – she has devoted her whole life to caring for these kids, she is the most giving person I have ever met.  In fact she normally goes without to make sure the kids have enough.  An example from just last night: she wears 1 dollar jandles which have broken and as one of the straps have snapped and she was going on how she was going to fix them with a drill rather than buy new ones!  Ha ha … you can also hear her coming from a mile away dragging her one broken jandle!

At the moment she is paying a lot of money for some kids from the community to get operations – one child has ambiguous genitalia and his lower abdomen is basically all open with his intestines hanging out – he is now 5 and been like this all his life with no one helping.  She raised enough to send him to Kumasi (one of the bigger centres), so now he is down there with his mum… unfortunately they are still begging on the streets… but mama has given them money for medicines, and enough for nappies so he doesn’t leak faeces everywhere.

There is also another child who has retinoblastoma (cancer of the back of the eye) usually this is caught early, but this child’s eye was actually hanging out of his face and no one could afford to help him.  Mama gave them about 1000 of her own money to go to Accra and get surgery from the cancer specialists.  He had his surgery on Monday.

Every day I see new children come here and she will give them money for books and food.

The kids that live here come from varied backgrounds.  Most of the stories I don’t actually know but sometimes Mama will tell me and it makes my heart break.  Little one 'P', now 7 and an absolute darling… Mama found him in the market with his mum and grandma – they were begging, and the mum has mental health problems… she covered him in faeces from head to toe – he was only 7 months old, so Mama took him in and raised him.  Another child who is my special friend 'M'– she is 5, her mum got stoned to death for being a witch, and the community left her to die, mama found out and stormed in with all community watching, picked the child from her death bed….. and now – she is the boss of the house!

Yet as tragic as each of their stories are – there is so much love and laughter and singing and dancing in the house.  The children are just wonderful and playful and full of love.