December 28, 2004: Headlines: COS Sierra Leone: Service: Newark Star Ledger: RPCV Tom Johnson has chosen to spend Christmas in Sierra Leone for the past three years. There's no place else he'd rather be. Johnson is a sort of surgery broker and last year arranged operations in Ghana for two little girls suffering from tuberculosis of the spine.
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December 28, 2004: Headlines: COS Sierra Leone: Service: Newark Star Ledger: RPCV Tom Johnson has chosen to spend Christmas in Sierra Leone for the past three years. There's no place else he'd rather be. Johnson is a sort of surgery broker and last year arranged operations in Ghana for two little girls suffering from tuberculosis of the spine.
RPCV Tom Johnson has chosen to spend Christmas in Sierra Leone for the past three years. There's no place else he'd rather be. Johnson is a sort of surgery broker and last year arranged operations in Ghana for two little girls suffering from tuberculosis of the spine.
RPCV Tom Johnson has chosen to spend Christmas in Sierra Leone for the past three years. There's no place else he'd rather be. Johnson is a sort of surgery broker and last year arranged operations in Ghana for two little girls suffering from tuberculosis of the spine.
Man tries to help troubled nation live up to the beauty of its name
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
The name Sierra Leone is one of the more mellifluous in the family of nations. It sounds like a warm and sunny Mediterranean resort. Portuguese explorers, struck by the storms that raged in the mountains that rim the huge natural harbor at what is now the capital, Freetown, gave it its name. Loosely translated it means "mountains where lions roar."
It is also one of the poorest, most disease-ridden nations on the face of the earth.
Furthermore, from 1989 to 2002, Sierra Leone was the scene of a horribly brutal civil war that took the lives of 50,000, made expatriates of most of the middle class and left thousands mutilated. Combatants routinely cut off the hands or feet of their prisoners.
This is where Tom Johnson chose to spend Christmas for the past three years. There's no place else he'd rather be.
"I'm just hoping that the peace holds," Johnson says as he prepares for his fourth consecutive annual trip to Africa.
He was there with the Peace Corps for the beginning of the war in 1989, assigned to the village of Masongbo in the north central part of the country. His Peace Corps tour over, he left in 1991, but he stayed in touch during the war and he returned to Sierra Leone in 2001 as the war was winding down.
Johnson is a sort of surgery broker and last year arranged operations in Ghana for two little girls suffering from tuberculosis of the spine. The disease paralyzed the girls from the hips down. Johnson has been told that they are now back on their feet and he was hoping to dance with them on Christmas Eve.
Johnson is a college graduate who makes his living as a handyman. He likes to work alone, unbossed and free to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He is a little guy, but powerfully built and very strong. He seems to prefer work clothes that most people would have thrown away years ago. A fiddler with the Dicey Riley band, he plays Irish music regularly at the Pub at the Marriott Hotel on Route 10 in Whippany.
He has never been married and says, "At the age of 52, I guess I'm safe."
Johnson joined the Peace Corps when he was 38. He had experience as a beekeeper and orchard manager, and that's what he did in Sierra Leone. Along with most other international volunteers, he got out in '91, but by that time he was hooked.
"I really hated the place my first year there. I felt that all these people wanted was my money. Then I came down with malaria and my friend Ahmed nursed me back to health. He had to go into my lockbox often and when I recovered there wasn't a single thing missing. The villagers seemed genuinely concerned about me. That really changed my attitude."
Poverty breeds sickness, and the ill are often not treated in Sierra Leone, a western African country squeezed between Liberia and Guinea. Deafness, epilepsy, leprosy, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and elephantiasis flourish there. And Sierra Leone shares with Afghanistan the distinction of having the highest rate of women who die in childbirth.
There are dozens of volunteer efforts going on in an attempt to ease the plight of Sierra Leone's five million people. By rights the country ought to rank among the world's wealthier nations because it is rich in diamonds, which is what the civil war was all about. Diamonds, not tribal rivalry or religion or ideology.
When Johnson returned to Sierra Leone in 2001, he became the man to see in Masongbo (population 2,000) for help with a stunning variety of foot diseases, which he personally treats, generally with applications of hydrogen peroxide held in place by gauze dressings and finished with strips of duct tape, which many of his patients prefer to standard dressings. The tape is shiny.
Hernias are another common ailment because most people make their living as sustenance farmers, and they lift very heavy loads. When they get a hernia, they go on farming, lifting just as much as they can. But this causes severe complications later on. Johnson has arranged for more than 40 surgeries correcting hernias. He is going to start doing the same thing for eye ailments.
Over the years, Johnson has hooked up with several charitable organizations, including the Foundation for Orthopedic and Complex Spine, which provides volunteer surgeons. But the Ghana hospital where they are performed charges $6,000 per patient for the spinal work.
Johnson takes a simple approach toward financing these procedures. He just pledges the money. Then he figures out how to raise it, and he's getting good at it. He raised $55,700 over the past 22 months. He's got his band involved. The Assumption Church of Morristown and Xaverian Missionaries are helping him, as are the local Knights of Columbus and Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. Plus his customers contribute. (For more information, consult http://wavedog.com/africa. )
"Things are going well. In the beginning it was just putting one foot in front of the other every day. But now I think we can really make a difference."
Johnson lives in the same house in Masongbo that he did when he was in the Peace Corps except that now when he makes his visits, he shares it with 10 Africans. He takes his fiddle with him to stay in shape musically. And most nights he's visited by young people who, after a rendition of "Gary Owen" or "The Wind that Shakes the Barley," begin to shout, "That's enough," in the local language, Timney. It is Johnson's cue to swing into the Christian call to prayer.
There is no electricity in the village so all this transpires in the dark. When the kids start to dance, invariably a couple of them fall over and that's the way Johnson's concerts usually end.
Tom Johnson's efforts have made life in the village of Masongbo more livable for dozens of people and have inspired hope for hundreds where once there was nothing but resignation. But the problems are so vast, he concedes he hasn't made much of an impression on Sierra Leone's woeful health statistics.
"At least not yet," he says.
Not yet.
John McLaughlin is a Star-Ledger columnist.
When this story was posted in December 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| The World's Broken Promise to our Children Former Director Carol Bellamy, now head of Unicef, says that the appalling conditions endured today by half the world's children speak to a broken promise. Too many governments are doing worse than neglecting children -- they are making deliberate, informed choices that hurt children. Read her op-ed and Unicef's report on the State of the World's Children 2005. |
| Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia." |
| Is Gaddi Leaving? Rumors are swirling that Peace Corps Director Vasquez may be leaving the administration. We think Director Vasquez has been doing a good job and if he decides to stay to the end of the administration, he could possibly have the same sort of impact as a Loret Ruppe Miller. If Vasquez has decided to leave, then Bob Taft, Peter McPherson, Chris Shays, or Jody Olsen would be good candidates to run the agency. Latest: For the record, Peace Corps has no comment on the rumors. |
| The Birth of the Peace Corps UMBC's Shriver Center and the Maryland Returned Volunteers hosted Scott Stossel, biographer of Sargent Shriver, who spoke on the Birth of the Peace Corps. This is the second annual Peace Corps History series - last year's speaker was Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. |
| Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here. |
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Story Source: Newark Star Ledger
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