Missionary Trip to Sierra Leone—Reported by George Wirnkar, June 9 - 13, 2010

For a very long time, HLI had been planning to visit Sierra Leone. Although we could say human factors like the war and insecurity that reigned there for many years prevented us, in hindsight, God’s moment for our visit had simply not yet come. Needless to say, from June 9th through 13th, 2010, I served on one of the most exciting pro-life mission trips I have had in nearly 10 years of international travel for HLI and 20 years of pro-life missionary efforts.

Sierra Leone is a small country of less than six million people, located on the coast of West Africa. It was a key transit location for the slave trade from West Africa for the plantations of the New World. Having gained independence from the British in 1961, it is now a largely Muslim nation, with Christians representing 10% and Muslims 60% of the population. The country was embroiled in a bitter civil war from 1991 to 2002—a war driven by competition for control of her vast mineral wealth. God has abundantly blessed the residents of Sierra Leone. Its people have easy access to the Atlantic Ocean and sit upon huge deposits of valuable minerals, like bauxite and diamonds.

The civil war years brought man’s inhumanity against his fellow to hitherto unseen heights. The people of Sierra Leone suffered not only massive destruction and brutal acts of rape by the rebels, but also the trademark torture of chopping victims’ limbs, either at the knees, wrists, or elbows. In addition to such heinous brutality, infrastructure throughout the country was badly damaged, such that she is not just in dire need of reconstruction, but of truly reinventing herself. The harrowing experiences of the people of this small nation, in the years not only of their own civil war but also of the Liberian war, make the task of reconstruction quite challenging.  Sierra Leone must develop a frame of mind entirely different from the one that led her through those despicable years.

The Classroom of Life

Our mission in Sierra Leone began when we landed at the small and old but very hospitable airport at Lungi. We got the feeling you are landing at a colonial airstrip in a palm and coconut bush clearing back in the days when the British were in charge. The friendly people on the ground welcomed us in a way that recalls the legendary “good-old-days.” I wondered at this remarkably warm reception at first, but I found the answer rather quickly. When you experience the kind of human suffering and abuse of human rights that these people have endured, your outlook on life, with God’s grace, changes for the better.  Among other things, you see every encounter with another human being as an irreplaceable opportunity for doing good. Only people unschooled in the walking classroom of life are ignorant of this.

After disembarking the plane, we took a beautiful, 45-minute leisurely ferry ride to the beaches of Freetown. And, at last, we made the final road-trip to our final destination. Sierra Leone is unchallenged as the one location to which one can only arrive after traveling by sea, land and air!

Meet Archbishop Edward Tamba Charles

Explaining the global outreach of HLI’s work to Archbishop Edward Tamba Charles – the Arch- bishop of Freetown and Bo – who hosted George during his visit.

Archbishop Edward Tamba Charles lived through Sierra Leone’s war-torn years, ministering to young people and carrying the responsibility of forming the next generation of priests. His experiences, and those of many other priests who lived in the Sierra Leone of the civil war era, testify to nothing short of Divine protection and many gifts of the Holy Spirit.  The lines that separated the events of daily life during the war were often the thin divide between life and death. As seminary rector, the archbishop had to move the seminary from Gbanga in Liberia to Kenama in the north of Sierra Leone on Easter Monday in 1990.  When Sierra Leone’s own war intensified and he found the professors and seminarians were going to spend more time dodging bullets or hiding away in the bush than pursuing formation, he captained lead the effort to move them to the relative security of Freetown in 1999.  Throughout the years of war, they were ever watchful of rebels, sleeping with one ear open for warning shots and explosions, hiding away in the forest for long days—until rebels who had laid siege on the seminary would leave after their plunder.  Amidst all this, one can see the guiding hand of God making sure, even in war, that Sierra Leone’s future was not totally compromised. Training future priests even in a stable environment is not the easiest of tasks; yet amidst the physical hostility and material want during days of war, Archbishop Tamba Charles and his team ran what may be termed a mobile, yet effective, seminary. Today, as then, this team provides Sierra Leone with the pastors who are working to build a new Sierra Leone.

George speaking at a meeting with Couples for Christ in Freetown. The meeting was convened by the Archbishop of Freetown and Bo, who was in attendance himself.

Even now, in peace time, Archbishop Tamba Charles and his clergy live an everyday life in conditions that would make many shudder. During my five-day visit, we had electricity intermittently for a total amount of time not exceeding a single day! Praying the Divine Office by flashlight with the archbishop and his priest secretary was the best way of offering up the hardships that each bright new day in Sierra Leone comes with, praying to Him who can make even our most painful sacrifices into instruments and moments for our own purification.

When a person has seen human life trifled with by armed rebels ready to chop off limbs—and that as merely a warning of worse things to come—he can only become an

Training seminarians on how to make fetal models / miniature babie

outspoken defender of life. During my visit, Archbishop Tamba Charles scheduled talks and a quick training session on making ten-week-old fetal models with the seminarians of St. Paul Major Seminary in Freetown. He not only invited me but accompanied me to speak to Couples for Christ, as well as to the faithful, after a Mass at which he administered the sacrament of Confirmation to a group of 30 souls. He reminded me, on each occasion, that we are helping him realize one of the key goals he had set for his episcopate when he accepted the appointment to the Archdiocese of Freetown and Bo—that of strengthening the families of his diocese. He maintains that if we build strong Christian families, the vocations crisis will never visit our shores.

Sierra Leone’s New War

If we are thankful to God that Sierra Leone’s bitter, 10-year civil war is over, we ask Him and His angels today to defend this country from two sad reminders of her historical past, now plaguing the country in new forms – slavery and war.

After the civil war, many NGOs (non-governmental organizations) flooded in – frequently with a public development and healthcare agenda, but all too often with a less pronounced, although not often hidden, “reproductive health” agenda.  Some have since left the country, but they have installed local affiliates, who continue their work to this day, receiving NGOs’ continued support in driving the population control agenda. With infrastructure destroyed, agriculture in shambles, and industry practically non-existent, the impoverished people of a nation are often in such desperate need that sifting through aid packages presented for their relief may feel like a waste of precious time or like looking a gift-horse in the mouth.  So, today we see, for example, several Marie Stopes clinics in Freetown. Their motto is: “Serving Your Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs.” I was told Marie Stopes offers Norplant (a contraceptive device inserted into the female body) for only 6,000 Leones, which is equivalent to less than two US Dollars. Marie Stopes has teamed up with a health franchise, BlueStar, to seriously expand the provision of “reproductive health” services. If we consider what BlueStar and Marie Stopes are doing in countries like Ethiopia, then we must realize that Sierra Leone is in urgent and imminent danger.

George Wirnkar uses HLI’s “State of Abortion Laws in Africa” map to help explain to St. Augustine seminarians our hope of helping Africa keep laws that respect life in place.

IPPF in Sierra Leone officially and publicly maintains that “the main task of Planned Parenthood Association of Sierra Leone (PPASL) is to help counter the high fertility rate by assisting women to access family planning.” They further and officially outline their targets: “young people in particular, pregnant women, fishermen, community leaders, police and army personnel, Muslims and Christian groups” (cf. http://www.ippf.org/en/Where/SL.htm).  Marie Stoppes operates true to the African saying – “The leopard never changes its spots.” What future do we have for the family in Sierra Leone when IPPF has vengefully targeted her fertility rate.

We must not be fooled! Once contraception becomes a commodity and “sexual and reproductive health” is the guiding way of life for viewing human sexuality and planning families, people are well-disposed to support legalized abortion. The archbishop and I agreed that this plague descending upon Sierra Leone’s people is like a new kind of slavery worse than what they suffered in the past.

When a country gradually accepts contraception, the way Sierra Leone is being coerced into doing, it is a declaration of war against the unborn. When a country’s youth are told they have sexual rights that they are free to exercise without limit as long as they do not become pregnant or catch an STD, the family unit is put in jeopardy. And if we dump Sierra Leone’s family life today, all efforts at reconstruction will be in vain. I reminded the communities I addressed during my visit of this and told them that the human person and the family—the foundation for each one of us—must be at the center of any meaningful development, or, as in the case of Sierra Leone, any national reconstruction.

Abortion remains illegal in Sierra Leone, but the big question is: “For how long?” Forces that battle to bring about legal abortion, particularly in Africa, do not do so by huge billboard campaigns. They prowl in the dark and only begin to emerge on the surface when they have co-opted the executive, conquered the school system, won-over professionals and compromised the legislature. We must heed the African proverb that warns: “You do not begin feeding your chicken on the market day.”