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Ghana- Before Anabel there was Kevin [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-10

Anabel is a four year old girl in Buduburam Refuge Camp in Ghana who was abandoned by her mentally ill mother. Some homeless kids took her to my friend John and we have been arranging for her care in a shelter for small children whose parents are unable to care for them themselves.

I have been writing stories here about Anabel for awhile now, documenting her ups and downs (a few months ago she had a bad case of the measles, and in May she celebrated her fourth birthday.) She is only one child in a very difficult situation. Africa has many such, as does the US. It is a hard world, and especially for the little ones.

John and I have done what we can for others in Ghana. Sometimes it has been difficult and has required sacrifice. Sometimes there is simply nothing we can do. But Anabel is one I am not willing to leave to her own devices with a shrug of helplessness. And it is not only because of Anabel herself. Anabel is not the first.

Back in 2016 John and I were much more involved in helping people in the Buduburam Refugee Camp. Even then money was an issue, as it always is to everyone below the level of a Russian oligarch, but we had built up a small circle of children who were either orphans or who had only one parent and were in difficult circumstances. We did what we could for them, and at last once a week, on Friday night, John brought them together and gave them a good meal.

But right about then I and the small number of people here in the US who were part of our group and were able to help ran into some difficulties of our own. Some of the them lost their jobs or had to take pay cuts, some moved away and lost touch. I myself lost my job and was barely surviving. So the small, unofficial organization we had built up collapsed.

Right about at that time one of the children we were helping, who I will call Kevin here, was abandoned by his mother. She simply went off to pick seasonal crop in another part of Ghana and left him behind. He was only three years old, the same age as Anabel when she was abandoned. I think several of the mothers went together and there were three or four children who were abandoned at the same time but Kevin, at three years of age, was the youngest.

We were all broke. There was absolutely nothing we could do for them.

John told me he could hear them crying outside on the streets at night.

One day that Kevin fell into a ditch filled with water and was screaming in terror. Some adults rescued him and brought him to John. John said that Kevin was simply too young to be on his own.

But there was nothing we could do. I was barely surviving. John was barely surviving. I wasn’t even paying the rent and was facing eviction. We were both barely eating. It was just not possible to help a little boy in desperate need.

So we did nothing. To my shame.

Later the mother returned and thankfully, somehow, Kevin had managed to survive until then. But even a slightly happy ending is no excuse.

This should not happen. Grown people should not allow such things to happen.

This is why I am determined that Anabel will be taken care of. I am paying a debt to a little boy I did not help. I will not fail any child a second time.

It is John’s goal to set up an orphanage and a school for the abandoned children, or at least a safe place that will give them somewhere to go when it is raining. But of course that takes money….

(Incidentally the picture above is not of Kevin but of another of the children who had been abandoned. I lost many of my photos of that time due to a hard drive crash but this one, thankfully, survived.)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/10/2180254/-Ghana-Before-Anabel-there-was-Kevin

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