How do you start the future?

Since returning back from Ghana in February, I have been searching and planning for ways to create a brighter future for Larabanga and reflecting on how this chance opportunity has captured my visions and changed my life completely.  

Raising awareness back home has proven challenging throughout the past months, trying to express my memories and concerns through social networking and word of mouth. Being a teacher, a friend and a foreigner with a first aid kit within the community made me realise that when I return I don't want to be a glimmer of hope, I want to be their way forward and their voice within this world that they seem to be lost within. 

Research has been my main priority recently, finding people who know what they are talking about and who are willing to help. I had started my new job and got talking to one of the customers about the project and that conversation has been the best conversation to date, it has given hope and a way forward for the project. Jay introduced me to a networking site called LinkedIn... and WOW! I have been completely overwhelmed with how much information I have come across whilst using it, I have found it to be an invaluable tool for me, allowing me to engage with and access a hell of a lot of people who work within the field that the Larabanga Life Project falls in to.

I have not only used LinkedIn as a source for research but the Internet as a whole, I have even been in touch with  Nigerian doctor who gave me fantastic information that is set to help one of our children, 10 year old Yakutu.

Yakutu

She is thought to have Sickle Cell disease and whilst I was in Ghana, I seen her in such severe pain, shouting "why, why, why". I could hear her pleas coming from inside her soul, this bright, loving young girl has been given no help up to now, with the community not even knowing what the problem actually was. I now know the steps we need to go through in order to move forward with her condition. 

Step 1) Diagnosis.
With the only cure for Sickle Cell disease being a Stem Cell transplant it is going to be a long and hard journey for everyone involved but the more me and my team put into the planning and research, the more positive and effective the outcome! 
 I am not a medical professional but my hours of foraging has brought plenty of people who are to the surface for me, which is perfect, contacts are power nowadays. 

Another source of information for me has been books, I visited a small second hand book shop close to where I live, looking for some African Literature. I came across a fantastic find, a very informative and complicated book about Malaria, I am beginning to read it whilst typing the majority of the medical terminology into Google, Malaria is rife and I need to know more about it to be able to help combat it within the community.