Early Challenges

On one of my first few days in Gbaukuchi Village, I came across a lady carrying a kid less than two years old. Well as a lover of children I called her to play with the kid and noticed the boy was in pains. I asked her what the problem was and she responded that the baby had a wound on his leg which they were treating. I checked out the wound and I inadvertently let out a wild scream. For the first time in my life I actually saw someone with a guinea worm infection. The worm was actually creeping through the boy’s right foot!

I could not stand the sight. I dropped all the cash I had which was less than five thousand naira and quickly called a woman who was a nurse in the main church to assist her and ensure the baby saw a doctor. Thank God the treatment was not expensive and the baby recovered quickly. I made it a point of duty to investigate the reason for the guinea worm infection. I was baffled by what I saw. There was no water in the village but a couple of compound sank wells. The main stream in the village is terrible. Fulani herdsmen lead their herds through the stream and the villagers fetch the water for domestic use. Also, the residents of the next village who are at the upper course of the stream, bathe and do their laundry in the stream before it flows down to Gbaukuchi village.

One of the major streams in the village after a heavy rain. This serves as one of the sources of water for the villagers

Also, I got a call from the village that one of the women had put to bed. I got there to visit the mother and child and asked which hospital was she delivered. I was shocked to hear she put to bed in her room assisted by women in the village. Now there is a clinic in the village manned by two community health workers under the employment of the Kuje Area Council but the villagers still prefer to give birth at home. I was told this woman started bleeding immediately after the baby was born and bled till morning before the community health worker arrived to give her injection that stopped the bleeding. What a relief. Maternal mortality avoided.

However, few weeks after that, another woman went into forced labour in the middle of the night and eventually had a still birth. I was called around 5am in the morning when they were going to bury the foetus. I had to make an emergency trip to the village in the morning to console the poor woman who had erstwhile been having difficulties getting pregnant.

These sorry stories spurred me to help the village find solutions to these challenges which unfortunately are being faced in rural communities in most parts of Nigeria.

I began to look for donors and partners but they were difficult to come by. People could not really relate to the pictures I painted. Then someone suggested that I should start inviting friends, colleagues, organisations and religious clerics to the village. They would witness onsite, the pictures I was trying to paint and appreciate the enormous task facing me. This was a brilliant idea and I sat down and calculated my next move…

Clearing of the site for the church's permanent structure