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Report from Richard & Linda Benskin with Joanna & Daniel

Dear Friends,

There is excitement in the air, and the sewing machines in town are all whirring away as party clothes are being prepared. Has the spirit of Christmas finally enveloped Yendi like a thick blanket of snow? Actually, no, Christmas is still pretty imperceptible here. Ramadan does end this week, and there will be big parties here in Yendi to celebrate the end of the Islamic fast. The Harmattan season now permeates our world. Dry, dust-laden air from the Sahara has come to us, bringing desert weather: hot days (afternoons are always well into triple digits) and cool nights (68°F) . Dust as thick as fog is common and humidity is so low that wood, plastic, skin and even respiratory tract linings dry up and crack. We are again dividing the clinic staff into two groups so one nurse can man the Yendi clinic while another sees patients in remote villages. The work is coming along well, and I hope this report gives you an idea of some of what the Lord has been doing here in the Yendi area these past few months.

Hamidu, the little boy shown in our last newsletter, is making good progress. He now has much more mobility in his burned arm, though all the burns are still quite deep. If he becomes too agitated during his wound care, he bleeds terribly. To encourage him to stay calm, we have tried giving him a lollypop after his dressing changes. Once as he was walking home from the clinic with his father, a monkey snatched his lollypop! High protein intake helps a lot in healing wounds, so we recently began giving Hamidu two boiled eggs to eat as we do his wound care. Surprise! Hamidu likes boiled eggs much more than he likes candy! One of my lesser goals has been to see Hamidu smile. He has such a sober look, even when we give him the treats. We still haven't seen a full smile reach his mouth, but his eyes are often smiling as he devours his boiled eggs.

The clinic sees many women with breastfeeding problems. It is amazing to us that in this area, where breastfeeding is an integral part of the culture, so many mothers need teaching and encouragement. Quite often superstitions or feelings of inadequacy aggravate the problem. If a baby cries in the night (as with an ear infection), the mother will often be told by "helpful" relatives that her milk has probably "gone bad"! After one of the nurses evaluates mother and child and treats any illness, Victoria or Asana (interpreters) continue teaching, often for several hours. All of the women who have come to the clinic have been able to feed their babies well after this process. God has created moms with an amazing ability to produce plenty of nourishing milk, despite their own limited diets. The mothers come back for "follow-up" visits to verify that the babies are gaining muscle mass. Quite often smiling mothers find Asana or Vic at the Yendi market (pictured) or elsewhere around town and thank them for helping bring their babies back to health.

These past few months have been especially hectic. We were the only Americans working with the Yendi church and clinic in September and October, so much work that is usually shared with the McVeys and the Thorntons fell to us. Additionally, we spent quite a lot of time in the South. Richard helped plan and later install the water system for the Village of Hope (they finally have electricity to run their well pump). Linda taught Primary Health Care for a week at Heritage Christian College (a preaching school in Accra). Ron, Susan, and Chantell Pottberg visited in November bringing the kind of encouragement only close friends can deliver. Ron works with World Bible School. He came specifically to upgrade the WBS office in Accra, which will help us here in Yendi, especially with follow-up. Susan is a WBS secretary for our congregation in Austin, and she was able to gather donated wound care supplies for us from members there.

We intended to go to Accra to pick up the Pottbergs in early November, but on 23 October we were on the road South again. A large medicine purchase was sent to the clinic by air, and we were nominated to clear it through customs. Rather than making two trips in quick succession, we planned to stay South until the Pottbergs arrived. Since we knew were going to be gone from Yendi for a long time, we took Barkley and some schoolwork with us. This turned out for the best -- the Pottbergs arrived before we completed running the bureaucratic gauntlet of getting the medicines released! The five hour trip from Tema to Kumasi in our small pickup with four Benskins, three Pottbergs, Barkley, luggage, and clinic supplies (pictured above) was ... interesting.

The Pottbergs brought many helpful gifts from various members of our home congregation. In addition to the wound care supplies, they brought money donated to buy Bibles for the soldiers and the WBS students in the Yendi area. This is a constant big expense, but the soldiers are away from their families during their free time, so they really appreciate having a Bible to read. Chantell and Susan helped with many day-to-day chores while in Yendi, including distributing Bibles and WBS lessons to the soldiers. Ron also helped Richard build bookshelves and such and presented a great lesson at our Sunday service in Yendi.

We greatly appreciate the addition of a second donated laptop computer for our office. The kids do quite a lot of their schoolwork on the computer, since CDs provide a compact way to bring reference materials and tutorials to Africa. Naturally, the adults also have plenty to do on the computer. Scheduling of computer time and often "waiting in line" for the computer had become a real problem. Having another functional computer is a big help.

Peter Bombande (below, with the new supplies from Austin), the director of the clinic, is very committed to our wound care patients, who often come to the clinic from long distances for treatment. Usually they have terrible infections, and often they have been to herbalists for years prior to hearing about our clinic. (Herbalists in Ghana do not just use plant medicines. They often make deep cuts, and sometimes their expensive "cures" are so potent they create deep chemical burns). Recently a woman came saying, "I didn't know modern medicine treated wounds." She had suffered for three years with a swollen infected leg. Her remark sounds incredible, but most clinics and hospitals here simply do not have the staff or supplies to care for such patients. We believe our success with wound care at the mission clinic is mostly due to patience, persistence and prayer. Techniques that work well in the USA are often disastrous here, where patients are unable to rest or keep clean, and people live in "Petri dish incubation" temperatures most of the time. Peter used to come to the clinic early every day (even Saturdays) to give the wound patients the attention that is required for good results. These days, Peter is so busy seeing patients (he is an RN) and handling paperwork that he mostly "consults," while Linda now does most of the dressing changes.

People often ask us if we live like the local people here in Ghana. We live much like the educated Southerners with whom we work, except that some conveniences are not available here in Yendi. For example, the walls of our house were built to conserve cement, so the concrete mixture is heavy on dirt. Chunks fall off on a fairly regular basis. Our house has great running water, rather eccentric electricity, and a telephone which usually works. We have hot water when the sun shines. We have screens on the windows and ceiling fans in every room (heating is never required and window air-conditioning is used only on a limited basis). We cook on a normal stove using propane and we have regular beds with mattresses and pillows, tables, desks, chairs, shelves and MANY books. We have lots of crawling insects, geckos and spiders in our house, but the screens keep out the flying insects (like the malaria-carrying mosquitoes).

In contrast, some of the villagers of the North are startlingly poor, and we do not live at all as they do. If we did, we feel we could accomplish far less to help them. Many villagers have all their earthly possessions in a single mud-walled thatch-roofed room of a family compound. They do not live in the room -- they only sleep there with their children. They spend their days working in fields that may be miles from the room, fetching water for washing and drinking from stagnant puddles, gathering firewood, and cooking on a fire on the ground in their compound's "courtyard" with a few rough stones precariously holding a big pot upright.

In addition to the pot and the stones, most women will own several pieces of cloth, which they use to cover themselves, carry their babies, and lie on at night. They often have one or two ragged Western-style dresses or skirts. Pillows, sheets, and "foams" (cheap mattresses) are all luxury items, as are screens and mosquito nets. Tables, chairs and books are also rare. "Flip-flops" are the standard shoe, and most people own one pair. Men usually own a hat. A family usually also owns a knife, a short home-made hoe, a bundle of broom-grass, a cutlass ("machete"), a few bowls and vessels of various sizes and some spoons, one or two low stools (less than a foot high), the produce that they are able to store for eating in the dry season, and a little paper money from the sale of excess crops. This may be all a family possesses, and poor families eat only one meal a day. Due to inflation, it is difficult to save money. If a man accumulates wealth, he may buy a used bicycle. Women often invest their savings, if they have any, by buying sets of baked-enamel pots with lids.

Prayer requests:

• Since we started this report, the parties for the end of Ramadan mentioned in the opening paragraph have transpired. Sadly, these brought with them renewed tensions between the two rival clans in Dagbon. No serious injuries have been reported, but several arrests were made. Pray that things can soon be resolved peacefully.

• The handbook for the village health workers is at the printer's. Pray that the printing will go smoothly and that we will find a reasonably-priced means of getting them to Ghana quickly.

• Please also pray for healing for our patients. We dress wounds and give out medicine, but only God gives health.

• Continue to pray for our health. This season's prevalent dust and smoke (from burning dry grasslands) lead to a lot of sinus and respiratory difficulties.

In the Service of Our King,
The Benskin Family

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