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Two lives - Two languages - Two continents apart - MAKING A DIFFERENCE THE OLD FASHIONED WAY BY REACHING INTO THE DARKNESS AND PULLING OTHERS INTO THE LIGHT / GIVING THEM HOPE, RESPECT, KNOWLEDGE AND DIGNITY IN PEACE.
I met Mao a couple years ago. He speaks French. He grew up as an abandoned baby by his father, feeling unloved and thrown away. At five years old and trying just to survive life he met some other abandoned and thrown away boys and they taught him to beg and steal. Mao lived in the sheds the ‘Koranic teachers provide for them if they bring in money for the day each and every day or they are beaten and thrown out.’ The sheds or vacant buildings are not suitable even for animals in America. But that is the life of the beggar children and women. I never really thought about all the rags Americans throw away in recycle bins, but in these pictures you will see where they end up. On the backs of children - a patchwork of rags on God’s children. I say they deserve more. I don’t care if I’m in America and they are there - THEY DESERVE A LIFE AND A FUTURE. And I’m only one person and Mao is only one person but together we are bridging the hopeless gap of continents. Just helping Mao to help them helps me to sleep at night and to continue the struggle to do more each day. After discovering the sad truth that Mao before finding out about me and Bajito Onda was thinking of ending his life because after all he has done to survive and educate himself alone and cast out - all the way through a Bachelors and Masters degrees in sociology he had no hope only barely surviving still on fifty cents a day if he was lucky. He wrote to me after discovering that Bajito Onda Africa Foundation is a member of the African Union since 2005 and he wanted to know how to start a chapter in Senegal, in French. When I found that he had no family, no job, no way to reach out and back to the kids who are now like he once was - I knew I wanted to get involved in Africa, wherever God led me - I would send Mao. I sent him to Liberia, he had never been there - it became dangerous after the war was over and there were no jobs. I sent him there to try to meet Madam Sirleaf and to offer Liberia my training programs. He had to leave before it was thought he was rich with my help so he went to Mali. It was there he stayed on and met with the Bishops of the Catholic church and with other townspeople in Bamako - there too we tried to work to set up training centers but he was not fluent in one thing ...
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