We are received like royalty, my friend and I. Like family in the home of John and Kadi. We are given the big bedroom while the family crowds in the small room and sleeps on couches in the living room. We are given food, delicious heaps of rice and stew. The girls fetch water for us, heavy gallons from far across the football field so that we can shower and flush the toilet. They engage in our every need.

We discuss it: how can we give back? Neither of us has run a fundraiser before. Still we find ourselves sitting in the living room with John and Kadi one evening, pitching the idea.
“How much would you need to finish constructing the clinic?” I ask. Kadi gave me a tour on my fist day already, led me up the narrow stairs to the two rooms without a roof that she started building almost two years ago, in the hopes of giving more space and privacy to her patients.
“Maybe around 500 Euro…” John speculates. In my mind I double that immediately. If we’re doing it, we’re doing it.

The next day I film the clinic, Kadi and the construction, edit it together while my friend writes a compelling text. Expanding Nurse Kadi’s clinic in Freetown. Then we post it online.

Maybe it is because of everything they are doing for us.
Maybe it is because the needs are so blatant here.
Maybe it is because of the direct, frequent and unabashed demands for money that I myself have received in Africa for the past year, but asking friends and family for funds does not feel difficult at all. Normally I avoid asking, twist my words until the last minute. Now it feels easy;
Please help us.

We spread the campaign. And our friends come through: within two days we have reached a fifth of our goal.

Kadi calls me into the clinic daily to take photos and to film whenever something is going on. She explains the processes, not changing anything about her whether on or off camera. No polish, no flash, no bashfulness; she remains calm, confident and direct. I get to film pregnant bellies, newborn babies, shots given and stitches applied, hands held, breaths held in pain. It feels like a privilege to be allowed to enter into this space. I try to stay out of the way for the nurses and my knees buckle at the trust Kadi is placing in me, believing that what I do will make a difference.

As the campaign runs on, I balance between moments of humility and purpose on one hand, and absolute doubt and anguish on the other.
Am I telling this story in a fair way?
What makes me qualified to do this?
Do I even know enough about this country?

“Look at the hills there, look Inga,” Kadi says and gestures with her arm across the football field below us. “Most of them they come from these hills. Some from even beyond. They are the ones who come here; this is the only clinic around.”
And I look at Pentagon and Jackulum, the two neighborhoods crammed on these hills, and my bones feel heavy with the beauty and the hardships; the needs here are so big.

The fundraiser for Kadi is not enough; they need schools, roads and clean water supplies. To clean up the stream where people throw their trash, piss and wash their clothes. To build houses for families living in shacks, draw power lines, get shoes for the children running barefoot among the rocks and trash. This clinic is such a small part of it, the 10 00 Euro we ask for so tiny, so futile in relation to all that is needed.

Is it even worth doing this?

But I drag myself up. Insist on yes. Yes, it is worth it. There are so many ways to strain and grope and wiggle into these systems of power that keep some people poor in this world. To divide the money, share perspectives. Share food. Host and be hosted. Right now I am trying out wiggling in this way, pushing cracks into the systems I find unjust. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know the full range of consequences we are setting in motion. I am just trying this way. Maybe later I will try other ways.

A defiance grows into my doubts; I don’t need fucking qualifications to ask for money and then use it to buy cement.

And so we keep at it. Send out messages, film and post updates. Kadi is doing her part which is her work, running her clinic and focusing on the patients. Inviting me to become her bridge.

I have to come through. I want to.

Every time I walk up or down the rocky hills now, cross the stream on the uneven stepping stones or rickety bridges; every time I bump along in a keke, especially at night in the complete darkness, I think about how it would be to do this journey while in labor. Yes, the women are strong here, beyond anything I’ve seen before. But they shouldn’t have to take these risks. It is too much.
“Some do not make it,” Kadi says. “Some children die on the way.”

In the evenings I dream of reaching or goal.

Two weeks in we have managed 50%; the sum that John asked for in the beginning. And in the living room that evening, sitting all together again, we decide to start construction. Kadi is reserved and quiet, agreeing to suggestions but not taking the lead, and I wonder if she is afraid to believe this is true. I can understand her. I won’t trust anything either until the money is resting in my hand.

The next day I go into town to withdraw the money, count the bills in the tiny air-conditioned office, ask to exchange the faulty notes and sit, sweating and nervous, on the keke back home, pockets full of paper. Please don’t die now. Please don’t get robbed right this moment.

Calls are made. The next day a truckload of sand somehow manages the steep hill down to the clinic. Zeynab and Kadiatou take me up to a construction store at the junction and we buy sacks of cement and iron rods. A group of young men take the sacks down the hill on their heads. Likewise the sand is loaded into sacks and taken up to the clinic; to lessen the risk of getting stolen. Suddenly all the materials are there. We just need the workers. On this day Kadi takes the lead, gesturing the truck drivers, haggling with the boys and instructing the process, her quiet reserve blown away.

On a Sunday morning I wake up to find that the workers have arrived. On this rare day we have electricity and the TV is on, the house full of life, spaghetti cooking on the porch. John is leaning over the railing to film the process. My heart takes a skip: it is happening.

I am happy for the opportunity to film a construction process in Africa; I have seen people toil and sweat under the sun to make buildings grow from the ground, all labor done by hand. I have been longing to film and pay homage to the work and the skills; the cement mixed on the spot by workers who just feel the ratios. Barefoot they climb up onto the wooden jigs they have hammered into the top of the walls, balance and pour the concrete. The body bound by endless work, the walls growing higher.

Even if we don’t hit the goal, it is already something, I think to myself. John’s estimate is not enough to finish the building, and I am glad I doubled the amount. The 500 Euro were enough for a truckload of sand and its delivery, seven bags of cement and seven full iron rods; to pay the men carrying the cement and the sand, to buy wood for the construction and to pay the three construction workers. But it will not be enough to place a roof on the building. With the footage from the process and our departure on the horizon, we make a last push on social media, ask our friends again for an early Christmas gift to this family who has received us so generously.

…

I am already on my way, cycling to Kenema, when I think to check the fundraiser page. I have woken up in the bush, packed my tent and am in the middle of brushing my teeth while the page loads on the slow connection. The toothbrush stops its little commute when I glance on the screen. The little green circle is full. The numbers show 1100 Euro; 110%.

The songs of morning birds wash over me then. Little ant feet tap up over a straw and the careful golden sun reaches up and swallows me too. My shout of joy is not a shout but a quiet wave inside my skins. The toothpaste drips.

We did it.

The morning mist is hanging on the fields. I am completely alone on the road and the bike rolls easily. The air bright and in my chest I feel the same colors radiating, filling up the rib cage.

We did it. We funded Nurse Kadi’s clinic.

—

The fundraiser is closed and finished; the lessons of running my first ever fundraiser are written and archived. My original videos on youtube remain.

Introduction of Nurse Kadi and the clinic:
Expanding Nurse Kadi’s clinic in Pentagon, Freetown

The building process:
Nurse Kadi – clinic construction

…

(This story told in pictures and video.)