The first weekend of July, COFA co-funded a dual mission to start a bike library for students and deliver bleach-making equipment and training to Bonthe. It’s a remote coastal fishing town on Sherbro Island in Sierra’s Leone’s southern province. Karim Kamara, our leader in Sierra Leone, Abdul Kamara (a COFA scholar profiled in a previous blog post), and the team traveled more than 200 miles over difficult terrain before returning home to Lunsar.
The 20 bikes are on long-term loan to students who have been walking an average of 7 miles to get to school and back every day. They’ll be used not only for school but to help families transport supplies and support their businesses. The bikes remain part of a “bike library” at the school for the future, but we’ll likely support another delivery to grow the library.
Abdul demonstrating bleach-making with a cup of salt
Abdul, nearly finished with his Master of Public Health degree, takes the lead on bleach-making. The equipment was donated by WaterStep (https://waterstep.org/) (which developed the technology), an organization that Karim and COFA have collaborated with over the past few years. Abdul trained workers from the only hospital on the island to produce bleach that will be used for hospital disinfection and also to disinfect drinking water for the community. Remarkably, the whole process works using only common table salt and water to produce pure bleach.
Thanks to all for the support that makes these missions possible.