The first few weeks of 2015 have seen the world seized by terror — and not just in France.
Four days before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, Boko Haram Islamic militants attacked a town in northern Nigeria, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of people and torching homes under a rain of machine-gun fire.
And while many in our region were glued to the news of Paris marching and debating free speech, at least one Pacific Northwesterner was wondering how the Boko Haram attacks might impact her plans to travel back to Nigeria — her home country — to help.
“These attacks, there’s so many of them that happen that we don’t even hear about,” says Ekene “Kennie” Amaefule, founder of Caring Hearts International, an Auburn-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing American health-care workers to remote parts of Nigeria to help provide care.
And in case you think Amaefule is exaggerating, the Sunday before I met with her, Boko Haram kidnapped between 30 and 50 people (most reported to be women and children) from neighboring Cameroon.
Despite this grim reality, Amaefule, who works as a nurse manager at the V.A. Hospital in Seattle by day, has organized and traveled with dozens of “medical missions” to Nigeria over the past decade. These are organized trips where medical professionals (mainly recruited from this area) travel for 10 days to administer needed care, everything from diabetes to malaria, high blood pressure to malnourishment — even sex education for teens — in remote villages.
It is work that is desperately needed. The country’s health-care system ranks among the worst in the world, and Amaefule tells stories of people who start lining up at 4 o’clock in the morning (for clinic hours that begin at 9) and who show their gratitude to her visiting doctors, nurses and pharmacists by offering chickens and goats to be taken back to the U.S.
It’s also work that is growing more difficult. When Amaefule first began her missions in 2002, she traveled all over Nigeria — even taking participants on fun trips to the Sahara at the end of their week of work.
Now she sticks to the eastern state of Imo, a region she knows well (she attended high school there) and which is far removed from the violence and insecurity of the north.
But even though her missions are hundreds of miles from Boko Haram’s attacks, Amaefule says she’s having a hard time recruiting for her next mission, planned for the end of March. Between the Ebola outbreak and terrorism, Americans are scared of Nigeria.
We’re sitting in her office at the hospital, a windowless room crammed with nursing manuals, family photos, awards for her humanitarian work and an impressive collection of little figurine angels (a tradition started years ago by patients who called her “their angel”) when I ask her about recruitment numbers for this year.
“I usually go with about 15,” she says. She starts counting this year’s volunteers on her fingers and seems to momentarily surprise herself by the low number before continuing. “Right now I have four.”
Amaefule tries to assuage the fears of potential volunteers by reminding them that Nigeria has the Ebola outbreak under control, that she’s never “lost anyone” in all her years doing missions, that she hires security for her volunteers — not because it’s really even needed but just to be safe.
But more than anything, Amaefule wants volunteers to know that their work is important, especially in these scary times.
“Once you go there, the feeling that you get is not something that anyone can explain to you,” she says, hundreds of glittery angels smiling serenely behind her in agreement, “You know that what we take for granted over here is like gold over there.”
If you’d like to learn more about her missions please visit: www.caringheartsinternational.org. Or email: Kenniea@yahoo.com.
