A MEMORIAL FOR SELORM KUADEY
1987 - 2012
Israel,
Liebling and Emefa suddenly lost the 4th leg of their family, Selorm,
on the 3rd of January 2012. He was an ex-England under 19s and 20s
Rugby player who went on to play for Sale Sharks, until injury forced him to
retire at the tender age of 24 years. Our church family held our hands all along
that painful journey. We promised to use the donations at his funeral to
continue his dream work with the youth.
I know many of you have also thought of various ways of
helping us with our project of building and running our pre-planned clinic in
mother Ghana. I was asked to write about it, but that project was one of "rob
Peter to pay Paul" given the vast inequality in wealth distribution in our part
of the world! The complex of clinic, gym, etc. was completed nearly 2 years ago.
It was not an easy task but we got there, by His grace. We ran the clinic for
well over a year but had to eventually make the hard decision of putting things
on hold until we could be on the ground, full time, for the purpose. However, we
were reminded of the angelic support we have from you all and thought it best to
express our sincere appreciation for your continuing support.
Some say grief should last no more than 6 months, others think at most 2 years otherwise it becomes pathological, but I have come to admire the individuality in us all.
It is more than 5 years now and the reality is just about setting in. A church sister whispered the following words to me, without realising how much an anchor/lifeline those few words would turn out to be; "you will begin to smile again one day". It was impossible to think along those lines at the time but our dear Father, who never fails us, has turned that into reality now.
We have learnt a lot from our loss, but that has helped build our endurance and everything else that follows suit.
The
promise to honour Selorm’s wishes and strong desire for youth work in his
motherland kept us thinking hard.
The Eureka moment came when Israel and I went to a relative’s engagement ceremony in a village, Kutunse, not far from our capital city, Accra. Lo and behold, the meal was being prepared in a small building with the bold writing "CDC" – a Child Development Centre with no toys or setup to point towards its child centredness (regrettably I did not think of taking a picture at the time!). All the same I was very impressed with the thought. It turned out to be run by the local Global Evangelical Church. Their office was open,
so I entered to have a chat and express my admiration for their determination. That proved to be the foundation of a support we knew Selorm would like to be involved with.
As expected, they had
many needs and gave us options to choose from with the assurance of involving
local artisans in the project of our choice. We settled on the provision of
classroom desks and chairs for the local school children (please see pic, free
range chicken not included!). The labels on them may not fully reflect the
source but one should not expect any acknowledgement or rewards for God’s work.
The sincere wish is to continue with the charitable work, but accountability is a major challenge when one is not on the ground, so until we can commit fully to the challenges we have decided to pause, just like we have for the clinic!
The SMKK gym continues to run in his name for now as we continue to watch out for innovative ways of meeting the various challenges. The journey continues, and many thanks once again for walking along with us!
Leibling Kuadey