Bizarre Border Day

After a 36h stop in Accra and a rather short night due to a party, departure alarm was set for 0530.  It proved to be a bad idea to try travelling to Cote d'Ivoire with my 'little brother' Charles Sablah from Nima after only 3.5h sleep!

Grumpiness set in right at the beginning, particularly when a man on our VIP bus was spotted boarding after departing Kaneshie, a preacher!  7 long hours later incarcerated on 'religious' transport our arrival at Takoradi was over 2hours late.  This was partly due to the fact our driver didn't seem to know how to get into 3rd gear, we crawled most of the way in 2nd with the engine groaning under my back seat!

Arriving at Elubo, the Ghanaian side of the border with Lampard, a driver I've been using for a few years; the hunt was on for a private Ivorian car.   We were looking to hitchhike and get as close as possible to friends living in Bassam for the night.  Lucky to spot someone with an empty car, he offered a lift despite being at work at the border.  The Ghanaian border guards all remembered me, shook hands & asked why I wasn't staying for longer.

On our way between Elubo & Noe which was heavily blocked with trucks waiting to get through customs we exchanged pleasantries and chatted about all things Ivorian.  Whilst crossing the bridge I made mention of the children that cross and a village I'm aware of ... He confirmed it all and the fact he's involved with trafficking .. Alarm bells were ringing, our conversation had been in French, he then asked Charles in Twi what I'm doing in Cote D'Ivoire, of course he'd not understood our conversation.  It all became a little complicated!

Arrival at Noe, big welcomes from the border guards who I've built quite a rapport with over the last 2-3 years with this team ... Then to bump into a colleague who was also heading towards Abidjan with her young family for Christmas.

I'm now in CI puzzling how to move forward at the moment.  Today is Sunday, tomorrow I'll probably be making a lot of calls in relation to our new 'friend' ...

A request ..

I'm under a lot of pressure to make sure that C.R.E.E.R will work.  We're all determined to make it work.  I've been talking to everyone and anyone that will listen to me!

We have a lot in place due to the generosity of the Mayor of the town we're going to be in with the land donation.  I've also had a long chat with a lovely lady in Canada who is very interested as she already has her own charity there that deals with trafficked children, trying to repatriate them but others who 'can't' go home may come to us.  She will be meeting our contacts in Cote d'Ivoire in the near future we hope to examine how we can work together.

I am hoping that people reading this blog may be able to offer a) advice b) support c) a word of mouth community to enable us to make this move forward, as I said, in the long term this should be self-sustainable, starting it up is going to be a difficult exercise so there are a few ideas namely:

1. Financial donations
2. Contacts you may have in the commercial world who would might like to be involved in giving material gifts (tools, materials, shipping containers of goods etc) or financial contributions
3. Sponsoring one of the children that will be with us for the longer term, keeping in regular contact and getting updates from them.
4. Donating items of use including clothes, shoes etc, although this might be difficult for us to get them to Cote d'Ivoire - I already have a mountain of clothes that I will be taking with me on each trip as I used to do for EMSF.
5. Doing fundraising on our behalf, when the website is up & running we intend to have a PayPal account.  So this could be evening charity auctions, fun runs, accomplishing a long bicycle ride or marathon run.
6. Just TALKING, if you're at university or at a school we're keen to hear from you & will send you fliers (to be made up soon on PDF) etc to get more interest. 

For French companies (and possibly across the EU, I need to examine this) there is a taxable deduction for companies who give either financial or material aid from their company, it's at 65% in France.

I've just added Amazon links to this blog.  I will receive some money from any clicks on there.  If you're thinking about Christmas presents already & want to buy from Amazon, please use my links & the money will go to C.R.E.E.R

Thanks!

c.r.e.e.r.rci AT gmail.com
C.R.E.E.R group page on Facebook