Christmas Trip Continued.

CHRISTMAS TRIP CONTINUED

The next day we made a trip with Mike Steward in Lokpako, this was a Biafra area, where a terrible war had taken place. Also located here was a studio where artificial legs and arms of wood were made and where many disabled war victims worked. Mike, who knew the director very well, showed us everything. It is unbelievable how they managed with wooden limbs and walk on it. Very impressing was also to see how cheerful and merry they were even though they had to wear wooden legs or arm stumps.
After that we also visited some woodcarving shops, where we bought our most beautiful African art pieces, new and old ones.
In the evening we had a Christmas dinner with also two nuns. They told us that they visited the sick and the insane in the local hospital to help out. One day they were at the local hospital again and when they looked in the mortuary they saw a white arm holding out. After checking, the owner of the arm, carefully they looked al over his body and by doing so, they saw that he was still alive. He was just terribly wounded and very thin. They had him taken out of the mortuary and put on a stretcher and brought him to an English doctor, who worked on him for hours. This young man was an 18 year Dutch old boy, who was sent to Nigeria by a volunteer organization, but this Dutch organization had forgotten to send him some money. He was begging the locals for some food, but they weren’t very generous. When he finally got the money he bought a motorcycle and made some trips. On one of these trips he had an accident near Lokpako and was given up by the local doctors and put in the morgue.
At last he recovered and had to be sent to Holland as soon as possible for further plastic surgery. At the Christmas diner we told the nuns that he could stay with us for 10 days before he would travel to Lagos and then to The Netherlands. They were deligthed and would tell him.
The trip home was on a Monday and there were no roadblocks, so it was a very cheap trip. Peter, the boy that was thought of to be dead, spent 10 wonderful days with us. He was a very nice boy and we had a great time with him, also making sure he had enough to eat, so he could further recover. Unfortunately he had to return to Holland because his whole back was full of scars and burnmarks. His face had also terrible scars and looked awfull. I often wonder how he is doing.
Dinkie