Peggy Wright of Sechelt has an important mission to complete. But she must wait patiently for COVID-19 to pass so that she can travel once again.
Two years ago the former travel business owner visited Ghana, a country on the west coast of Africa, where she toured an orphanage in the inland village of Nsutam. It was started about 30 years ago by Mary Kwofie who is now elderly and ill, so her son John A. Kwofie, a Ghana police inspector, left his post in Accra, along with his wife Gina, and transferred to Nsutam to take over the care and feeding of the orphans.
When Wright met Kwofie he was working full-time managing the orphanage that currently hosts 28 children, from four years old to high school age.
They don’t have much, Wright explains. The Marcoff Foundation Children’s Home has only an outside toilet pit with two stalls, they wash all clothing by hand and shower behind a concrete wall using a bucket of water. Cooking is done outside over stones using a big iron pot.
“However, laughter abounds and the kids are healthy and happy,” Wright says. She was moved by the scene.
“There’s something I could do for this orphanage,” she thought. “I can help.”
She set out to raise funds for the organization by holding garage sales and selling homemade items such as colourful crazy quilt patterned cushions. In this pandemic year she is also making cloth masks for sale.
But her big project took her all winter to make.
She has sewn 40 lightweight quilts, each one unique, using fabric from local thrift stores – our cast-off dresses and sheets – and turning them out on her vintage sewing machine.
These are not for sale. Each child at the orphanage will get a quilt for his or her bed – something personal to decorate their own space in the dormitory.
She has put a lot of thought and hard work into each quilt, making a special one for the director and choosing the most colourful and pretty fabrics.
The plan was for Wright to travel to Ghana this Christmas and deliver them in person. Sadly, this must wait.
The orphanage also runs a school for the village, educating about 125 children and feeding them lunch every day. They lost their old transport van, so these days they have to send out a local taxi to pick up the kids that live too far away to walk.
Wright started a fundraising page: (https://www.gofundme.com/manage/3whmc5-ghana-orphanage) but thought about what she could do personally and she continues to make and sell cushions ($25) or masks ($5).
She can be reached at [email protected]
