Terrors Rugby Helping Friends in Liberia & Sierra Leone

We want to help our friends, Baindu, and sons Joseph, and Brima Kamara (founding members of our rugby programs) help their immediate family suffering in urban and rural areas in Ebola-afflicted Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

After experiencing a decade of civil war, unimaginable atrocities and years in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, Baindu and some of her children were granted asylum in the U.S. through the UN Refugee program in 2007.  However, the Kamara's have many immediate family members in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Monrovia, Liberia as well as the rural areas of Liberia most affected by the Ebola crisis. A crisis wreaking havoc not only on the physical health, but the economic health of these nations.

We recently asked how their family and friends are managing in the midst of the Ebola crisis. "Ebola is not killing my family, starvation is" said Baindu Kamara. Baindu went on to say that, since the outbreak, there is no working outside of the home "everything is closed" including boarders to neighboring countries. For example, Ivory Coast, the world's leading producer of cocoa and in the middle of their cocoa harvesting season would typically secure Liberian migrant workers for the harvest, not so with the boarders being closed. listen here for an interesting backstory. 

Baindu's eldest sons, brother, sisters, and father, phone her in the States, pleading for any little bit of help. "The men cannot make farms, they cannot work...they think because I am in America I have money to send." Baindu has lost friends to Ebola but her greater fear is loosing family to starvation. She tells us of heartbreaking calls from her family and has little to offer but sends what she is able to via Western Union to West Africa then she says "puts it inside a prayer." For context, a 50kg bag of rice, once $5USD, is now $50USD and while the average Liberian before the crisis was existing on $1.25USD/day which amounts to $37.50USD/mo. That's a month and a half of earnings (which aren't currently being earned) for a bag of rice. 

We would like to show the Kamaras how much we care about them and, by extension, their family members who are suffering. We have launched this modest fundraising campaign in the hopes of sending several hundred dollars, at minimum, for the next few months or for as long as this crisis lasts. Please don't feel compelled to give, but we would be grateful if you would.  Central Terrors Rugby will pass through all donations and assist Baindu in wiring much-needed money to her family in Liberia and Sierra Leone for food. 

It's that simple. 

We are not a 501.c.3, we are not working with NGOs in Liberia or Sierra Leone, and we cannot offer tax deductible receipting. We are simply trying to help the Kamaras to help their family in an immediate, direct and meaningful way.  Read here for more information about why direct cash, v. programmatic support is so critically important during crisis. 

Many thanks!

To learn more about the Kamara's homeland the following is a great read...

New York Times Article In Homeland, Liberia Native Finds Resilience Amid Horror