African Medical Missions: Part 1 of a Series

Dal Basile flatly refused to go on Dr. Bob Hamilton’s first medical mission to Sierra Leone in 2001. Gutted by 10 years of brutal civil war over its diamond mining, the nation was left a shambles, its economy the second poorest in the world.

“It was devastated. I was in shock for four weeks afterward; I couldn’t talk to anyone,” said Dal, a vocational nurse who relented and went. “There were bullet holes everywhere. All the windows were broken. There were rats in the rooms. Every woman I saw had been molested or raped. There were amputees. I saw cancer oozing out of people’s bodies. But the worst thing I saw was so many people starving. You look at the people of the Holocaust, but it’s not the same as seeing it in real life.”

Now at 16 years of ministering to some of the neediest people on earth, Lighthouse Medical Missions has conducted 21 missions in nine nations. Doctors, nurses, medical students and other volunteers have administered $500,000 worth of medicines, conducted surgeries, built schools, dug wells, distributed clothes, food, computers and vehicles. Virtually all of the people who live in these nations survive on $1.00 a day. Students from Lighthouse Christian Academy regularly go on these missions.

“Africa’s talons got into me,” said Dr. Bob, a pediatrician who lives and works comfortably in Santa Monica and twice yearly submits himself to uncomfortable circumstances to run clinics. “I fell in love with Africa. I found myself wonderfully entrapped by the people and their graciousness. I also felt there was a huge need and we could make a difference. Hopefully my legacy will be people: that the people who come with me will have a heart to do missions, and that people will be touched by Christ.”

Of the 65,000 patients attended to so far by ongoing missions, one was a starving waif who was refused admittance into a local hospital because she was beyond hope. Upon seeing 8-year-old Kaddy Jatou Jameh reduced to 36 pounds, even some members of Dr. Bob’s team went grim-faced. And that made volunteer Sophia Kiapos cry.

“Dal, you have to do something,” she pleaded, carrying the limp body half swallowed by death. Dehydration had already collapsed her veins, making nearly impossible insertion of an I.V. But nurses managed the miracle, and Kaddy is alive today.

An aspiring actress, Sophia was at college student when her cousin invited her to participate on the medical mission to the Gambia. “It was absolutely indescribable,” she said. “It was the best time of my entire life. I would go every single day of my life if I could. I’m so passionate about those people and their worth.”

Though anyone can go on a medical mission, not all go. Many help raise funds here in the States. In an effort to buy the expensive medicines that pharmaceutical companies no longer donate, Dr. Bob started the Walk to Africa, an 8-mile walk-a-thon every Spring in Santa Monica. Collectively hundreds of participants walk the distance from here to West Africa.

Lighthouse Medical Missions has almost no overhead. With volunteers organizing logistics, almost 100% of donations goes straight to alleviating suffering.

One community impacted by such investment is Lunsar, Sierra Leone. When Lighthouse Medical Missions first visited in 2006, the former mining center, harried by rebels, was a ghost town. The medical workers were spooked.

The streets were eerily empty. Their Sierra Leonean guide fell mysteriously sick and had to be rushed back to Freetown. Worst of all, from the mountains came an unrelenting drum beat day and night that conjured nightmares. Was it witchcraft, war or cannibalism? When anyone asked what the drums signified, the one person who knew would respond ominously: “You don’t wanna know.”

(The drums alerted townspeople that they were performing female circumcision in the nearby hills.)

They Lunsar team completed its mission and returned home. In subsequent years, Lighthouse Medical Missions donated a well, bought property for a church and school. Today, the town’s economic outlook is climbing.

“The ladies dressed Muslim garb from head to toe in that town. They didn’t even know what a Christian was,” Dal said. “Now they know what a Christian is. Jesus is in that town now.”

To read part 2 of the series, click here.

To read part 3 of the series, click here.