By Tami DeVine
Actually, my entire family is made up of heroes. Most of the time I can hardly talk about any of them without getting all misty-eyed. They probably wouldn’t consider themselves to be Heroes, but by the end of this article, you can decide for yourself.
My sister Kim Kargbo is probably better described as a modern-day Mother Teresa. She has held the hands of lepers, attached prosthetic arms and legs to the limbs of those whose were missing from birth or from the hands of butchers, and she has wept with family members of Ebola victims. She has treated all kinds of illnesses, and she goes back to Sierra Leone, West Africa year, after year, helping people in need. Kim is a registered nurse who created a non-profit organization in Sierra Leone called Women of Hope International. It’s an organization that helps women with disabilities. She normally goes back 3 or 4 times a year to conduct trainings, and make sure everything is running smoothly. In 2014, her trips changed pretty drastically when the Ebola outbreak happened. Now she goes back to train people how to recognize and prevent Ebola, to protect themselves and those they love.
Kim did most of her growing up in Sierra Leone. As the daughter of Rev. Les and Diane Kimball, who were serving as missionaries in one of the poorest places in the world, she grew to love the tiny country along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean with such a deep, rich, and painful history (if you’ve seen the movie Blood Diamond, you’ll have a little bit of an idea of what I’m talking about). I was born in Sierra Leone to a woman with elephantiasis who was treated by most the way many of the disabled women whom Kim works with are treated. She was often just
invisible to others, left on her own to fend for herself, sometimes exploited, taken advantage of. She had lost 4 children and I was her only surviving child because the infant mortality rate is so high. The religious beliefs of people in her family and in her culture kept them away. Between the loss of her children and the elephantiasis, they thought she was cursed. So she raised me by herself, despite the fact that my biological father was the son of the chief of the larger neighboring village. Still, she would walk with me each Sunday to that village where White American missionaries lived and went to church. I would sit with the missionaries sometimes in church, and we got to know them well, and they us. That missionary family was Kim’s family. There were 4 children in that family. Kim, Karen, Mike and Paul.
My mother died in 1980 when I was 6 years old, and the missionary family adopted me. I lived with the Kimballs for three years in Sierra Leone before they brought me back with them to the United States. They raised me and loved me as their own, giving me opportunities that I could never have dreamed of as a little girl in a remote village in a poor African country. Kim grew up to become the registered nurse helping women like my mother. Karen and her husband work for a private school in Wisconsin, and had previously worked at a missions academy in Brazil. Mike and his wife are truck drivers who have worked for the federal government. Paul and his family served as missionaries in Brazil before coming back to the U.S. and helping missionary families with transportation when ever they take much needed vacations in the U.S. Mom and Dad worked in churches after returning since Dad is an ordained pastor. They also did a little more missions work, and eventually retired and are now living in Florida. I adore them all. They are the most self-less, kind, giving, generous people I have ever known, and they are all heroes to me.
Back to Kim and her work with Ebola. As I write this story, Kim has just finished her 21 day incubation monitoring period where she was watched closely by her public health department after returning to the U.S. from Sierra Leone before Christmas. I’m relieved to know she is Ebola free. While Ebola infections and stories about such have slowed down here in the U.S. and other countries, the disease is still running rampant in Sierra Leone. Even the emergency first-responders are dying from the disease. In a facebook entry Kim writes… “In 4 months of the Ebola outbreak, 11 Sierra Leonean doctors have died of Ebola. Given the number of trained doctors per capita, this would be the equivalent of the US losing 64,000 in 4 months time. This is a devastating loss for a country with such a weak medical infrastructure. Much work will be needed when the Ebola epidemic ends to rebuild and retrain the needed medical personnel for ongoing care.”
Like Mother Teresa, Kim is not shy about her faith. Through Women of Hope International she works to provide hope and healing for women not just on the physical level, but also on a social/relational, intellectual, economic, emotional and spiritual basis. Her blog www.kimkargbo.com is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended, where she not only describes in detail her work with people who have deadly diseases, but also challenges Christians to go and help others instead of staying in their comfort zones.
Through Women of Hope Kim has started a campaign called “Disabling the Power of Ebola.” The disease is leaving thousands of orphans in it‘s wake, and families have become used to the idea that they may lose a loved one at any moment from it. Kim will tell you it’s brought down the already fragile infrastructure, causing death from other usually non-fatal illnesses or injuries because people are refusing to go to the limited hospitals, fearing they’ll catch Ebola there. It’s shut down schools, and it’s also causing hunger and famine because of the loss of jobs and income, making the already poor… even more so. To help battle the hunger brought about by Ebola, Women of Hope International is distributing weekly emergency food supplement packages for hundreds of women with disabilities and their families. They are also providing help and education regarding the secondary effects of Ebola – stigmas, orphans, emotional trauma, depression, spiritual crisis and more.
There’s so much more to say about her, but this is all I have for now. Now you see why I say my sister Kim is a hero. But not just to me, to the thousands she has helped in one of the poorest places on earth.
To find out how you can help Kim visit www.womenofhopeinternational.org. To find out how you can help Women of Hope fight the continuing Ebola battle, visit www.womenofhopeinternational.org/disabling-ebola. To learn more about Kim’s heart for helping others and read her blog visit www.kimkargbo.com. I’m Tami DeVine, the creator of Crown City News and CCN Sunrise. To learn more about me, Crown City News and CCN Sunrise, click here.