Father and daughter
working together to help Liberia

Though Walter Johnson is more than 5,000 thousand miles away from his daughter Edna, he feels closely connected to her work at Curran Mobile Hospital in Liberia.  At age 97, living at home outside of Siren, Wisconsin, Walter is doing what he can to support health care services in Lofa County, Liberia.  By the time his daughter had arrived in West Africa, Walter had already given a gift  to purchase a badly needed 4-wheel drive vehicle that provides one of the only means of transportation for drugs and medical supplies vital to the mobile health program. Now, he wants to do more.

Earlier this year, Walter’s oldest child, Edna Johnson, had seen an advertisement about volunteer mission opportunities at a Lutheran hospital in rural Liberia. Recently retired from teaching at the University Of Connecticut School Of Nursing, Edna’s extensive background in population-based health care made her a good fit for the needs of Curran Hospital.

Before the Liberian civil war, Curran was a thriving institution, providing holistic health care to a remote population of approximately 100,000 in northeastern Liberia. However, over the last 15 years, terrible fighting caused the hospital to close and the staff to flee for their lives. By the end of the war in 2003, nearly every building at Curran was destroyed or severely damaged.  Now, along with a handful of Liberian staff, Edna is part of a medical team that hopes to revitalize desperately-needed health services to the war-affected in Lofa County.

Originally, when Walter heard of Edna’s intention to be a volunteer in Liberia,  he was supportive of the call she felt. “I wasn’t surprised,” he said. “She had served for 18 months as a nurse in Vietnam during the war, and also had served with the poor in Appalachia, so she has had experience working in difficult situations.”

Until Walter’s wife Ella passed away two years ago, the Johnsons were both well-known in their community for supporting local ministries, including work with mentally disabled people in northwestern Wisconsin. Walter now looks forward to working with neighboring churches to support Edna’s work in northwestern Liberia and the ministry of Curran Lutheran Hospital. “Maybe in the short amount of time I have left I can help them see the need to help people in Liberia.” he says.

“Most people here don’t know anything about Liberia, or even where it is.  Until recently I didn’t know myself. I’m still learning.”  But he’s hopeful that the community around him—people who normally go out of their way to help those in need—will respond to the needs of those very far away, people who Edna sees every day.  “If I can provide opportunities for people to contribute to Liberia’s health services, that would be the most rewarding thing for me.”

At age 97, Walter knows he doesn’t have a lot of time to sit and think about helping out. With a sense of humor he says, “If  I’m going to make anything happen here in Burnett County, it’s not going to be five years from now. It has to be quite soon!”  Even more importantly, he knows that Liberians don’t have much time either. In Lofa County, every day that goes by without adequate medical supplies or access to needed treatments represents a terrible loss of life.

Every two weeks or so, the Johnsons receive an email from Edna when she is able to travel four hours to a place with a working satellite phone that provides her with limited internet access. Every so often they’ll receive an actual letter carried by someone traveling back to the U.S. (there is no postal service in Liberia since before the war).  One recent communication reported the lack of laboratory equipment and medicine at Curran. Edna wrote: “Anyone who walks in with a fever is assumed to have malaria and to be anemic. The only equipment here is a scale, thermometer, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, and a very limited supply of medication. We are able to provide very limited primary care. But with just a little more we would be able to provide better diagnosis and treatment.”

Letters like this motivate Walter to raise more funds for Curran.  He knows that he has, like all of us, an opportunity to put our resources to good work.