wfn.org | Delegation focuses on social issues in West African country

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

July 18, 2002   News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York
10-31-71B{305}

Note: A head and shoulders photograph of the Rev. John McCullough is
available online at http://umns.umc.org/photos/headshots.html.

By Carol Fouke-Mpoyo*

BANJUL, the Gambia (UMNS) - A nation at peace, the Gambia has come a long
way in building its infrastructure with roads, schools and hospitals.

But the West African country of 2 million people is combating issues of
poverty, new streams of refugees, HIV/AIDS and concerns about child labor.
An eight-person Church World Service delegation visiting there July 6-9
arrived with a commitment to help deal with those issues.

"This West African nation of Muslims and Christians is generally blessed
with peace," said the Rev. John McCullough, a United Methodist pastor who
serves as CWS executive director. "But, since the UN High Commissioner on
Refugees withdrew from the Gambia last year, the country is struggling to
deal with an increasing stream of refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and a
fresh influx of 2,000 to 3,000 refugees from southern Senegal."

The CWS delegation was invited by the Gambia's Christian Council and met
July 8 with the nation's vice president and its minister of the interior and
religious affairs. The officials said the United Nations had been invited
back to help with the new refugees but had not responded yet.

McCullough said CWS is particularly concerned about human rights in West
Africa. Some Gambian church leaders expressed concern about the children,
mostly from Senegal, who are being sent into the Gambia to serve as house
workers for a small salary to send back home.

"Most of these children," McCullough explained, "don't go to school, and
they work hard at home morning, noon and night while the children of the
host households are at ease."

Technically, the refugee children are not being trafficked or sold as
slaves, but some church leaders went so far as to say these children are
virtually slaves. Others in both church and government denied that there's a
problem at all.

Although the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the Gambia is at a relatively low
percentage, officially 2.1 percent, there is concern about an increase in
infections. Gambia Christian Council General Secretary Daniel Able-Thomas
told the delegation that the Gambia is trying to get affordable drugs to
prevent mother-child transmission of HIV "in order to take care of people
clinically. Right now," he said, "people can only easily get drugs to treat
opportunistic infections."

McCullough noted that the country's vice president "urged us to advocate
that the price of AIDS drugs be brought down."

A Gambian government minister and physician in charge of the nation's
HIV/AIDS program acknowledged the religious community's reluctance to talk
about condoms, for fear of implying that infidelity is acceptable. So the
churches, he said, will "talk about A-abstinence and B-be faithful. We, the
government, will confidently talk about C-condoms."

The CWS delegation was hosted in the Gambia by the Gambia Christian Council,
which includes Roman Catholics, Methodists and Anglicans. Delegates also met
with Gambian Catholic Bishop Cleary, Anglican Archbishop S. Tiliwa Johnson
and a deputy of the Methodist Church there. The U.S. visitors worshipped
July 7 at St. Paul's Anglican Church, where the Rev. Priscilla Johnson, the
archbishop's wife, is pastor and the only Anglican ordained woman in the
Gambia.

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*Fouke-Mpoyo accompanied the CWS delegation in West Africa as media liaison.

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org