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While we take many things for granted, FACES gives to the world


By Betty DeRamus / The Detroit News 

    The container is about half the size of a semi-truck and crammed with dreams -- 80 computers, 30 manual typewriters, a disco set with strobe lights, a gas generator, reference books, soccer shoes and outfits. It sits in a Detroit warehouse at Fort and Clark, waiting to be shipped to people hungry for those dreams. 
    Once the nonprofit group known as FACES raises $5,000 for shipping costs, the container will sail to The Gambia, a small West African nation with large needs. There, villagers will use its contents for computer-training schools, community improvement and money-making projects. 
    People in the villages of Kassakunda, Penyem and Sintet, for example, will make money taking the disco set from village to village, charging fees for its use at dances. 
    The proceeds will help pay for a new solar-powered water distribution system in Kassakunda. FACES already has installed new water systems in Sintet and Penyem, where every family now has water within 100 to 150 yards of their homes, and governing water boards. 
    "The disco set could raise a lot of money," says Dr. Manuel H. Pierson, founder of FACES (Fund for African and African-American Cultural and Educational Solidarity Inc.) "Every village around there has dances." 
    Before his retirement in 1993, Dr. Pierson was Oakland University's vice-president for university and school relations. Now he spends four to five months every year in The Gambia, paying his own travel expenses and costs. 
    "I go into villages and do a needs survey and let people ... decide on certain projects," he says. "They must raise at least 1/3 of the cost of projects. I've taught them management by objectives and timetables. My mission is to help people to help themselves." 
    I needed a Kleenex after hearing Dr. Pierson's story. 
    We Americans take abundance for granted, but the world overflows with people who've never gone to bed feeling full or stood in the spray of a hot shower or gulped down glasses of relatively uncontaminated water. 
    America, for all its flaws, is still the place to which millions of people turn for assistance, direction and comfort. A place where even the poorest of the poor live better than the middle class in other lands. 
    I sometimes think about an acquaintance from Poland who moved to Metro Detroit some years ago. Two or three times a week, he'd visit a supermarket just so he could stare at all the multicolored bags of junk food and chunks of pan-ready meat. I really think he feared it might disappear one day. 
    None of this means we shouldn't keep struggling to make America honor its promises. None of this means we should put up with injustice or shrug off crime. 
    It means that every now and then we ought to give thanks for supermarkets that never run out of sausage, for the smell of Christmas trees and for dinners of turkey and stuffing instead of rice and beans -- or the bark stripped from barren trees. 
    By the way, if you want to help out Dr. Pierson, who takes whatever he raises directly to the Gambian people, you can send tax-deductible contributions to FACES at 16929 Wyoming, Detroit, MI 48221. 
    Now, pass those sweet potatoes, please. 


Abdoulie A. Jallow

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter".
 - Dr. M. L. King Jr.