04/27/2004
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The story of Gregoire and his humanitarian crusade in the Ivory Coast
Twenty-five years ago, Gergoire Ahongbonon was a finished man. Living in a foreign
land, far from his family, he had squandered all his savings, the fruits of years
of hard work and each he could feel depression wearing him down. He had lost the
will to live and often contemplated ending it, once and for all.
Today, this Beninese man, with his gentle eyes and deep voice, is the source of hope for over four thousand mentally-ill people in the Ivory Coast, and who knows how many others.
Gregoire’s story begins fifty-one years ago in a village in the Porto Novo region
of Benin. Born into a farming family, of a spiritualist mother and a Christian
father, he was educated at the local Catholic mission school. “One day”, he recalls,
“my father told me that he had a friend who was going back to the Ivory Coast
where he was working as a tire repairman and that I should go with him, learn
a trade and fend for myself. That was in 1971. In those years there was plenty
of work and many young people like me left the village to make their future elsewhere.
Working at the garage, it didn’t take long before Gregoire had accumulated a significant amount of money. He invested his savings in buying a few taxis and led a comfortable life. Not long after, however, his life became a nightmare which robbed him of the prime years of his life.
“Business was going well,” explains Gregoire in serious tone, “ and I had several people working for me. I had established myself in Bouake, the Ivory Coast’s second largest city. I was a young man with plenty of money, maybe too much. I took to living the high-life and squandered all my savings. In no time I was poor again, with no money and no security. I felt like a failure and that I had thrown away everything I had believed in.”
More than once he contemplated suicide. Gregoire was on the edge of an abyss. Then, in 1982, a priest re-opened the doors of hope for him with the suggestion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to rediscover himself. “As soon as I heard about the possibility to go there with the missionaries, my heart leapt,” he recalls, laughing. “The very idea of the trip restored my strength to go on. But I couldn’t afford it: it would take years to save the 400,000 Cfa (about 700 Euros) needed for the flight. So I began to work like mad, day and night, without stopping. I even got into debt, but in the end I boarded that plane and that pilgrimage made a lasting impression on me”.
When he returned to the Ivory Coast, Gregoire began a new life. He started going regularly to the Bouake hospital where he would help with the patients who were without money or families to look after them. He became well-known throughout the hospital wards and in the village clinics. For hundreds of dying patients he was the last person they saw from their death-bed, lonely and abandoned. It was also thanks to his dedication and effort that many others now receive medicines and adequate treatment.
After a few years, Gregoire decided to take his smile into the prisons of the Ivory Coast. “Anyone who has never set foot in an African prison cannot begin to imagine what it’s like”, he sighs, shaking his head. “There are facilities which are designed to house 150 prisoners but in which more than 500 are often crammed in. The cells are filthy and decaying. They have no toilets and hygiene is non-existent. Dozens of people live for years crowded into rooms which are just a few metres squared, deprived of any legal or medical assistance. The prisoners are afflicted by all sorts of diseases and often there isn’t even medicine available to treat them. I heard voices from behind the bars shouting, “Gregoire! Help us, we can’t go on!”
It was 1993 when Gregoire threw himself, body and soul, into work which no-one, or very few before him, had ever undertaken: rehabilitation of the mentally ill in the Ivory Coast.
In many African countries people with mental health problems are abandoned on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Their condition, combined with a complete lack of infrastructure, means that these people are often left to drift in a society which rejects them, disowns them and fears them. Most of the time they are considered as sub-human, afflicted by a curse or possessed by evil spirits. For this reason no-one wants them and they are considered nothing more than a useless burden on the family or the community.
“I was scared of them too, and when I saw them I would look the other way”, confesses
Gregoire. “Then, one day, something happened which opened my eyes and my heart.
I was walking along a road which had open sewers running alongside it. I looked
down and saw a man, stark naked, rummaging among the piles of rubbish looking
for food. I stopped to watch him and at that moment I realised that my role was
to take care of him and all those like him.”
Gregoire started to tour villages and in doing so, he discovered a world which he had never known before. That world of the insane,
the mentally unstable and the condemned which he himself used to reject, he now saw in a different light: the drawn, deformed expressions which used to scare him became gentle and harmless, and the harsh reality of life for the mentally ill in the villages hit him hard, like a punch in the stomach.
Thousands of them are tied to trees in the middle of fields, chained up in courtyards, tied up in the corners of the huts. Many live in those conditions for years and years, forced to sleep in their own excrement, fed on left-over food surrounded by swarms of insects. Abandonment, filth, monsoons and the cruel sun have robbed them of the last trace of humanity. Families keep them like that because they don’t know what else to do with them. Most commonly, the families turn to witchcraft, often consulting witch-doctors who claim to be able to rid them of evil spirits, conning families out of their life savings before disappearing into thin air. And thus the mentally ill are left to writhe in their own madness.
Gregoire speaks with the families to try to pursuade them to let him take care of their sick.
After years spent in the clinics and the country’s administrative offices, he has become a well-known figure and thanks to his continued efforts he managed to procure a wing of the Bouake hospital in which to treat the patients he brings in from the fields.
“These people’s stories get sadder and sadder”, he continues quietly, hands clasped and teary eyed. He takes an album of tattered photos from his bag. In them are people chained to tree trunks, rolling in the dust, covered with rags. Years passed in those conditions have disfigured and deformed them to the point that they are no longer even able to stand up straight. In one photograph, a boy is lying on a filthy floor of a shack. His ankles and wrists are tied up with wire which has cut into his skin causing sores which have then become infected. His body is reduced to a pile of deformed bones. His gaze is the image of pain.
“Only God can know how moved I was when I entered that room. His family didn’t want me to see,” sighed Gregoire, “but I insisted that they let me. In the end I managed to take him away, but he died a few days later”.
Since 2002 the Ivory Coast has been torn apart by war, causing serious problems for Gregoire and the St Camille de Lellis Association he founded. Although the rebels who control the areas they are working in look favourably on them and do not stop their work, the impact of the conflict has had serious consequences on the infrastructure of Bouake and on the economic support available to the local communities.
But the great little man from Benin, who has a wife and six children back in his home country, will not give up. So far he has helped cure four thousand mentally ill people and enabled them to return to their families and reintegrate into their communities. Some of these have even found jobs; and the potential number of people who he could help is much greater still.
“When I see a sufferer, I see God”, he says in conclusion, his face lighting up with a smile. “Sometimes, when I see them in the hospital where they have a bed and hot food, I look out of the window and see rows of armed men, ready to kill other men. It is then that I realise that the real mad men are not those who you find wandering harmlessly on the streets and in the fields, but instead they are those who think they are normal and then go and kill another person without blinking.”
Today, this Beninese man, with his gentle eyes and deep voice, is the source of hope for over four thousand mentally-ill people in the Ivory Coast, and who knows how many others.
Gregoire’s story begins fifty-one years ago in a village in the Porto Novo region
of Benin. Born into a farming family, of a spiritualist mother and a Christian
father, he was educated at the local Catholic mission school. “One day”, he recalls,
“my father told me that he had a friend who was going back to the Ivory Coast
where he was working as a tire repairman and that I should go with him, learn
a trade and fend for myself. That was in 1971. In those years there was plenty
of work and many young people like me left the village to make their future elsewhere.
Working at the garage, it didn’t take long before Gregoire had accumulated a significant amount of money. He invested his savings in buying a few taxis and led a comfortable life. Not long after, however, his life became a nightmare which robbed him of the prime years of his life.
“Business was going well,” explains Gregoire in serious tone, “ and I had several people working for me. I had established myself in Bouake, the Ivory Coast’s second largest city. I was a young man with plenty of money, maybe too much. I took to living the high-life and squandered all my savings. In no time I was poor again, with no money and no security. I felt like a failure and that I had thrown away everything I had believed in.”
More than once he contemplated suicide. Gregoire was on the edge of an abyss. Then, in 1982, a priest re-opened the doors of hope for him with the suggestion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to rediscover himself. “As soon as I heard about the possibility to go there with the missionaries, my heart leapt,” he recalls, laughing. “The very idea of the trip restored my strength to go on. But I couldn’t afford it: it would take years to save the 400,000 Cfa (about 700 Euros) needed for the flight. So I began to work like mad, day and night, without stopping. I even got into debt, but in the end I boarded that plane and that pilgrimage made a lasting impression on me”.
When he returned to the Ivory Coast, Gregoire began a new life. He started going regularly to the Bouake hospital where he would help with the patients who were without money or families to look after them. He became well-known throughout the hospital wards and in the village clinics. For hundreds of dying patients he was the last person they saw from their death-bed, lonely and abandoned. It was also thanks to his dedication and effort that many others now receive medicines and adequate treatment.
After a few years, Gregoire decided to take his smile into the prisons of the Ivory Coast. “Anyone who has never set foot in an African prison cannot begin to imagine what it’s like”, he sighs, shaking his head. “There are facilities which are designed to house 150 prisoners but in which more than 500 are often crammed in. The cells are filthy and decaying. They have no toilets and hygiene is non-existent. Dozens of people live for years crowded into rooms which are just a few metres squared, deprived of any legal or medical assistance. The prisoners are afflicted by all sorts of diseases and often there isn’t even medicine available to treat them. I heard voices from behind the bars shouting, “Gregoire! Help us, we can’t go on!”
It was 1993 when Gregoire threw himself, body and soul, into work which no-one, or very few before him, had ever undertaken: rehabilitation of the mentally ill in the Ivory Coast.
In many African countries people with mental health problems are abandoned on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Their condition, combined with a complete lack of infrastructure, means that these people are often left to drift in a society which rejects them, disowns them and fears them. Most of the time they are considered as sub-human, afflicted by a curse or possessed by evil spirits. For this reason no-one wants them and they are considered nothing more than a useless burden on the family or the community.
“I was scared of them too, and when I saw them I would look the other way”, confesses
Gregoire. “Then, one day, something happened which opened my eyes and my heart.
I was walking along a road which had open sewers running alongside it. I looked
down and saw a man, stark naked, rummaging among the piles of rubbish looking
for food. I stopped to watch him and at that moment I realised that my role was
to take care of him and all those like him.”
Gregoire started to tour villages and in doing so, he discovered a world which he had never known before. That world of the insane,
the mentally unstable and the condemned which he himself used to reject, he now saw in a different light: the drawn, deformed expressions which used to scare him became gentle and harmless, and the harsh reality of life for the mentally ill in the villages hit him hard, like a punch in the stomach.
Thousands of them are tied to trees in the middle of fields, chained up in courtyards, tied up in the corners of the huts. Many live in those conditions for years and years, forced to sleep in their own excrement, fed on left-over food surrounded by swarms of insects. Abandonment, filth, monsoons and the cruel sun have robbed them of the last trace of humanity. Families keep them like that because they don’t know what else to do with them. Most commonly, the families turn to witchcraft, often consulting witch-doctors who claim to be able to rid them of evil spirits, conning families out of their life savings before disappearing into thin air. And thus the mentally ill are left to writhe in their own madness.
Gregoire speaks with the families to try to pursuade them to let him take care of their sick.
After years spent in the clinics and the country’s administrative offices, he has become a well-known figure and thanks to his continued efforts he managed to procure a wing of the Bouake hospital in which to treat the patients he brings in from the fields.
“These people’s stories get sadder and sadder”, he continues quietly, hands clasped and teary eyed. He takes an album of tattered photos from his bag. In them are people chained to tree trunks, rolling in the dust, covered with rags. Years passed in those conditions have disfigured and deformed them to the point that they are no longer even able to stand up straight. In one photograph, a boy is lying on a filthy floor of a shack. His ankles and wrists are tied up with wire which has cut into his skin causing sores which have then become infected. His body is reduced to a pile of deformed bones. His gaze is the image of pain.
“Only God can know how moved I was when I entered that room. His family didn’t want me to see,” sighed Gregoire, “but I insisted that they let me. In the end I managed to take him away, but he died a few days later”.
Since 2002 the Ivory Coast has been torn apart by war, causing serious problems for Gregoire and the St Camille de Lellis Association he founded. Although the rebels who control the areas they are working in look favourably on them and do not stop their work, the impact of the conflict has had serious consequences on the infrastructure of Bouake and on the economic support available to the local communities.
But the great little man from Benin, who has a wife and six children back in his home country, will not give up. So far he has helped cure four thousand mentally ill people and enabled them to return to their families and reintegrate into their communities. Some of these have even found jobs; and the potential number of people who he could help is much greater still.
“When I see a sufferer, I see God”, he says in conclusion, his face lighting up with a smile. “Sometimes, when I see them in the hospital where they have a bed and hot food, I look out of the window and see rows of armed men, ready to kill other men. It is then that I realise that the real mad men are not those who you find wandering harmlessly on the streets and in the fields, but instead they are those who think they are normal and then go and kill another person without blinking.”
Pablo Trincia
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