Nana-Fosu Randall
Nana-Fosu Randall, a native of Ghana who worked for the United Nations for many years, is the founder of Voices of African Mothers, a non profit, UN sanctioned, non governmental organization, that seeks to empower people, particularly women, to provide a culture of peace in Africa and worldwide. The organization resulted from her professional observations that violent civil conflicts always left in their wake widespread destruction of social and economic infrastructures, with a greater impact on women and children. These include poverty, disease, and lack of access to education.
Nana-Fosu Randall has seen much suffering in her years as a chief financial officer and chief administrative officer for the United Nations Field Missions. During her 29 years of service, she has worked in Tanzania, Namibia, Ivory Coast, Israel, Lebanon, Liberia, and in Iraq and Kuwait from 1991-1993 during the first Iraq War. She commented that even though there is so much oil in Iraq that one can drown in oil slicks in the desert, some women and children go hungry. Everywhere, it is the women and children who suffer most in wars, but it was Saturday's Child, in Liberia, who crystallized Nana's resolve to do something about it.
While she was working for the UN in Liberia, Nana came to dread her Saturday trips to the market because the war-crippled beggars would crowd in front of the shops and she had to walk past them on her way to buy groceries. All of them tugged at her heart, but she wept for days over one teenager, to whom she privately gave the name "Ama," or Saturday's Child.
Ama, who could not have been older than 14, had no hands or feet, but she was caring for a baby. Nana asked her driver to find out what had happened to the girl. He learned that soldiers from the group known as Taylor's Army had descended on Ama's home in the night, and had dragged the entire family out into the bush. There, they were given a choice: join the military group or be shot. Ama struggled with them but was raped and shot, and her hands and feet were injured. Two weeks later, she managed to crawl to the roadside where someone found her and took her to a hospital, where her gangrenous limbs had to be amputated. There, also, she discovered she was pregnant. There was no one to help her, as all her family was dead, but she decided to keep the baby. Without hands or feet, she was now begging for food to keep herself and her child alive.
Another story that haunted Nana was that of a mother of three daughters. The mother was locked into one room, from which she could hear her children continually screaming in the next room. Finally, the screaming stopped. The mother learned that it was only when they had been raped to death did her children fall silent.
In response to these women, mothers and daughters, Nana and a group of her friends founded Voices of African Mothers.
