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The Heartbreaking story of "Baby Kofi"

No one knows who his mother was, or why she threw him away, tossing him away like a banana peel. As she walked along, she may have swung the black plastic bag as if it were just another bag of garbage. Her aim fell short of the stinking garbage pile. The baby fell into the open sewer. No matter. The baby was unnamed, for the African naming ceremony requires the presence and approval of the family. We’ll call him Baby Kofi, one of the most common names in Ghana.

It could be that little Kofi’s mother was a young schoolgirl who did not want to tell her parents in the village that she became pregnant after they let her go to school in the city. She may have been afraid that with a child to care for, she would not be able to complete her education. She may have been abused by the father or angry at him. The most likely scenario, though, is that she was a street prostitute and that a baby would ruin her business and make it all that much harder to feed herself. He was not conceived through love or affection and certainly not through commitment, and the mother felt none of those emotions toward him. He was just a problem—a big inconvenience.

Whatever her name or her reason for doing so, some mother gave birth to a full term healthy little boy and then threw him at a pile of rotting garbage. As the mother strolled on her way, inside the suffocating plastic bag, brave little Kofi desperately fought to hold on to life as rodents and scavenger birds picked all around him. Alone, unwanted, discarded. Considered worthless. Treated as garbage.

About 6 a.m., I received a call. Baby Kofi had been found. Mrs. Oware, going out to toss her family’s own garbage on the pile, had heard little Kofi’s cry. Opening the plastic bag, she was stunned to find a beautiful baby boy, covered with fresh blood. She knew of ECM’s commitment to "the forgotten children of Africa." Could we take him? How I struggled in my soul! I SO wanted to take him, but I knew the mothers at Haven of Hope could not care for a needy newborn in addition to all the children they were already caring for. Surely there must be someone who could take in newborn babies.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Oware admitted him to the hospital for care and went out to buy baby clothes. The next day I called to find out whether they had yet found a place for little Kofi. I was told he was taken to a children’s home, but a hospital worker admitted they had sold him. I was heartbroken. I know that there are those who purchase children in Ghana for many purposes, including slavery, human sacrifice and the making of powerful fetishes.

Little Kofi’s struggle caused all of our staff to think deeply about our response. Over and over we asked ourselves if we couldn’t have done something.  If we had been prepared to act quickly, we might have saved little Kofi and assured him a life of love and hope. Is ECM really for the forgotten children of Africa? Wasn’t little Kofi exactly the kind of forgotten child we were thinking of?  Are we really committed to save the children?

The solution we came up with was to build a network of warm-hearted, approved Christian families who would be willing, in an emergency, to take a little child into their home temporarily, until the child was old enough to go to Haven of Hope at two years of age. ECM would provide the family with financial help and would pay for medical expenses. We have talked our ideas over with Ghana’s social welfare department, and our staff, motivated by the memory of Baby Kofi, have already begun that work. The next time a live baby is found in the garbage, ECM will be prepared to help.  We will be prepared to save the children.

The crisis of Baby Kofi also helped us to realize that we need to be prepared to act more quickly to help older children as well. The truth is, several times children have been left in situations that were truly desperate for far too long while we proceeded step by step through the preliminaries necessary to finding a sponsor for them. We can’t easily find sponsors without the preliminary steps that tell us exactly how we are going to help the child, but meanwhile the child is sometimes left in truly dangerous situations. The rescue fund helps those children, too, coming to the rescue of any child in a situation we know to be truly desperate and dangerous. 

To donate to ECM’s Child Rescue Fund, please click here.
You can Save the Children.