From Riches to rugs!

Meet Yarcy Borca and Faith Phillips. These two as Raphael came to discover aren't your average models at a million dollar photoshoot with glamour and glitz. Miss Faith there is posing on a child's bed at an orphanage in Accra Ghana while Miss Yarcy is standing next to a giant metallic food container inside a hot refugee camp in Dakar Senegal. Both of them sing praises to the skies on a daily basis just so they can have a meal and are lying on rock bottom! A smile is their only camouflage. They heard about me and this blogging platform and offered to share their stories hoping that they might change both their lives and someone else's. Maybe you.

You see Miss Borca, is daughter to a dead personal advisor of the late tyrant Col Muammar Gaddafi. Originally from Libya, she is used to the posh life of spacious rooms and antique interior décor. She new servants at her beck and call would grant her her commanding wishes in an instant and everything she touched was squeaky clean having been thoroughly confirmed to be harmless and very beneficial. In fact, Yarcy's was a life we all want for our children. But then life happened. Gaddafi was ousted in a Great Libyan Revolution and with his fall, the world as Yarcy knew it shattered to pieces. She watched breathlessly as internationally supported rebel soldiers hacked her parents to death for their nasty dealings with Gadhafi who had a horrible and worse than Yarcy's eventuality. I personally told her to be grateful as, unlike Gaddafi, she wasn't sodomized by a knife! Today, Yarcy talks to all of us who have looked death in the eye and emerged victorious with little or no evidence of our fatal ordeal. Her message to those who cheated death once, twice or multiple times in the refugee camp with her is, "The innocence of an ignorant stranger is better than the blackmail of a helping friend!"

Miss Philips, on the other hand, isn't your average caregiver who just graduated from the university as a pediatrician, with a passion for young orphaned children . She was born in an elite society in Liberia. For her, wits carried the day as daughter of a former vice president and now prominent business man. She knew the world as a board room with visitors to her home as envoys for business deals. A handshake for her was a deal closed and a cup of tea was an invitation to discuss the changing business trends in hope to maximize on profits. Well, nothing is no longer the same, anymore! A cup of tea is just that, ...a cup of tea! Yes, it is a cup of sugarless tea and it is also manna from heaven and it is also one of her two meals which if she misses, she will deal with acute starvation all day till the next! Visitors, these days have to be entertained with songs and provocative dances and killer smiles even though all they have is a bunch of old t-shits and torn shoes for tired Miss Phillips and her team, sometimes these visitors just came bare hands bu with their donors to prove that they haven't been squandering funds meant for the needy. School is a privilege for the strongest in the team and not every child's right as media reports made her think initially. In fact it is a waste of precious time and you'd rather clean the orphanage than go to school if you knew what was best for you. You see, if you are not on the line as the supervisor checks role call before meals no one will remind you not to go to the washroom next time. Miss Phillips talks to all of us who think the world is unfair because it stole our parents wealth from us who are supposedly the rightful heirs. Her message to the world and to child orphans at the orphanage she lives in is, "Always be grateful for an act of kindness towards you in life, no matter how insignificant the person is or how uselessly irrelevant the kind act was!"