Andy, Dawn-Marie, Anthony, Jabob, Becca and Anjali Bass.
Besides being the local audiologist in Syracuse, Dr. Dawn-Marie Bass and her husband, school teacher Andy, are on a personal adventure. Of their four children, two are adopted from overseas. Both have compelling stories.
The newest member of the Bass family is 12-year-old Jacob, who was a slave in Ghana, West Africa. He worked in the worst possible conditions imaginable, had no clothing and slept on the ground. He suffered from malnutrition.
Bass explained, “He had moderate to severe, permanent nerve hearing loss due to his slave job of diving underwater to untangle fish nets in Lake Volta. He was rescued by Touch A Life Foundation, founded by my friend. Pam Cope.”
The story of how the Basses got Jacob is very similar to how Cope founded A Touch of Life. According to its website,
www.touchalifekids.org, “Touch a Life Foundation inspired others to advocate on behalf of trafficked and vulnerable children around the world, providing them with long-term holistic care.”
Jacob when he was rescued from slavery by abolitionists in Ghana.
Cope learned of a boy named Mark Kwadwo through his photo on The New York Times front page. Cope noted, “It was heartbreaking and haunting; his frail, stooped body; his scarred skin; his terrified eyes. He was a 6-year old slave.”
The man he called “master” had purchased him for about $20. Mark and Jacob are just two of the many children bought by fishermen to work on Lake Volta, a large lake in northern Ghana.
Cope traveled to Ghana vowing to help Mark and other children. “I forged a strong alliance with Ghanian abolitionists who were seeking to rescue children from Lake Volta. With these partners, A Touch of Life was born in Africa,” she commented.
Since then, the Touch A Life Foundation has gone on to build the Touch A Life Care Center, the only long-term rehabilitative care center in Ghana. Bass noted, “Normally, the children who are rescued live in their home country in the care center. They are educated and nurtured to be the future leaders of their area. Adoptions only happen when a child has a serious medical need that requires care elsewhere. Usually adoptions like this take about two years, but this one was completed in just a little over nine months. It was an act of God.”
“He has fit into our home beautifully and is so full of life. We are so grateful to the staff and students of Jefferson Elementary, part of the Warsaw Community School Corp. Jacob is flourishing there. They’ve been so understanding of the cultural differences and so helpful and warm.”
His hearing has been corrected through the use of digital hearing aids on both ears. Now that Jacob can hear, he is learning English. “Jacob has really melted into our family. It is amazing how we came to love an older child so quickly and fiercely, just like our other kids.” Jacobs’s siblings are Anjali, age 14; Anthony, age 12; and Becca, age 8.
Anjali was adopted from India when she was young. She has what is termed a “dead ear.” Treatment at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis changed her life. While Anjali has other medical issues, she is a student at Lakeview Middle School in Warsaw and doing well according to Bass. “She has more joy than any other person I know.”
Truly miracles are happening in this family.”We have good and bad days like everyone else, yet there is no doubt this is the family we are supposed to have,” said Bass.
