sunshine and joy

i would say today was a fairly productive day.

i got up in the morning, and really had no idea what to expect. yesterday had been relatively slow, and rather heartbreaking. i was in the opc with guido when we had to tell a mother that her two week son, born with spina bifida, would not survive. it was mind-numbingly painful to see the face of this mother as she sat, cradling her convulsing infant realizing that she must begin to say goodbye just as she had begun to say hello. i was pretty shattered by the whole experience, and i was still a bit off this morning. but i had a good cry and the prayed for joy. sunshine and joy were my two prayers for today. and i would have to say they were answered.

the day broke to heavy rain, and as it was still going strong when we piled into the land cruiser this morning, it looked as though we would have our sixth straight day of rain. but by the time we arrived at the clinic, it had stopped, and by ten the sun had begun to beat down on the soggy earth. i quickly took advantage of the moment and walked down with christa to the lumley beach arts and crafts market, was obviously mobbed by shop keepers who haven’t sold anything in ages, but managed to get some good deals on a few things i had on my list before heading home. after being relatively chilled the past few days, it kind of felt good to sweat a bit on the walk back. sunshine.

upon getting back, i heard that there was a lady who i could interview waiting out in the courtyard. so i rushed over with my book, only to find that she was here for a consultation after receiving surgery somewhere else, and that she didn’t qualify for my study. but then, there was another woman there (who i had assumed was the first lady’s traveling companion) who apparently is a former patient, and one of the women whose homes i had visited in all of my searching. so i got my interview after all...

after lunch, i sat on the ward for a bit to cover for the nurses while they had a staff meeting. some of the girls have been teaching my fullah, one of the eighteen tribal languages of sierra leone, and when i was teasing her about how i was about to lose my teacher (she goes home tomorrow), she sat me down and began in earnest to teach me all the basic things she deemed i needed to know. so now i have a half sheet of paper that holds all the fullah words for the parts of the body, basic foods, formal and informal greetings, and the numbers one to ten. it was great! they all laughed when i read the words back to them – astonished that their language could be so perfectly captured on paper. i laughed so hard with them. joy.

sunshine and joy...

rain and a weekend ramble

well, i awoke this morning to the third consecutive day of rain. it ebbs and flows, ranging from a drizzle to a downpour reminiscent of a hurricane (with winds to match), but it never really stops. but one blessing out of it all is how cool it has been. yesterday i had to bundle up with a sweater and a woven blanket i had bought at the market. last night i was downright cold. it's been fun, though, getting caught in the rain and then warming back up again with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. not exactly what i had in mind when i packed for my time here in west africa!

in two weeks exactly, i will be landing in london, and sierra leone will be far behind me. then all i will have is the memories in my heart, the pictures and video clips on my computer, and the various things i have picked up along the way: two calabash (a type of gourd) bowls, a few strings of beads, a blanket, and some wooden animals. it's a rather depressing thought, actually. but with change always comes growth, and i am beginning to look forward with great anticipation to the coming semester. i have some really wonderful classes ahead of me, a family of loving friends, and many adventures in store.

the one thing that i am probably looking forward to with the most is the independence of being at school. any feminists which feel that american women are oppressed by the male race really should step out of the box a bit and come to sierra leone. it's not so very awful at least on the surface. but when i hear that our women (who are advised to remain sexually abstinent for six months in order to heal fully) can't go back to their husbands right away because they will be forced into sexual intercourse, or about husbands who leave their wives because they having children and take any children she has had with him, or about the beatings and violence - i begin to see a glimmer of what i have been so blessed as not to experience.

for me here, it only becomes evident as a vague feeling of discomfort. it comes in the calls of 'hey white girl' from across the street, in the winks of the male passersby, in that indescribable look of ownership and hunger in so many of the faces of the young men i have met along the road which speaks so clearly: you are a woman and i can do whatever i like with you. you are white and therefore you are an especially exotic toy. generally, i brush it off. but the hardest to endure is when it's a couple walking together and the husband or boyfriend blatantly flirts with me while his wife/girlfriend is standing right there. she stands there, eyes cast to the ground. glancing up, our eyes catch and i see a brief flicker of something. pain, anger, sorrow, despair? i can't be sure. but my heart aches as i continue along the way. i have begun to take a perverse pleasure in completely ignoring all the men i meet along my walks, acknowledging the women only. these greetings are often met by surprise and, just maybe, a smile.

don't get me wrong, not every relationship is like that. i have seen husbands come to the clinic faithfully to visit their wives. sitting with them and touching them when no one else outside the hospital will. i have seen women so strong and forceful that you almost fear for their husband at home. i have seen women who know that they have a value independent of who they are married to, how many children they have, or how much they sell at market. but i also live in freetown, and i know that the rest of sierra leone - the real sierra leone - is much different.

honestly, i'm not sure where i am going with all of this, but these are the ramblings that fill my mind on these rainy, rainy days. i think that time will bring equality to sierra leone. already i see women beginning to question the status quo - the result of the efforts of countless men and women working for a handful of ngos over the years, as well as the efforts of many a pastor and politician. as the elections approach, i wonder honestly what will happen. i wonder if the special strengths and skills of the sierra leonean women will be embraced or once again placed on the back of a shelf somewhere. in neighboring liberia, the presidency of her excellency ellen sirleaf-johnson is a wonderful example of what african women have to offer. my times in the kitchen at the clinic, helping with cooking and picking out bits and pieces of the Krio chatter, have taught me that i certainly couldn't measure up to these bold, courageous, and altogether amazing women...

in more general news, things at the clinic are small-small. the rains and the upcoming election have slowed our steady stream of patients to an ever dwindling trickle. we'll be down to one ward on monday - thirteen patients altogher, i think. but as all the girls that i have become so close to leave to go home, it makes my own departure that much easier.

a full head

it's funny. the thing which i have treasured most about my time so far in sierra leone, is how my head has been perfectly empty. life and my particular role therein was relatively simple. actually almost non-existent. all i have really had to do was be sure to wake up and get out to transport on time. but things have been different today. it's not that i have been particularly busier or that my day has looked that different from any other day. but for the first time in nearly two months, i had to make a to-do list.

for those of you who know me from school, you know that i operate on a perpetual cycle of to-do lists. i love the feeling of getting everything that's swirling about down in such a concrete way - on paper, on the computer, on my calendar, in my day-planner. for some reason, seeing everything neatly bulleted and organized makes me feel as though it can all get done. since arriving in sierra leone, i have not had to make a single one. until today.

very little of the list has to do with life here, actually. it's all focused on things i need to do before i go, things i need to do when i get home, and a few things that have to be done before the weekend or before the end of the day. i greet this first of many transitions back to my former life with a mixture of pleasure and dread. in a way, it's like returning to a long-lost friend. in another way, i didn't particularly miss that buzzing feeling in my head of countless thoughts which consistently refuse to be tied down.

but it really isn't so bad as it sounds. when i think of many of the aspects of school which lie in front of me - the relationships, the activities, the excitement, the adventure, the lessons to be learned. it really is wonderful. and if i have to heighten my stress level a bit, and take on a bit more responsibility, then so be it...

from yesterday

it’s such a surprise. today i am sitting on my bed in my room typing by the filtered light of late afternoon, and it’s only five thirty. we all left the centre by five, which hasn’t happened since i came back from liberia. it actually makes little difference whether we get back by five thirty or six thirty. there’s always something to do at the centre, and we don’t get power here until after dinner. but it is nice to have a bit of time to unwind before sitting down to eat. and it gives me a proper time to sit and update my blog!

it’s amazing how you start the day with no real plans or to-do list, and the day fills itself up. today i came to work with nothing really on my plate. three former patients were tentatively scheduled to come for a visit and chat with me, but the torrential rain, which started last night and ended up continuing until about two or three this afternoon, made those prospects fairly slim. but then i got to work, and everything sorted itself out. there were discharge cards which had to be made, operative reports which had to be filed, the admin office to clear out and clean, patients to talk to, toenails to paint, and before i knew it, it was ten to four. then one of my participants ended up showing up, and i had a wonderful little interview with her.

so now i’m here, and i’m looking forward to a long evening with my book. terri has loaned me ‘the devil that danced on the water,’ which is the autobiography/memoir of a woman who grew up in sierra leone during the tumultuous times of siaka stevens. her father was actually the finance minister and the right-hand man to the promising apc leader-turned tyrant. i’m only half-way through, and i really have no idea what’s coming next. but it’s written in such a nice way – a series of short stories and memories – that i can really pick it up for any amount of time, short or long. i highly recommend it. :)

it was, in the end, a simple day. so many things now just fall into place, and only every once in a while do i wake up out of myself and the reality of where i am and what i am doing hits me. i am so incredibly blessed to be where i am. it’s like a mantra which flows within me throughout the day: i am blessed. i am blessed. i am blessed. when i make a patient laugh by my unreserved attempts to speak fullah. i am blessed. when i get to sit with and touch a patient who hasn’t felt human touch for years because of her fistula. i am blessed. when i greet the staff by name and hear my name returned. i am blessed. when i sit in the growing dark of the falling dusk and hear the sounds of the freetown suburbs – so different from the suburbs of home. i am blessed...

sunday report

sunday was a lovely day. it started off well enough: i woke up to rain. it was absolutely lovely. and even better than that was that it had cleared away by the time i headed out to church. i greatly enjoyed my walk to the wilberforce barracks, and though i was later than i usually am, i didn’t really miss very much.

the mass itself was really lovely. i’ve struggled in the past, with the language and cultural barriers, to really get spiritual nourishment out of the services at st. luke’s. yesterday, however, there was a visiting priest, on his way to magburkah village outside of makeni town, and he was just the most lovely priest. usually the sunday sermon becomes an opportunity to speak as loudly and as creatively as possible into the microphone. the catholic church much less than other churches, but it still tends to happen. sermons wander from one idea to the other spontaneously flowing out of the preachers’ mouths, but this priest was different. he spoke clearly and succinctly to the heart of the message in today’s gospel. he was reserved yet passionate about what he talked about. the message focused on the gospel of matthew, where jesus says, ‘my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

his main message is that your burdens become lighter when carried with love. he told a hilarious story which illustrated his point. during the war, he was traveling from makeni and came to a river which he had to cross. boats were there, but they wouldn’t pull right into the shore but stay a few feet away in the water. upon arriving, he noticed a couple waiting there as well. it was a small, small man, he said, and a big, fat woman, nearly five times her husband’s size. ‘she mus’ be one hundred an’ feefty kilos.’ the wife was dressed fine, fine from head to foot. she didn’t want to wade out into the water, so her husband offered to carry her out. the priest watched in amazement as he easily picked up his enormous wife ‘as if she were a piece of bread.’ the next week, on his way back to makeni, the priest came across the same man. this time he was traveling alone. the priest was completely amazed, then, to see the man struggling to pick up a fifty kilo bag of rice which he had with him. in fact, in the end, the man had to have another man help him hoist the fifty kilos of rice into the boat. when the priest asked him why he couldn’t carry the rice after he had carried his fat wife easily, the man replied that he didn’t love the rice like he loved his wife. the church was laughing so hard, but i think everyone received the message as well.

on the way out of church, i ran into a father and son who i had met briefly two weeks before. we were walking in the same direction, so we walked together for a bit. he introduced himself as mr. kargbo, and his son is james. he is a corporal in the national army, and his young son has just graduated to class one. they were on their way to mr. kargbo’s mothers home where james stays during the week. mr. kargbo’s wife died in april of this year. she apparently miscarried and proceeded to hemorrhage. they weren’t able to get to the hospital in time. it was really very sad, but then we moved on to talk of his work, my work, the election, and his predictions of the probability of violence. he thinks that it will be, in the end, quite peaceful ‘by the grace of god,’ which was encouraging to hear. it was just so lovely to know that i now know someone in the church, and as we parted ways at mamba point roundabout, we promised to look for each other next week.

upon getting back to the house, i grabbed a quick lunch and then began cooking for dinner. it actually all turned out really well. i had made up an enchilada-type sauce the night before which i mixed into the tinned chicken. making the tortillas really was the largest effort, but they turned out quite well, which made it all worth it. everyone enjoyed it (or so they said), and i thought it was quite good as well, although i personally thought that it was a bit bland for mexican food. but, in the end, i would count it as a success, and i think that stefani was blessed by it, which was the whole point. :)

i crashed around ten, and didn’t wake up until ten to six this morning. now i’m at work, and we’ll just have to see what the day brings!

weekend update

another weekend is halfway gone, and i can hardly believe it. i'm one week closer to leaving this place, with its amazing highs, desperate lows, and plenty-plenty mediocrity in between. there have for sure been enough days that were just hum-drum, but then i wake up every morning and realize that i'm in freetown, sierra leone! i'm doing what i want to do, and it's such a blessing. the biggest surprise this summer has been the amazing-ness of the people i have been so blessed to meet. people working in all sorts of non-profits and ngos that have such incredible visions for the future and passions for their work.

on friday, i got to go with stefani and geraldine (one of her co-workers) to see various places doing physio work. we stopped by the military hospital in the wilberforce barracks, right next to where i go to church; handicap international, which, having been handed over to the ministry of health, is now called the national rehabilitation centre; and emergency, a hospital run by an italian ngo. at emergency i met a really neat swiss nurse who has worked for quite some time in afghanistan, in the northern bit of the country, where emergency actually opened the first official maternity centre. michaela, the nurse, was telling me how incredible it was to be providing healthcare for and celebrating the lives of women who had never stepped foot into a formal healthcare facility or doctor's office ever before. just being able to value these women as they participated in the great mystery of life...there is a seed growing within me, and i already feel the gentle tugging of my next big adventure. :)

today, we hosted an emotional awareness workshop for the nursing staff at the centre. i actually didn't participate very much. stefani and i spent most of the morning on lumley beach, watching the scrimmages of the single leg amputee sports club, a football (soccer) team which is comprised of all amputees. they are so absolutely incredible, and it was such an honor to watch these men defying the fate which had been handed out to them during the civil war. they are all absolutely determined to still have life on their own terms!

then we spent the rest of the day on the ward with the patients so that the nurses on duty could participate as well. it was a quiet afternoon on the ward, and the women passed their time rolling balls of wool that they will receive next week, and i worked on putting some thoughts together for the bible study that i'm leading next week. another person in the group was scheduled, but something came up and some things shifted, and i was willing. it really was a beautiful day for that sort of thing. there was a good breeze blowing the whole day, especially on the beach, and the rain came right in the middle of the day to cool everything off. it was absolutely glorious to sit in the courtyard in between the wards and just read...

there was a funny moment, when we stopped by freetown supermarket on the way home. as we pulled up, we noticed how busy it was. the wee, small parking lot in front of the store front was jam-packed with cars. upon going inside, we realized that the store was also full of people. it was the most white people that i have seen in one place in such a long time! i was completely overwhelmed. especially by hearing english. i had just forgotten how to interact with a white stranger. one older english chap whom i had passed a few times in the aisles finally addressed me, "how are you, ma'am?" and i was so totally taken aback. i think i ended up mumbling something like, "hello, thank you," and scurrying past. getting back in the car after a few minutes, i thought back on that encounter and felt like a complete idiot. but then i had to laugh at myself. you know you're in africa when...

but it was a good day, and i think it will be a good weekend. monday is stefani's birthday, so we are making dinner for her tomorrow night. i've kind of spear-headed the whole thing, and decided to make her some of the good tex-mex she has been missing ever since leaving east texas. so on the menu for tomorrow is: tortilla chips, pico de gallo, guacamole, enchiladas suizas (although we are renaming them enchiladas salone), black beans, and mexican rice. only we are in west africa, so we've had to be creative with some of the recipes. how do you make salsa verde, for example, without green chiles or tomatillos? how do you make enchiladas without tortillas? i'll let you know how it goes! :)

rainy weather and teary eyes

i woke up today to pouring rain. not just the drizzly stuff which normally comes and goes during the day, but a real cats and dogs downpour. it’s funny because, once again, the weather kind of fit my mood. today was gladi-gladi day, except no one was going home dry. at their discharge education time, they were given the option of not having the ceremonial celebration, but they all wanted to. whether to celebrate their time here or to simply keep up appearances, i do not know. but we sat there, sang our songs, presented the girls, and prayed over them. but we dispersed very simply without the traditional singing and procession around the courtyard. it was, all in all, very sad.

then they all went and gathered their things, and the tears started to flow. first seray, then me, then isatu. we all stood rather awkwardly by the door, crying and pretending not to cry. you see, crying isn’t really popular here, but until today i didn’t really understand why. apparently for some people here, crying because of hardship, etc. is essentially a statement of distrust and unfaith in god. also, there is always someone who has had it worse than you, and to cry is disrespectful to that person’s experience. it was definitely hard to stand and listen to person after person berate seray in front of me for being emotional. i tried my best to force the tears away, and, as a result, have had that headachy feeling all day.

surprise, surprise, it’s raining again. we had, all in all, six hours of dry weather today. just enough time for some of the bigger puddles to drain a bit before being filled up again for the night. i have to say though that i quite enjoy the rain and rainy days. at home, rainy days can be so dismal. but here, it is such a part of life that most things generally continue on as normal. there is just less noise. the din of music, honking horns, and other vestiges of life are generally dimmed by nature’s music of wind and rain. and i love falling asleep to it at night. plus, it cools everything off so wonderfully. the moments before and after the rain are my favorite. i even donned a little cardigan the other day. a perfectly delicious moment. :)

heartbreak and providence

i’m sitting in the dark. the rain, whose steady falling creates a musical symphony to the percussion of my typing, has driven all vestiges of the sun from view. it normally gets fairly dark around this time of night – 18:15 or so – but never is it so dark that you must almost grope from room to room. but the dark is actually very nice. a comforting peace after long days full of busy-ness and heartbreak.

that really describes today for me. that and providence. a bit of an oxymoron: heartbreak and providence, but let me explain.

the morning opened up beautifully. following a plan of forty days of prayer for sierra leone and the looming political elections, i opened the morning praying for god to dispel the clouds of corruption from this beautiful country. walking out into sunshine instead of rain was such a blessing to my poor human mind which gropes for signs on which to hang my faith. the first item on the agenda, after opening the admin office, making coffee, and then going to devotions, was to take two of our patients in for hiv testing at connaught, the government hospital. i was thankful for the opportunity to see again the centre that i had visited with harriet and abibatu upon first arriving. the trouble was that the girls spoke limba and fullah respectively and about a drop of krio between them. thankfully, francis, one of the drivers, was taking us, and whether or not either woman was able to understand him, his confident, authoritative manner was easy enough to understand.

the testing went well enough without too much of a wait for the test results. thankfully, both girls were negative! such a praise...while i was in the office, i wished so badly that i could take a picture or maybe just be able to download the experience from my brain to my computer so that i could share it with you all. there are so many memories of sierra leone that are like that. i wish that i had more patience for writing so that i could sit and record every detail faithfully, but it’s not really my personal gifting. ah well... :)

in any case, the trip into town took most of the morning, but we were back to the centre by lunch. the girls were so relieved to be back. apparently when they saw the big land cruiser they had come in, they thought that they were being taken back home, without warning to pack any of their personal belongings and without having surgery!

right as i walked in the door, i saw my friend, seray, laying on her bed. i went over to say hello, but noticed that she was quite out of sorts. when i asked her why she was sad, she finally looked at me and told me that she had woken up wet that morning. completely thunderstruck, i struggled to say anything at all. when i took her hand, we both began to cry. in seray, i have experienced a true understanding of what it means to be afflicted by fistula in sierra leone. we are told how it ostracizes the woman from her community, how devastating it is, how life-changing the surgery can be, but that doesn’t really mean anything. it all stays up in your head and becomes another fact that you spit out in your carefully organized spiel. with seray, it struck right to my heart. i saw the utter devastation in her face, and i couldn’t stand up to it. nothing i can do or say will take that pain away from her. so i didn’t say anything.

when we both settled down a bit, after seray had poured out to me the woes of her journey with this condition and her bitter disappointment, i looked through the doctor’s notes and explained to her what was recorded there, and how there was still hope for full healing and recovery. she understood, and we moved on to other things, namely her education.

i have felt a burden for a while for seray’s education. she is so bright, and she really gets it. after talking with her, she told me that she would like to finish secondary school, but she thinks that it would be better to go to a vocational school instead and learn a trade which she can continue on in. she also told me that she would be coming back to freetown sometime soon. that she would only be visiting kabala for a few weeks. her mother kicked her out of the house when she lost the baby and started leaking urine, and now that her mother is re-married following the sudden death of seray’s father, there are plenty of new little ones to keep her mother occupied.

so i was well on my way to trying to sort out some sort of way that i could set up a trust fund of sorts for her education, when god really landed everything in my lap. when i asked her where in freetown she was staying, she told me that she was in fact going to be living with one of the nurses, fatmata. when i checked with fatmata, and she is, in fact, taking seray in, and she had already begun looking into a vocational school that is right down the street. such a blessing!

heartbreak and providence. you can’t tell me that god doesn’t exist...

quick summary no. 2

it's sunday evening, and i have a few days to catch you up on. so i'm going to repeat what i've done before and bullet the highlights:

• friday - i spent the day at wellington orphanage with stefani and kerri, an australian woman who's been helping out at the centre while her husband is here on work, training the customs anti-trafficking force. we treked up a bit of hill to be greeted by heaps of smiling faces. the kids are going to summer school, so they trickled into the orphanage, and when they had all arrived, we split them into smaller groups. i got the wee ones, some of whom were reading some of whom weren't. so we read the gingerbread man together aloud and worked on reading comprehension by having each one draw his or her own illustrations for the different parts of the story. one girl, fatmata, ended up attaching herself to me. i don't know if there was a minute where i wasn't holding her hand or hugging her as everyone bustled about. i loosened my hold a few times to let her go do other things if she wanted, but she would only grasp my hands tighter. later, we stopped at ramada's beach bar and restaurant for a mango juice on the beach on the way home. i baked some banana bread that evening, and we ended up playing a make-shift version of tabboo, which was particularly humourous with our german pediatrician, guido.
• saturday - got up early and did some work on the computer while we had power. then we piled into the car and headed out to river number two beach. spent a beautiful day on the sand. there was an especially neat moment when i was standing in the freshwater of the river where it shallows and bends before joining the ocean. i stood in the water for a time, watching the rain clouds roll down the side of the mountain in front of me. then the rain itself came, and i was struck by the fact that i was completely surrounded by water - above, below, and all around me...but then the rain cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day, and we got to swim a bit in the huge waves.
• today - i headed out early with stefani to go to the church in wellington pastored by the man who also heads up the orphanage. one of the associate pastors, Pastor Bull, had just had a baby boy about three weeks ago, and his wife invited us on friday to the naming ceremony and dedication service happening today. we caught a lift with vez and emma who were also headed out in the same direction, which was the first of many unexpected blessings which characterized the day. the service itself was good - longer than the catholic service i'm used to going to, but really not that bad. the worship was really nice, and the community was incredibly welcoming. plus it was fun to see some of the kids from friday. the naming ceremony bit of the service was really fun. the whole church was up out of their seats cheering for this little bit of a baby. his name, if you are interested, is adam shadraq bull. both parents were so proud, especially the papa. it was so sweet to see. we ducked out after the service, but before the extended time of teaching and fellowship, determined to catch public transport back to the team house. three of the orphans walked with us down to the main road and helped us hail the right poda-poda (krio for hither and thither and the cheapest form of public transport). that took us all the way into downtown, stopping on ecowas street. after a bit of confusion and some kind guidance from a female police officer, we finally found the peugot stand (peugot station wagons which operate a bit like taxis but fit more people) and found one heading out to lumley via spur road. while in the car, we got an earful of political talk from one of our fellow passengers. but it was friendly enough, and to be perfectly honest i had a hard time following his many stories so i nodded gravely and he seemed fairly pleased. :) in the afternoon, my housemates went out to the chimpanzee reserve, but i opted out at the last minute. i will miss not seeing the chimps, but i realized that it had been awhile since i had taken a bit of time on the weekend to just sit at the house, read, and journal. and now i'm writing this...

this coming week looks to be a busy one - at least something every day, which is great. hopefully i will also get some progress made on my study. i'm going out one more day into town before things get too crazy and i have a few women on the ward as well that i would like to talk to. everything seems to be going so quickly all of a sudden. i can't believe that it's already 15th july...in a month i'll be home. weird. and i think the weeks will just get faster and faster as they fill up with projects, trips, things to do, and people to see. but i'm determined to not hurry it away by looking too much to the future. rather, i want to focus on the moment and day in front of me.

in doing so right now, i'm realizing how tired i am. :)

up, down, and all around

today was a busy day. boy, it feels good to say that! i think my biggest struggle since coming to sierra leone has been feeling as though i'm actually contributing anything to this little community. but in the flux of staff coming and going, there are a lot of little gaps, and i have been able to pick up some of slack, and it's been wonderful.

the day started off on a really pleasant note. after devotions with the patients and staff, i reported to the kitchen for my first cooking lesson. thursday's lunch is rice with pumpkin ('punky') sauce, and it's my favorite dish out of the week. aunty evelyn said that it would be fine for me to come to the kitchen and learn. the whole of the domestic staff took on this bumbling white girl as i learned to chop vegetables in my hand, to use a mortar and pestle properly, and how to taste the sauce without burning your hand. i won't bore you with the details of how the sauce is made, but i will be more than happy to cook it for any interested parties upon my return! i was firmly pronounced an african woman, and i had a glimpse of what it would be like to have been born into an african family - the comraderie, the teasing, the community, and the social nature of all parties involved. i definitely felt like a niece of fatu as she directed me about the kitchen, described the steps she was taking, and was steered away from things i wasn't allowed to do. the young guys who came to the back door for a cup of tea and a biscuit could have been my cousins, and the other women in the kitchen my sisters. it was really, really wonderful.

everything was done by eleven o'clock, so i spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon entering data from my study into the computer. i'm such a mess, and it felt really good to be organized. my time at the computer was broken up by trips out with the ward camera to take pictures ('snaps') of patients for their discharge cards. then guido, a pediatrician from germany, came and found me. there was a girl in the waiting room of the opc (outpatient pediatric clinic) with a substantial maxillo-facial tumor whose picture he wanted me to take for possible referral to the ship in liberia.

mariama is six years old and the little spot on her gums had, in two weeks, blossomed into a massive growth completely distorting the right side of her face. barely able to open her mouth, she had begun to lose weight, and it broke my heart to see this tiny little girl sitting in the doctor's office, her feet dangling off of the floor, with tears streaming down her distended face. coming from up-country, she didn't speak krio, and i was at a complete loss for words to comfort her. i don't know what will happen to her, honestly. as best i can remember, the ship doesn't have a surgeon on board at the moment who specializes in facial tumors. because her tumor has grown so fast, it's really difficult to know how long she'll be able to last before her airway becomes obstructed or she can no longer eat or drink. i will keep you updated if i hear anything else...

in other news, seray, my friend from the ward, is dry! her catheter was pulled today, and when i checked in with her in the early afternoon she hadn't leaked since right after the catheter was pulled. i almost shouted with joy, and seray laughed at me. "yu likah laf," she always tells me (laf = smiling or really any outward sign of happiness). "i do, very much," i told her. "you make me gladi."

i also had the extremely rare treat of speaking with one of my dearest friends from school, meg, by phone today. she has a calling card, and decided to splurge on me. it really made my day. i know it's cliche, but it really was like a long drink of cold water.

then i spent the rest of the early evening researching online. it's funny the more i read about global health policy work and some of these international cooperatives and foundations and initiatives and programs, the less i want anything to do with them. but we'll see, won't we. :)

now my laundry is in the dryer, and i'm wrapping up some things for the day. it really was an up-down-all-around day...

politics and prayers

today was really a very good day. for the first part, we had power when i woke up. yesterday morning, i had awoken at five to the sound of silence. then the incessant barking and howling of the neighborhood dogs. i’ve never been comfortable with the sound of a dog barking, and when it’s eight or nine of them together, sleep stays quite far.

but this morning was lovely, and i particularly enjoyed sleeping all the way until six. this morning i helped out in the OPC (outpatient pediatric clinic). wednesdays are days for vaccines and referrals, and i was able to help the nurses with some of the vaccinations. i weighed a lot of babies, gave two vaccinations, got peed upon, slobbered upon, and almost pooped upon, and i loved every minute. a five day old baby came in, and he was perhaps one of the most beautiful thing i have ever seen so i didn’t mind when he (nappy-less) peed all over the place. his mom was a first timer, and she was so cute, nearly jumping out of her chair when he sneezed.

i went for lunch with terri and susan to bliss bakery. it was so nice to get out of the compound for a little bit during the day. the apc (all people’s congress) supporters were out en masse all decked out in red. free-for-all campaigning opened on monday, and i have witnessed some sort of political demonstration almost every day this week. today was the day that the apc candidate was announcing his manifesto of campaign promises so almost everyone out today was dressed in red. but the grapevine brought us news of the election’s first casualty. apparently, an apc supporter walked into the slpp (sierra leone people’s party) party headquarters and when he refused to leave began to be beaten. he was beaten to death. we spent out lunch watching knots of red clad people dancing down the street past the plate glass windows on their way into town and could only dream about the state of freetown in a month’s time on the day of the elections.

i spent the afternoon running around a bit more and interviewing a few more women for my study. they had both come back to the centre complaining of stress incontinence, and as we are unable to help them, are about to go home. but i had a chance to talk to them both, which is really such a blessing. especially because my ability to go out and recruit participants will now be severely limited by the demonstrations in town. it was really neat to talk to them both. its interesting. part of my interview comes from a quality of life/stress test questionnaire, and nearly all of my women, whether or not their surgery was successful, have returned similar results. there just isn’t an easy life in sierra leone.

yesterday, i spent the afternoon chatting with one of the patients who has become a very close friend, seray. she’s the only one left who has had a bit of schooling and her english is quite good. it was actually really funny, because we had been carrying on a conversation, and i was getting quite proud of my krio. then seray asked me if i wanted to learn krio. yes, i replied. okay, she said, i will stop talking in english. :) i almost died laughing. but in our conversation, it was very interesting to hear seray speak of sierra leone. ‘it’s a beautiful country,’ she told me. ‘but if i ever get a chance, i will leave it. there are no opportunities here. salone suffers. it suffers because there are no opportunities. no one get job so no one get any money and so all man suffer.’ looking around, sometimes i can’t help but agree. i think of seray in london or new york city. her sister has been. she met a brit and lied to him when he showed an interest in her. she said she didn’t have a husband when she did. he was probably away in the mines or upcountry working somewhere. couples and families often live apart here. her british ‘man’ took her to london, but when he found a love letter to seray’s sister from her proper husband, the brit rejected her and sent her back to sierra leone alone.

yet there is so much potential here. i have met so many people with initiative, high hopes, and even bigger dreams. the elections provide a pivotal moment for positive change and growth. please pray with me for sierra leone...

morning time and prayer...

mornings at the centre are my favorite times. we arrive from the team house by 7:30 usually. the admin office is usually opened by terri. i dump my stuff into a chair and grab the coffee pot. it's quite a commodity around here, and so it's the first task of the day. that done, i run off to the morning devotions held by some of the staff for the patients. we sing songs in krio, and clap to all different rhythms. i have several favorite songs, one of which i have copied here:

tell ah, tell ah ten-ki
tell papa god tenki
tell ah, tell ah ten-ki
tell papa god tenki

wetin ee do foh me
teh papa god tenki
wetin ee do foh me
teh papa god tenki

the devotional time ends with a time of prayer, and i love to hear prayers in krio. florence, our official/unofficial counselor is a pastor's wife, and she prays with the most fervent spirit. filling her prayers with scripture and thanksgiving. we have begun praying with each of the patients going into surgery that day. today we prayed with a fifteen year old and an eighteen year old, both absolutely petrified with fear. honestly, sometimes i struggle to understand how such things can happen. when i see such young girls, i realize that we are really treating a symptom but not the problem. fistulas are still happening, and frequently.

yet i notice every morning after the devotions and after the times of prayer that one of the most amazing things about prayer is that no matter who or what you are praying for, you always end up feeling better. even with these girls, and the whole country of sierra leone and all its difficulties, there's a peace in my heart and a confidence in god's abundant love. it's the mysterious blessing of prayer...

a quick summary after some delay

one of my biggest technology-related pet peeves is when you spend a relatively substantial amount of time, energy, and effort into doing something and then your computer flips out and you lose it all. that’s what happened to me on thursday. i had written a really lovely post for this blog that kind of recapped the few days prior and summed up my feelings of the moment. i clicked ‘post’ and then the server could not be found. of course, when i clicked ‘back,’ it didn’t reload the words i had typed. ah well. i can’t really go back and write everything up, because that plus everything that i’ve done since would make for an inordinately long blog post, and that would just be daunting to read all in one go. so i thought that i would just do some bullet points of the daily highlights of the past little bit to (hopefully) help me to stay concise.

• wednesday. morning. mercy ministries team trip to an hiv/aids hospice and orphanage in downtown monrovia run by the sisters of charity. met some really lovely liberian nursing students who chatted the morning away while we all cuddled and hugged and did our very best to get these poor little dear ones to smile a little bit. twenty to thirty kids, most hiv positive, one sister and a handful of local volunteers. i never learned the name of the little one i was cuddling, but at the end of two and half hours or so, i finally did coax a smile out of her. really, one of the most gratifying moments of my life. afternoon. tagged along to a meeting with sr. barbara brilliant, alum of bc nursing, one of the only ex-pats to stay in liberia for the duration of the war. absolutely blown away by the impact she has made on that country and the volume of work which she does. really, incredibly inspired.
• thursday. woke up. packed. said oodles of goodbyes. couldn’t really eat lunch because my stomach was so twisted. spent some time wondering why goodbyes never get easier no matter how many times you done them. wrote a blog post which was sadly lost. met my traveling companions, kent and oebele. got to know them even better when our flight was delayed two hours or so. arrived in sierra leone. i could barely keep from smiling to see the beautiful hills of the land i have come to love.
• friday. came in to work only to be frustrated by the internet. organized some data for the study. headed out in the early afternoon with bas and anna for makeni. drove three and a half hours. arrived in magbenteh village outside of the town, where bas and anna worked in a hospital. was almost mobbed by all of the villagers who were so ecstatic to see them. was often taken for bastiaan’s second wife. a little awkward. :) went for a drink at ibrahim’s, a particularly lovely lebanese man. ended up at the house of action contra la faime (acf), a french ngo. met some of the most open-hearted, hospitable, friendly, easy-going people i’ve ever encountered. had a dinner of fried rice, a nice glass of wine, and played ‘the were-wolves of thiercelieux’ (roughly translated) – the french equivalent of mafia. set up a mosquito net. fell asleep.
• saturday. woke up to almost complete silence, a novelty after freetown. took a quick, cold shower that felt absolutely amazing. breakfast of tea, freshly baked bread, fried egg, cake, fried rice, and pineapple. packed up. waited for the rain to end. began a long process of saying goodbyes, to acf, to makeni town, to magbenteh village, and to magbenteh hospital. felt so incredibly privileged to see and participate. got on the road around one in the afternoon. rain, some suspicions of car trouble, a couple of stops for bananas, bread, a little squat behind a gallon drum, and three hours stuck in the middle of a political parade opening the official presidential campaigns equals arriving to the centre a little after seven. after a little food and a second shower, i felt tired but absolutely content.

hopefully i will have a chance to write a bit more about my time in makeni – the wonderful people i met and my reflections upon the whole experience, but for now i will end. it’s getting late, and i’m quite tired. also hopefully the internet will work tomorrow and i will be able to post this up. i think that there is another post that i want to put up that i wrote before i left for monrovia. better late than never, i suppose. :)

a day in the village

my goal for today was to notice in particular all the little details which really do make up each and every day. and armed with that perspective, i headed out to face the day. so what did i notice? i noticed how riding in the land rover along back country roads was similar to riding a frisky horse. i noticed how the red of the iron-rich earth of the dirt road contrasted so beautifully with the green of the plants and the blue and white of the sky. i noticed how beautiful was the workmanship which placed the mud onto the walls of the huts in the villages we visited and laid the dried palm fronds on the roof. i noticed how the hot items of the liberian market are mosquito nets and tarpaulins. i noticed a unhcr bucket full of rainwater. i noticed the detailed faces of the little children which clung to my legs and my fingers. i noticed the domineering attitude of the young teenage guy who professed his love for me, asking for me to take him to the united states and care for him. i noticed the change in his face when i reminded him of his sisters and brothers who need him to care for them. i noticed the young girl who was nine months pregnant, and i wondered if she has a birthing plan or if she will become a future vvf patient.

you see, i went today with the community health education team to distribute chemically laden mosquito nets. they’ve been working in the area of cheesemanburg, which is made up of a chain of seven or eight villages. today we were in kosoh town, a grouping of seven or eight homes whose inhabitants comprise one extended family. we went into the homes, counted how many people sleep there and proceeded to hang the nets. one for the bed on which this husband and wife sleep. one for the children who sleep on a mat on the floor. two more for the brother’s family in the other room, and one for the grandparents who sleep in the third room. according to jen, the team coordinator, one can really only home that at least by taking the nets out of their plastics and hanging them up that it will be enough to prevent the recipient from taking them down and selling them, which has apparently happened quite a bit in the past. there were heaps of people to hang everything up, so i spent the better part of the day playing with the village children, who were so incredibly cute. i’ve only seen children at the opc, the outpatient pediatric clinic, the one day with sandra and annekoos, and i forgot how much i miss children. i met emmanuel, tony-boy, angel, homer, and infa. they were beautiful children, and i was flattered by their attention. according to one woman in the village, normally they all just cry and run away from the white people. :)

we ran out of nets fairly quickly, though, and were heading back to the ship by a little after twelve noon. we got back to the ship a little after one. climbing out of the car i met ann, jutta, and kate all going out to hopefully meet with a man who had some rabbits to sell for the micro-enterprise project. at their invitation, i climbed out of the one land rover into the next one. we went to one of the local supermarkets and waited for nearly half an hour before we were able to contact him by phone. his car was having trouble, he could meet on friday at the same time. with no real other choice, we abandoned the hope of getting some rabbits and proceeded to cross a few other things off of the to-do list, like placing an order for bamboo so that one of the other women in the program could have the materials to build her rabbit hutch. apparently, once the woman can demonstrate that she had an appropriate hutch built, then she receives the pair of rabbits. anyway, we drove out on the same road which took me nearly a week ago to white plains. it was really fun to recognize something, i must say. :)

and now i am back, once again, on the ship. it’s funny, with all of the wonderful amenities of life available here on board, i must say that i couldn’t help but look a little wishfully at some of the homes that we went in and out of today. they were really beautiful. beautifully constructed, beautifully kept up, beautifully simple. mud floors, mud walls, palm frond and tarpaulin roof, but i found myself wishing for more than half a moment that i could live there, with these people. honestly, i know that this desire is one of theory and born out of the luxury of choice, but still the desire remains, much to my chagrin. maybe someday...

a day with the dental team

i suppose that i owe every one a blog post, for all of you who are so wonderful to be faithful readers of this little web log. so i have settled down with a lovely cup of darjeeling tea, and i will faithfully record the events of the past few days, and get you updated. :)

the weekend passed uneventfully enough. it rained all day saturday, spoiling plans for a trip to the beach, which i was used to after a few weekends in sierra leone. it was such a blessing, though, to spend the day with power and the light and air conditioning that come with it. yet how quickly thankfulness turns to complaining, as there really was no where on board where i could get warm, and suddenly the blessed ac became a burden as i shivered through the day. last night, at the crew sunday service, the speaker, rob cairncross, spoke on just that.

it's pretty neat. this trip which i thought would be all about my study, and seeing different things and just experiencing the ship and ship-life again, really has become a spiritual retreat of sorts. i've had so much time to just sit and think and read, and it's amazing what little thoughts bubble up to the surface when you give them a moment. i've been reading a lot about prayer, and that has been so incredibly enriching to my day-to-day life. i love waking up the morning to see what the day will bring.

today brought a trip with the dental team. they have established a clinic in one of the areas of a local government hospital, and we set out early in the rain, all very much resigned to the fact that it's the rainy season, and you're just going to get wet. :)

the day seemed as though it was going to be slow, because of the rain, but in the end, it was a fairly full day with everyone just showing up late, delayed by the downpour. i worked mostly on the admin side, pairing up with the woman in charge of admissions paperwork. i sat and watched and then later helped taking medical histories. the pidgin english here is no less fun than krio.

Have you had rhuematic fever?.....Whe' yu small, yu get fevah dat put red spots on yu skeen?
Have you had hepatitis?.....Yu get yellow jaundice or livah diseese?

fun times. :)

there was actually a man that came in who was sierra leonean. he only moved to liberia on 28 June, so he only spoke krio and mende. i don't speak any mende, but we managed to communicate a bit through my broken krio. the poor guy was in an extraordinary amount of pain with some pretty severe swelling near his jaw. he seemed much happier when he left and even gave me a little corner of a smile.

another memorable patient was one of the little children that came through. his name was simeon, and he was from a local orphanage which was taking advantage of having a pediatric dentist on the team. i didn't get to spend much time with him, but his adorable smile warmed my heart in the middle of the morning when i was wondering why i had come. it's the interesting part of mercy ships, or any missions work, really, we all get so used to being understaffed that when you are there to volunteer or help out, no one can really sort out what you could possibly do, although you know there is heaps of work to be done.

but i really can't blame them, because i know that i will be gone tomorrow, and they'll have to shift back to being chronically understaffed...