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...