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. :)