Je m'appelle Afua

I roll out the magenta playdoh into strips, slowly spelling out phrases. Je m'appelle AFUA, I wrote on the bedside table...My name is Afua. Like so many West Africans, I now have been named for the day I was born...inflection and name slightly different depending on people group and language. You are Friday-born?, they ask with a smile...who gave you this name? I tell them my Ghanian brothers from Mercy Ships have given me this name and told me it is Ashanti. Ahhhh they sigh, in understanding and delight that a yovo woman would choose to have a name like theirs. Brown hands turn my name tag over, running a finger along the medical tape I've put there with my African name just above my own, sounding it out again. I point out the other nurses...This is Afivi, Afigan, Ama, and Aqia. You see, we are not so different from you...

9-year old Kofi calls me across the room, running my names together into one. AfuaLaura, he calls happily. He is balanced on a stool, one casted leg stuck out in front of him with crutches thrown carelessly on the floor, drawing with sharpies. As I turn to look, he shows me his cast, on which he has carefully listed every staffmember involved in his care – from “Dr Frank” the surgeon, every nurse on our ward, and one of the crewmembers that comes often to visit. The other side proudly displays a huge ship, with “Mercy Ship” and his name inside. I give him a thumbs up and c'est bon, and draw a smiley face on the foot, telling him, “This is you, Kofi, with your happy smile that lights up the ward!” He giggles and offers me an energetic high-five and a hug.

They say that only 10% of communication is actually done through words. Working here, I could believe it. Smiles, gestures and facial expressions play so much into our lives here...sometimes when the translators are busy I can hold entire conversations with just a few words in French, or none at all. The part of me that wants to chatter away reassuringly to my little ones makes do with a smile, a headrub, and teasing pinch of casted feet.

It’s not a name, or a language that truly matters. It is a belonging. With a people that have been rejected by village or family, with the castouts and thrown-away children. In us, they have found a place that they can simply be loved, be healed, and a chance at new life. In them, we have found a whole community to love and learn from.

What is trust?

What is trust? Can I count the unknown for these people, many of whom have walked from remote villages or come long distances with only the hope of change? We are a different color, a different language. The ship is different and the food is strange. There are lights that turn on and off, toilets that flush, showers that spray. We distill complex medical procedures down into simply "tomorrow they will give you medicine to make you sleepy, and fix your leg so it is straight."

As I continue in this vein, I get solemn nods from 4-year old Kwabena in my lap. "You will not be able to walk on your leg for a little while, and it will be in a long hard cast." I point to the boy in the bed next to him, legs already in bilateral casts, Kwabena nods. "We will tickle your toes to make sure that you can feel them, and ask you to wiggle them, and give you medicine if it hurts." Nod. "We will listen to your heart and check your breathing...would you like to hear your heart?" Nod...and an ever so shy smile of wonder as he listens to the steady beat of his own heart. The doctor has already discussed basics of surgery with mom, it is my job to explain pre- and post-surgical basics. She nods and smiles, no questions. Diagnoses of genu varus and a treatment plan of tibial osteotomy mean nothing to her. Jesus brought us here, tomorrow the doctor will fix her little boy's leg, and that's all she needs to know. Bored with the serious talk, Kwabena hops up and runs off on crooked little legs to resume his lively soccer game through the ward with another nurse and dimpled little boy.

"Will you let me carry you?" The elevator had broken again yesterday and was working slowly today, bringing our kids up to deck 7 and out into the sunshine. Two days of enforced bedrest had turned two of our lively and cheerful little girls into screaming, fighting, and bored out of their minds. Two-year-old Grace stared back at me out of her nest of pillows. Pigtails stood up everywhere and casts jutting out in the air. Earlier today she had tried to bite me, angry and in pain, and scared. Our translator had gone with the first crew after inviting mom to come up as well. Limping herself, mom is in no shape to carry her little girl up and down 4 flights of stairs.

I point at myself and Grace, make a carrying motion with my arms, then point to the ceiling. "Grace, I know I'm tall and white and smell funny...will you let me carry you outside?" Mom nods and smiles. I pick up the tense little body, one arm cradling the stiff white casts. "Evo, evo Grace," I murmur, "everything will be all right." She peeks a few times over my shoulder, checking that mom is following up the stairs, then curls her little arm around mine and looks up at me. The other fist is clutching tightly to her large pink balloon.

Upstairs on deck there are people everywhere. Patients with tumors and ones that used to have them, heads no longer wrapped in shame. Children in casts are on laps and chairs, batting around their balloons. A boy in a flowered patient gown races wildly along the deck and into my leg, looks up and giggles. Soon no one will be able to tell that there used to be a hole where his upper lip should have been.

As we prepare to go back down for dinner, I hear "sssss Afua, sister!" Grace is crying as a translator tries to pick her up, mama calling me over. "You take her, Afua," mama tells me. And just like that she is in my arms, one chubby arm hanging on tight to mine, and head resting against my shoulder. "Can I carry you, Grace?" She grins up at me, pats my white cheek, then snuggles down again in trust.

So many of the staff here have left jobs and settled lives and friends at come to come, if only for a little while. To come and serve in obedience. To make some small difference in a life, of two, or a thousand. To be Jesus to a child in need.

It's not an easy thing to leave the known. To boldly step out into something completely and wildly new. I know for myself, in taking this one small step, I have been allowed a glimpse into what life could be...a life of trust.

Akloa

My head bobbed as we hit another bump in the road. I woke up just enough to catch myself from falling into the lap of the man next to me. Heat pounded up through the floor under my feet, along with the smell of burning rubber and exhaust. The rearview mirror drooped from the ceiling, a tired swing with each pot hole. With a loud crack we lost half of the side mirror, and I realized we had left it back on a projecting tree branch. The engine coughed, coughed again, and stopped. As we coasted downhill the driver enthusiastically revved the engine until it finally turned over and started again. We picked up speed as Bo threaded his way through a series of potholes...the ultimate slalom ski course. Barefoot brown children wearing only a pair of shorts, every rib visible, ran out of leaf-thatched huts to happily wave and chase along the road shouting "Yovo, yovo!!" Apparently, a bush taxi full of yovos was not a common sight along this road.

After working a night shift friday, I joined a group of friends for a hiking trip to Akloa falls, Togo's highest waterfall. Eight of us yovo girls piled into a dilapidated van (fondly referred to as a "bush taxi") for the 6 hour drive after a lively haggle session at the bus station. After the first few stops wondering how many people we would be fitting into a 9 seat van, we finally stopped wondering and just started joking, counting and enjoying the ride. We made it up to 18, a solemn child on my lap patting my waterbottle as we tried out our French and Ewe, and they, their broken English.

After a warm and sweaty hike (well hey, it's Africa...what did you expect!) to the waterfall the next morning. We tramped on a (slightly muddy) winding trail through green meadows and groves of banana and mango trees. The thickly forested mountain rose on either side, swathed in cloud.

"Like something out of a shampoo commercial" says a Togolese website. It does not even come close to the majestic beauty of the 115 ft cascade. A rush of breeze tickles wet hair, the soothing rush of water far different than the growl of diesel engines. This too, is Africa.

After enjoying the photos of the beautiful Badou region and Akloa hike along with our adventurous bush taxi ride above, check out some of the fun Africa photos below...more photos to come as my friends upload theirs!

Akbe kaka

We start and end our shifts with prayer, nurses and translators huddled in a circle between beds, patient and family activity around us. So much of our prayer is thanks...for safe surgeries, for healing, for patients being discharged and for the time that we are able to spend with each one.

Akbe kaka...thank you very much...I whispered softly in Ewe. Akbe kaka...for everything.

After 4 days of crying despite all attempts at entertainment and distraction, this little guy finally found his toy of choice - a plastic balloon pump. With a good half-hour carefully spent on each small balloon, he inflated enough for the entire ward then explored static electricity via his fleece blanket.

Giggling proudly when a balloon stuck to his face or hand, he took time out to stick his finger into the oxygen probe. He responds to my Akbe kaka with a laugh and a Merci, Tank you!

Both born with cleft lip, Kosi and Kasi's parents had no way of getting the defect repaired until a few weeks ago. (Look back a few posts and you will see Kosi at screenings, pre-surgery) As I write in a patient chart, Kosi climbs up in my lap to pat my cheek and play with my nametag. Suture ends sticking out of his fat little lip and a few steristrips are the only evidence left that he was not born with a perfect face. A few feet away Kasi sings to himself, clapping his hands and dancing to some inner two-year-old African rhythm. As their nurse discharges them home and we gather to say goodbye, Kosi proudly points out his new SmileTrain backpack and gives me a energetic high five. Kasi's mother ties her son onto her back and looks at the happy group of nurses, shyly smiles at us and whispers Akbe kaka.

Blessing was discarded at birth, found in a bush with little legs bowed. Love-starved, she chattered away to any Yovo (white person) nurse that happened to be on the ward, climbing them like a monkey to touch earrings and hair. Post surgery her legs stick out straight in red-and-white striped casts as she waves to her friends on shift, calling tickle tickle (her favorite game), and pantomiming what she wants to do.

As I discharged Blessing and her brother home yesterday, their adopted mother tells me through a translator "Thank you for treating (them) like people, thank you for loving us. Tell the doctors and the nurses, Akbe kaka."

For giving me the incredible privilege of loving these kids, for allowing me to be His hands if only in a small way, my heart cries out to Jesus...Akbe kaka.

Ward nursing...a whole different world

The ward is definitely an experience in itself! I don't even know what to say.

Our little hospital opened about 10 days ago, and has slowly been filling up with pre and post-surgical patients and parents. I can't give you names or details or amazing photos right now, but maybe I can take you, just for a moment, to my world...

You walk down a long hallway and turn into a door marked only with a brightly colored curtain and a sign marked with a single letter. As you open the door you see a circle of nurses, all in blue, praying at the beginning of their shift...in English, German, and Dutch. As the prayer finishes, they report off then move through the room, checking on each of their patients, greeting them, checking morphine pumps, IV drips, and small toes at the bottom of new casts. Beds stretch along each side of the room, some filled with little people watching you solemnly, and some rumpled and empty. The little boy in the corner begins to cry, and mom rolls out from under the bed where she was sleeping to soothe and give him a drink.

A tiny brown boy toddles up to you and pats your leg, chattering happily in Mina. As you crouch down to talk with him you see that where his upper lip should be, a hole extends up into one nostril and into the back of his mouth. His mother greets you with a "como savaah" as he tugs your hand to come and join the lively Jenga game in the center of the room. Suddenly shy, he runs back to mom, who boosts him up piggy-back and ties him on with a bright piece of cloth.





A bright-eyed seven year old grins at you and invites you in Ewe to join him. He is carefully balanced on a stool, legs encased in hard plaster casually jutting out to either side. A half finished Jenga game in front of him, he carefully takes out pieces and covers his ears, afraid that the tower will crash. One of the translators is with him, and an older woman in a hospital gown. As the woman turns you can see that a whole side of his face, jaw and chin are jutting out in a huge tumor. As you start to talk with her, she tells you that she has been living with this tumor for several years, and prayed to God for help..."and then Mercy Ships came to Lome and Jesus answered my prayer!" she happily exclaims.

At that moment the Jenga game crashes, and the whole room laughs happily. One of the little girls runs around the table to help pick up, and you realize that she runs lopsided as both knees jut far out to either side. She picks up a maraca and starts to dance. Soon you are learning to dance, singing along even though you don't know the words, and trying out your limited French and tribal langages as the patients giggle at your awful pronunciation.





Down the hall are more wards, full of patients with sight restored, tumors removed, or babies in the feeding program who only weigh a few pounds because of prematurity or clefts, slowly gaining back weight. Everywhere you look, there is hope.

Often rejected by community and family, discarded as babies or seen as cursed, our patients are starved for love. While we may be the first white people they've ever seen, we may also be the first ones to ever look them full in the face and be able to see past the deformity. We love these kids and adults just as they are, seeing them through Jesus' eyes and knowing that to Him, they are beautiful.