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.