It started out like any other screening day, just a little earlier. We pulled on scrubs and whispered in the bathroom to keep from waking our new roomate, filled waterbottles, and filed out to a waiting convoy of landrovers. We set up chairs and tables in the early dawn, asked about hernias and malaria and tumors, checked blood pressures and lab work, tried out our new Krio words, walked the hopeful patients from place to place, prayed for them.
The sun rose quickly, and the hot African sun beat down as we continued screening. I was called out to treat several people who had fainted outside the gate, only to find that they had revived with a little water and melted back into the crowd of thousands. It was around midmorning when I got another call to respond to a fainting victim outside the gate. With blood pressure cuff and stethoscope in hand and another nurse behind me we headed out through the inner gate into the crowd looking for our patient. The the voices behind the main gate were frantic and growing louder, but there was friendliness and hope in the eyes around me.
As I turned around the outer gate suddenly buckled in and gave way, and a sea of lives flooded in and piled up and up as the crowd continued to come...desperate eyes looking up from the ground, pleading for a right to be human. Carefully guarded hope, hours and days of waiting and sleeping in line crushed in the weight of the mass. Suddenly the high concrete wall was against my back and people all around, more people than could fit through the little inner gate, but still they tried. I found my voice lost in the crowd as I yelled for order, that everyone would be taken care of, that everyone mattered. From nowhere a calm little man appeared, told me it was time to leave, parted a way across so that I could hand off my stethoscope and jump over the wall back into the stadium...when I looked back he was gone as though he was never there at all.
We linked arms, shoulder to shoulder, as they came through the little gate one by one, and suddenly I was an emergency nurse, kneeling beside an unconscious man in the thick red dust with another nurse, asking about breathing and pulse and shade...
And then we were four, and ten, and twenty and fifty, a sea of blue scrubs under the tent we had moved the injured to for staging and treatment. The supplies we packed the night before in preparation for a one or two person emergency stretched and stretched, and I found myself in silent thanks for the urge to pack more than I had thought would be needed. I was soon pulled away from my first patient to find supplies, to create supplies when we had no more, to triage and make transport decisions, to check on the little groups of medical personnel revolving around each victim, to soothe and offer a brief word of comfort. It was a moment, a minute, a lifetime, until the last landrover-turned-ambulance pulled away and there were no injured left to treat.
It wasn't what we had expected, winding through the bustling market and past the big cotton tree in the soft dark early that morning. It wasn't what we had planned and hoped and waited and prayed for, the anticipation of surgeries and hope to come, of lives restored and God's love for humanity found. It also wasn't the familiar pang from previous screenings, from deformity and outcast and helpless and starving. This was a sharper pain, an unexpected and terrible occurrence.
Our hearts are broken for families in tragedy...our hearts are broken for the thousands that were left behind the gate after screenings were cut short for the day...my heart is broken for the helpless that were trampled unseen, and for those that trampled them too desperate to notice...my heart is broken because I watched a man die yesterday, and I don't even know his name.
I'm broken and hurting, and it's hard to pick the pieces back up as I pray for faith. All the people we saw yesterday and the ones that we didn't...they are already in God's hands. Every broken face, every blind eye, every bowed leg, every outcast. I am so thankful that despite all the chaos and apparent hopelessness, he is still in control. And only He can open the eyes of the hopeless to let them know that not only are they human, but they are also loved.
All I can do is pray...and trust in His promises for each of these helpless:
At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes," says the Lord. ~ Zeph 3: 19-20
The official Mercy Ships statement is below. Please read and pray for the crew, the victims, our patients, and the hurting people of Sierra Leone.
Mercy Ships is deeply saddened by the tragic events that occurred today during medical screening at the Freetown National Stadium when a crowd stormed the gate resulting in several injuries and one life lost.
Mercy Ships personnel working at the site attended the injured and accompanied them to local hospitals.
"Our hearts and prayers are with the individuals and families of those affected by today's events. The occurrence of this incident in the course of activities intended to restore lives is tragic. We move forward with tremendous sadness, but great determination, to assist as many people as possible in the next ten months," stated Mercy Ships Founder, Don Stephens.
Mercy Ships exists to serve the forgotten poor and has served Sierra Leone five times over the past two decades, also helping establish two land-based health care facilities. For the next ten months, Mercy Ships will be providing surgeries for qualified patients while working alongside the Sierra Leonean Government to support its five-year healthcare plan and strengthen the functions of the national health system.
Please keep the people of Sierra Leone and the Mercy Ships crew in your prayers, not just today but in the months to come.
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