Yu de pillar

Working aboard a hospital ship in West Africa isn’t the most secure and predictable job I’ve ever had.  There are so many things that we don’t always know, that we can’t know.   Things we think we know and then find out that actually we didn’t after all.  Questions come up that I never really thought about at when I lived in the States: 

Will the frozen food container come through so we’ll have meat to eat, or will it be stuck on the dock for the next 3 weeks?

Will I be woken up for an emergency in the middle of the night tonight?

Will I get malaria tomorrow?

Has one of the mischievous children on A ward escaped down the hallway?

Will the water truck show up so we’ll be able to continue showering regularly?

Who will move in this week when my roommate moves out…and who will be moving in next month?

Is the floor sideways (or in nautical terms…are we listing)?

Realities are true here that weren’t my reality before.  Like the fact that in less than a week my hospital temporarily won’t be a hospital any more.   Or in two weeks I’ve been reassigned to the hospitality department for the duration of the sail.   Or that I don’t actually know what date I’m leaving the country, even though it’s only 2 or 3 weeks away, because we won’t know until a day or two  ahead of time for security reasons (and you all won’t know until after we’ve sailed).

There is a truth that holds firm in my life when everything else changes.  I hear it in the streets, in the wards, in a soft chant that soothes my heart in the busy office and in the silent hum of the engines through the night.   It’s in the songs we sing at church and in ward worship, that we murmur as we rock children to sleep.

Yu are de pillar that holds my life

Yu are de pillar that holds my life

Masta Jesus, yu are de pillar that holds my life

Masta Jesus, yu are de pillar that holds my life

It's only on the truth of my master Jesus that I can stand, tall and strong and confident.  He is my rock, my strength, my constant.  It is only He that holds my life.

Glady boku-boku

Thursday was the end of surgery for this outreach.  There is one more week for faces to mend and graft sites close over, for little stomachs to start digesting food again.  The ward is full of bewhiskered cleft lip babies and the leftovers from the plastic surgery rotation waiting for wound healing.

We gathered in A ward to celebrate and tel God tenki (give thanks to God) - patients and parents and nurses and doctors and day volunteers and OR sterilizers and physical therapists....and the odd stray we pulled in from the hallway.  We lifted our hands in praise for successful surgeries, lifted our voices to the deckheads and up the stairwell, and danced as the ship gently rocked.  Nurse after nurse was pulled into the dance circle as well, as Abu spun wildly and yelled, "shake you bodi and dance like an African!!"  Later on as patient after patient shared testimonies of God's goodness in their lives, a small voice in my lap murmured through steristrips and sutures, "Amen, amen, He has turned my life around.  A--MEN!"  

I have wished a thousand times that I could bring you here with more than words; that you could experience the wonder of a ward worship service with me and join us in being glady boku-boku (very happy) for what the Lord has done.  Deb, one of our nurse-turned-photographers, captured a few moments of worship from our Thursday.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe the clip below will finally give you a window into our lives.  Come and join us, just for a few moments, in telling Papa God tenki :-) 

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

For a week I’ve been learning my new job of nurse educator, planning ahead for next year, organizing the desk that will soon be mine.  The piles of paperwork have slowly diminished and the ever-growing to-do list I’ve been compiling is already half crossed-out.  The rest of the list will take a bit more time, I think.  I’ll be dividing my time between nurse educator and working on the wards, and so for now it’s time to learn the job I haven’t done yet.

Throughout the week it was a bit of a strange feeling to walk by the wards and look in from the outside.  I didn’t know the nurses in blue that bent over the beds to assess and medicate, to try out Krio and Mende with the patients and be a part of healing.  I didn’t know the woman who waved to me from the bed as she nursed her baby, her pressure garment tight on her head above burn scars that streaked down her neck.  I didn’t know the mischievous escapee from the plastic surgery ward that came to my office to visit again and again, hand outstretched in a continual wave from a hand brace, begging me to come and play with him.  The translators remembered me by name, welcomed me home, and eagerly asked when I would be coming back to the ward.  I told them, honestly, that I wasn't sure but I promised to work with them again as soon as I could.

This weekend the wards became mine again.  I was called in to work as a nurse on D ward - land of nasogastric tubes and steri-strip-whiskered lips and suction and dressings, the ward I worked in during the first few months of our time in Sierra Leone.  Life on the ward puts all the paperwork and planning into perspective and gives it a fresh purpose.  

I'm not sure exactly when it was that I realized I was home.

It might have been the smile on Isata's face when she looked in the mirror to see her new jaw after I took the bulky dressing off.  It might have been the guilty look from 5-year-old Kadi when I discovered her once-sterile thigh dressing half pulled off, or the pleading in Temne for her papa's rice when I chased her around her bed with an NG feed.  It might have been the toddler popo securely on my back with a sheet, drowsily drooling down my scrubs as I went from bed to bed to finish my daily vital signs.  It might have been the mama who patted me in church the next morning, as I danced past with Kadi on my back, who attempted to claim my skirt for her own and told me I dressed like "fine African woman."

I don't know when it happened exactly.  There's not a specific moment I can define and pin down.  All I know is that I'm right back where I belong.

Journey to a different world

Two+ weeks ago:

Thirty hours on land, air, and sea.  It seems an endlessly long and turbulent ride, but in reality such a short trip to a wildly different world.  Let me take you with me here – riding along in my backpack from plane to plane with our group of 21, past the smooth punctuality of Brussels and the welcoming grins of Salone immigration and health officials – through to outside the Freetown airport where men throw our luggage high on top of a waiting poda-poda and tie it down securely with only a tarp to cover from the rain.  I stand guard like a watchdog over the two bags full of fragile surgical supplies as I repeat over and over, “this one is medical supply; it needs to go in the car.”

Let me take you past the lush tropical greenery and bare concrete buildings with bold-patterned cloth doors fluttering in the wind.  Look with me through the sea-salty breeze as our ferry draws closer across the bay to a large blue-and-white hospital ship.  Can you see the light shining out from your cabin window?  Veer with me through the erratic traffic, and don’t forget to duck your head and hang on as we bump down the half-paved road after a brief ship visit.  There is less chance of whiplash and head injuries if you just go limp and disjointed, flopping aimlessly with the jolts like a rag doll in the clothes dryer.

This place is familiar to me.  The sellers call in the streets, the sticky heat presses down like an electric blanket; the dusty breeze is reminiscent of salt air and chickens and frying plantain chips and humanity.  A fruit seller dressed in a lappa and lit up only by a single flame from roasting peanuts looks up to wave and smile a welcome.  Well Come, Massey Sheep (welcome, Mercyshippers), welcome home.

Our hostel is tile and concrete, reminiscent of my Indonesian childhood home.  It is beautiful here, with the mountains surrounding and a view of the ocean in the distance.  The evenings are peaceful and dark (at least until the electricity comes on again), and the cool of the trickling showers is briefly refreshing, a reprieve from the continual sweat and stickiness. We live a few minutes drive and a thousand friendly greetings away from the village we will be working in, Yams Farm Wharf.  Yams Farm is perched at the mouth of a river, with much of the livelihood gleaned from collecting wood and selling sand for construction gathered by boat from the river.  Our welcome is nothing short of wildly enthusiastic as we bounce in over the potholes - serious faces light up into broad grins from adults and children alike.  One little boy wearing only tattered overalls is jumping up and down outside his house, with both hands outstretched and opening and closing furiously in greeting.  We pull in just down the hill from the school as a roaring crowd of uniformed schoolchildren surround our poda-poda to beat on the sides and shake hands through the windows as they run alongside.  Well-come whiitaman (white man), well-come.  The chant grows louder and louder as we open the door to climb out.  I feel like an undeserving celebrity as I wade out into the crowd holding hands with twelve kids at once.

There is a school there already – a small one-room building for 270 children in 7 different grades.  On Sunday the building doubles as a church, with the school benches and desks as pews.  The décor reflects a bit of both, with a banner and lectern on the raised concrete podium and blackboards encircling the edges of the room.  The chickens attend both school and church on occasion, gleaning any bits of crumbs that have fallen from our lunch, or bugs they find in the dirt floor.  Out the window you can see our construction site less than 10 feet away.  Over the next few weeks we will be working on building another school so that the classes can spread out into both buildings as the numbers of children continue to grow.  Everywhere I look there is excitement and hope, reflected out of shining eyes and back into my own.  I am excited to see what God will do over the next two weeks!