Cape Coast

This weekend we took two tro-tros full of people (21 of us) to Cape Coast, which is west of Accra, with two castles that were built in the 15th century and occupied by various colonizers (Dutch, English, Portuguese) until the mid-1900s. Both castles were used primarily for slave trading; the Europeans bought slaves from the natives in exchange for goods, which usually included the guns that were instrumental in perpetuating intertribal warfare; warfare resulted in captives, captives were sold as slaves for more guns, and you get the idea. We toured the Elmina castle, and were quite depressed by the end. The most disturbing part was the chapel that was built directly above the ‘door of no return’ through which the slaves who survived the squalor of the castle would board ships bound for various destinations around the world and, well, not return. Great location for a church!

We were supposed to stay at a small hotel in the fishing village surrounding the castle, but there was a mix-up with the booking (mix-up?? in Ghana?!?!) so we were relegated to its partner hotel, the five-star resort called Coconut Grove just a mile down the beach, for the same rate. Two of us decided to walk the distance through town to the hotel rather than waiting for the tro-tro to show up (always a gamble), and had the delightful experience of being escorted by a growing horde of children who wanted to talk to the ‘obrunis’ (white people – sp?) about fishing (‘my father is a fisher and my mother is a fishmonger’), soccer (I have an appointment to watch Sylvester play for Ghana in 2014), the songs they sing in church, and then more about soccer. They were also very concerned for our safety, insisting that we were walking too close to the passing cars – delightful bunch.

Sunday morning we rallied the troops, all of them, and three hours later departed for the Kakum rainforest national park, where we walked amongst the treetops on a tightrope 70m above the ground (more like a suspension bridge, but it felt like a tightrope) and took a nature tour with a rather hefty guide named Doris who described to us the medicinal qualities of various trees. The only thing I remember is that Mahogany wood is nature’s Viagra. I remember this because Doris spent a good 15 minutes talking about it, sans euphemisms, and made it very clear that she was available after the tour if anybody needed some to take home. Her parting words were, ‘Doris likes tips.’ Subtlety, like prepositions, is often lost in translation...

~more pictures on Shutterfly~

Surgical Instrument Names That I Think Would Be Cool Names For WWF Moves Too:

1. Rib Stripper
2. Bone Cutter
3. Mandibular Plate Bender
4. Crushing Bowel Clamp
5. Double Skin Hook
6. Tongue Retractor
7. Nasal Gouge
8. Jameson Muscle Hook
9. Davis-Boyle Mouthgag Tongue Blade

10. Benson Nose-Digger (I made that one up myself, it's what I call the thing in the picture, I use it to pick Dorothy's nose sometimes.)

Hospitality

In an interesting Ghanaian cultural experience, we decided to go for a short hike this Saturday up a mountain about 45 minutes away. The mountains here are odd-looking, rising up suddenly from the flat planes without so much as a bump in the ground to call a foothill (you also can't see much from the top because of the seasonal Saharan dust cloud I've mentioned before - called the Harmattan). We were dropped off by the tro-tro by the side of the road and, ignoring the advice of the local loiterers, headed straight for the mountain without a guide or a clue as to where the alleged path was. Being American, Canadian (wannabe American), and British, we decided to make our own path by climbing straight up what turned out to be the sheerest slope of the mountain.

Halfway up, we turned to see two local men following us. Naturally, we sped up, suspicious of their motives (they probably want to rob us, yes, that's it) and not interested in being accosted on our pleasant weekend hike. We went around a ledge and didn't see them anymore, so we assumed they had given up and felt comfortable enough to sit down and have a drink. Much to our discontent, they came around the bend a few minutes later, huffing and puffing; interaction, we realized, was unavoidable.

It turned out that they had seen us going up the wrong side of the mountain and were concerned that we didn't know where the path was; they immediately set out to catch us and show us the correct path (only about 50 yards away from the route we took), but had trouble because we were going so fast - they had never seen anyone scale the mountain like that before. They didn't say it, but we could read it in their sweaty faces: 'Crazy Westerners.' They stayed with us to the summit, napped under a tree while we ate our lunch, and showed us the path all the way back down, leaving us near the road to flag down a crowded tro-tro back to Tema. I couldn't help but notice the ironic juxtaposition of our suspicions with their intentions...

Ghanaian hospitality is widely reknowned. We went to a church this Sunday and were invited by the pastor to stay several hours after the service to chat, and only left after promising to go on a hike with him and go to lunch at his wife's house (and drooling over his newborn twins - see picture...). Ghanaians are exceedingly proud of their country, and for the most part, go to great lengths to make foreigners feel welcomed. If you ask for directions around here, you will usually get a very helpful answer accompanied by a wide smile - even if the person has no clue where you are going, and has made up their answer on the spot. Some girls from the ship were in the market in Accra yesterday and described asking a group of three friendly people for directions, whereupon each person pointed a different way - none of them knew, but they were all more than happy to help out.

Crazy West Africans.

Pictures, and Three Cheers for Starbucks

I finally got some pictures uploaded, here's the link to Shutterfly.

In other news, after asking a fellow crewmember why the coffee here is so good (I'm not saying anything about all the other food, nope, my lips are sealed), I was told that Starbucks donates all of our coffee! So next time you spend $14 on a latte, kick that guilty feeling and give yourself a pat on the back for supporting the corporation that makes me a better worker and a happier person.

Paradise Mountain

After an exhausting first week of orientation and work (10 to 14 hours of sterilizing a day!!! Someone is getting me back for all those 5 and 6 hour days I worked this Fall… I knew that would come back to haunt me), I was quite refreshed by my first weekend adventure into the Ghanaian countryside.

I went with a group of 13 crewmembers to a place called Paradise Mountain near the village of Lake Fumme, about 3 hours from Tema (where the ship is). The transportation of choice for large groups here is the “tro-tro,” which refers to any vehicle carrying multiple people. To find the tro-tro, we took taxis to the tro-tro station (a dirt lot where the tro-tros congregate), where we were accosted by 30 or 40 yelling tro-tro drivers. One thing led to another (I use this phrase because I have no idea what happened), and we were herded onto a tro-tro. Three hours later, we took a right turn and arrived at Paradise Mountain.

Paradise Mountain is a collection of three large lodges with two friendly proprietors, one monkey, no electricity, bucket showers, and the biggest anthill I’ve ever seen (see picture - that's me on the right). We spent both days hiking a gorgeous canyon trail through a forest of various fruit trees and butterflies, taking enough digital pictures to irritate the most patient of guides (ours seemed to be fingering his machete a bit too fondly at times), and swimming in the waterfall pools – which we were assured are completely parasite-free. Stay tuned for more information.

The highlight of the weekend, however, was the Italian hippie family that we befriended, from a hippie commune in Tennessee. They serenaded us with Bob Marley, we talked about Jesus, they told us about hippies, and there was like so much love. They hiked with us on Sunday, and upon seeing a massive bamboo tree, the son Biko, who is on his way to study for six months with the drum masters of Mali, exclaimed: “That bamboo plant is HUGE! Oh my GODDESS!”

All in all, a fabulous weekend, totally worth the 300,000 Ghanaian cidis (about $30... yeah, scientific notation anyone?).

VVF, and happy birthday to ME.

The people here have made my birthday quite special, despite the fact that I hardly know their names… I walked out of my room at 6am and bumped my head on the balloons and markered signs that the night shift nurses had taped to my doorframe, then the OR wall was decorated too, and tonight we’re going out for fried chicken. The downside: One of the doctors here informed me that “I had already been a doctor for a year when I turned 24 – you haven’t even STARTED med school yet!” and then came back later to add, “I just remembered, I got married when I was 24 too!” Thanks doc. Now I feel both unaccomplished AND single.

The best part of my day, however, was watching a discharge ceremony for a few of the VVF patients. I have no idea what VVF stands for, but basically when women give birth they sometimes have a tear in the urethra lining that results in constant urine leakage, and it can only be fixed by surgery; some of these women have had this problem for many years. There is a huge demand for VVFs here and a visiting surgeon has been doing three of them a day (meaning I’m extremely familiar with some nasty-looking and uncomfortably-named instruments). The patients stay on the ship to recover for 7-10 days. At the discharge ceremony, they gave each of the departing patients a new dress, and they were singing praise songs and dancing and clapping to the beat of the drums that someone had brought.

We heard a testimony from a former VVF patient from Liberia last night who had been pregnant during the Liberian civil war, and went into labor during an attack on her village back in 2001. Her sister delivered the baby under a bush with bullets flying by, and yanked so hard that she broke the baby’s neck, damaging the mother so severely that she spent the next few years bleeding constantly, among other problems. Her family had fled and left her behind, a beggar and essentially an untouchable because of her condition. Thankfully, she eventually encountered someone who knew about Mercy Ships, and she came in for a free VVF surgery. She’s now healthy and immensely grateful to the crew and to God, and she sang us a song, and yeah, I crie, again...

(Some logistics: If anybody wants to call me we apparently have a U.S. phone number, so if you can’t bear to go another day without hearing my voice, just call 954-538-4258, but not too late at night, it’s 5 hours ahead here.)

Mortality?

I wrote this on Tuesday, but wasn't allowed to publish it because the family hadn't been contacted yet...

I’ve only been in West Africa for three days, yet my sterile understanding of life and death has already been somewhat soiled. Today at around 4pm, while I was drying operating instruments in the sterilization room of the onboard operating theatre, an announcement came on summoning the emergency medical team to a room on the ship. The announcement was made a few more times, important people rushed around while the rest of us prayed in groups, and an hour later we were informed that one of the security guards, an ex-military officer from Nepal who spoke more in smiles than in English and who was supposed to go home today, was dead. He had been diagnosed that morning with malaria, but the cause of his sudden death is unknown, possibly a heart attack; he had been found without a pulse.

It’s scary when a missionary dies. At devotionals just this morning, there was a reading about how “when two or more are gathered together in my Name, there will I be.” Well, there were about 300 of us gathered today to pray for this man, but it appears as though God missed the memo, like He did when Jim Elliot and his four compatriots were speared by the Alca Indians they were trying to reach in Ecuador (we just watched the movie last night). Or, perhaps, God knows more about these things than we do, what with having created the universe and all, and we should just let Him do His thing…

“'For your thoughts are not my thoughts, and neither are my ways your ways,' declares the Lord." -Isaiah 55:8

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” -Psalm 116:15

My First Surgery (awww)

My job as a Surgical Sterilizer includes setting up instrument trays for various surgeries, then scrubbing them up and cooking them afterwards. There’s a lot of inventory-taking, towel-drying, and blood, and the hours are quite long – from 8:30am until about 2 hours after the last surgery has finished, which can be quite late. The best part is that I’m right in the middle of the action – within the first three hours of work, the nurses invited me in to see a cleft lip/cleft palate surgery (!!), and I was captivated. I hadn’t realized just how much of an art surgery is – it seems so imprecise; there are no lines to cut along, and every body is so different in its proportions. I guess that’s why you have to be in like 37th grade before you can be a surgeon.

The patient was a woman in her 30’s who had lived her entire life with no upper lip – essentially her mouth and nose were one big cavity, making her an outcast. It only took a few hours for Dr. Parker to give her a new face, and it would probably change her life dramatically. I went into the recovery room afterwards to see the results, and she was just waking up. She was wide-eyed and terrified, but Dr. Parker had done an amazing job, and we told her she looked beautiful.

(Have I mentioned that I tear up at least 13 times a day here? I think I’m turning into a wuss…)

In other news, anyone who has ever seen me in the morning or in the humidity, and especially anyone who has seen me trying to mix one of those things with athletics, will be shocked to hear that I voluntarily woke up at 6am and went running in a humidity index of about 99% and strong stench of fishy diesel. Why the sudden freakish behavior? Well I hadn't actually been off the ship in over 48 hours, and I think that makes you do funny things...

Getting here...

I've never considered myself a terrorist, but then again, British Airways does have more experience with that sort of thing, so perhaps I should consider adjustments to my self-perception... I arrived at the London-Heathrow airport three and a half hours before my departure time yesterday, something I never do, yet I still managed to only just make the flight by running through the terminal with my rolly suitcase and being the last one through the gate.

Why?

Well, first I had to spend two hours at the ticket counter and $1,000 on a faux ticket to return to London on January 10, as proof that I would leave the country (fully refunded, and completely unnecessary as I found out upon arrival - although a life of international crime does sound fun, I don't think that would quite resonate with the mission statement of the Christian charity organization that I'm representing). I was then "randomly" selected for "special" security searching involving various acrobatic poses in an X-ray machine, spent half an hour trying to work the pay phone to figure out how to avoid said life of international crime (pay phones! they're complicated!), and by the time I made it to my gate the plane was ready to leave - but it couldn't until I had enlisted five other passengers to help stuff my oversized carry-on into the overhead bin (another 10-15 minutes) and narrowly avoided an altercation with a staunch Ghanaian who insisted that he was NOT sitting in my seat (he was).

Anyways... I made it, and I'm here on the ship in Tema, which is a port city about 30 minutes from Accra. I haven't really done much other than sleep as it's Sunday, but what I have seen has excited me for the weeks to come. The people are fascinating, from all over the world, and friendly - there is a definite sense of solidarity in a common faith and mission, and an attitude that everyone's gifts and services are valuable and needed, from the head surgeon to the newest housekeeper. I've befriended a fellow child of the Greek diaspora, Eleftheria from South Africa, on whom I'm determined to practice my Greek (HER parents taught HER Greek...). We went for a short jog/walk (emphasis on walk) around the port today and I got to explore a bit. The most notable thing about the port, aside from the other boats and mountains of crates, is the ubiquitous haze. They have a name for it that I can't remember, but apparently this time of year the sand from the Sahara desert floats into town and hangs around for a while, giving the impression of a lingering fog and covering everything in a film of dust. It also supposedly cools things down a bit, which is nice...

I'll finally start my job (I keep wanting to say 'sanitation' for some reason, but I'm really in the 'sterilization' department) bright and early tomorrow - can't wait to get to work!

Visiting the London Greeks

I'm in England right now on a brief visit to the London contingency of the Mihalakis (Greek) side of the family; it's a treat to be here as I only get to see them once every several years. As with every visit, I will leave for Ghana on Saturday much fatter (Uncle Nico owns a greek taverna, the Acropolis Diner in New Eltham) and richer (Greeks are like the inverse of Oliver Twist; the briefest encounter will leave you with money coming out of every pocket and orifice that you knew and didn't know you had) than when I arrived.

My Yiayia (grandma - in the picture) is here to visit for the month. She's all of 4'4", shrinking fast, and recovering well after a broken arm and botched surgery had her struggling through daily tasks for the past year or two. I've gotten to know her much better since learning to speak Greek, as her English vocabulary consists mostly of "take it", "eat it", "hungry", and "fat". However, I'm not sure I wasn't happier in my ignorance; I seem to be a source of great discontent for her due to my bachelorettehood, and she's quite adept at slipping the subject into every conversation, no matter the subject. My cousin Serena, 21 years old and an old maid like me, can commisserate; she bought Yiayia a sweater for Christmas, and upon opening it Yiayia exclaimed, "Thank you, I'll wear it to your wedding." I'm convinced that the best way to avoid further criticism is a well-timed exclamation of "Don't worry Yiayia, I'll get married as soon as I'm pregnant", but I've been advised against it out of concern for her health and longevity.

Happy Birthday to Melina! Now I think I'll go shopping with that £40 I found in my coat pocket this morning...