Thoughts from a Mercy Ship...

Epilogue

2007-06-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in the Houston airport, about to return to Connecticut after three days of condo-hunting. I am now officially the property of Baylor College of Medicine and will be starting med school in July. I will re-emerge in Spring, 2011 with more letters after my name (I never really liked the implications of ‘Eleni Benson, B.S.’) and much less money than I have now (farewell, mere poverty; hello, insurmountable debt).

It’s been three weeks since my departure from Monrovia. I’m completely unjetlagged, I’ve washed the Africa out of my clothes and I’ve taken my deworming pills (they’re not just for dogs!), but I still get a rush from jumping in the car to drive anywhere I want without telling anybody, or going for a run without turning around every 400 meters when I come to the end of a UN-guarded dock, and without expecting everyone I see to pull out a knife and ask for my ipod.

Stepping off the plane onto the Gatwick Airport tarmac in London felt like Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. The cool, lucid air gave me a light head after months of labored breathing in the 4390857849% humidity (maybe it was less the air itself, more my frantic lamaz-ish breathing to soak it all in). Once in the airport, I was dizzily overstimulated - the lights weren’t only on but they were bright, the stores took credit card, there were white people, lots of them, who didn’t work for NGOs or the UN, and all the people were just so… beautiful... I suddenly felt very lame in my missionarious formal attire – my best pink wife-beater, black sweatpant capris, and once-upon-a-time white socks and sneakers, stained red from too much soccer in the African dirt (missionarious is a term we coined to describe what missionaries wear). Contributing to my feeling of lameness was the fact that no one told me I was beautiful or asked to marry me, and not a single little child tried to touch my hair or hold my hand. Cue plummeting self-esteem.

My trip home involved some six plane flights, four countries, two weeks, and 387 relatives visited, giving me plenty of time to digest my experiences in Africa and providing a sort of buffer to my transition back to real life (or maybe less real – who’s to say). Here are my resulting thoughts, outlined illegibly in a notebook on the airplane tray table:

My time in Africa was an incredible sojourn into a world that I never knew existed. Africa is a world where organizations like Save The Children, World Food Program, World Vision, UNICEF and Samaritan’s Purse are no longer just different brands of sappy commercials with the requisite large-eyed skinny black kids, pleading for your support and probably prompting a quick channel change. In places like Liberia, these organizations are for many people the difference between life and death. I met a 16-year old girl at the Fatima Orphanage who would not be alive today had Save The Children not found her starving on the streets with her little brother – both her parents died, one in childbirth and one in the war - and placed them in the orphanage, where their food was mostly supplied by the World Food Program.

Africa is a world where spiritual affairs are acknowledged just as much as physical, and I think that this is something from which Western cultures, including the churches therein, are so far removed as to be unhealthily focused on the physical (i.e., materialism). Driving through the market one day, we were stuck in some traffic (probably waiting for cows to cross the street or something) and a man came to my window and said, “You are from the Mercy Ship. Your ship is good, it is physically and spiritually powerful. No demon can stand before your ship.”

If someone said that to me at home I’d probably sniff for the alcohol on their breath, but in Liberia, where the spiritual world is very much a part of everyday life, it was a profound thing to hear (I know it was profound because I got goosebumps). Animistic religions there call heavily on demonic powers, and there is much evidence for successful channeling of these forces, which manifests itself most horrifically in the sick brutality of war – mutilations, cannibalism, etc. On the other hand, the Christian church in Africa is generally very much aware of what it is up against, and calls heavily on the Holy Spirit and God’s angels to fight for and protect it. This is one thing that the African churches have right: It’s hard to fight a battle if you don’t know it’s going on, and I think that here in the sanitary, scientific West, Satan’s biggest victory must be in convincing us that he doesn’t actually exist. I think perhaps our churches could benefit from a slightly more African awareness of the world between what we can touch.*

War-torn Africa is a world where life is hard. Death often comes early and is difficult to evade without basic medical care. Tragedy is routine, and it’s difficult to find anyone in countries like Liberia who isn’t eligible for some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Physical labor has yet to be replaced by technology, so everything is done by hand, from scrubbing laundry on a rock in the river to transporting water into the capital by wheelbarrow. Jobs are scarce and require elaborate networks of connections, education is too expensive for most, and there is no infrastructure to support and rehabilitate the impoverished masses. Justice is just beginning to re-emerge from the ashes, but the jails are still full of innocent men who have never been on trial while crimes perpetrated on the streets go unreported and unpunished.

And yet, though hopelessness seems to prevail, a vibrant culture survives. Through the Monrovian streets wallowing in trash and sewage, elegant women glide with slow, stately steps that can only result from a lifetime of balancing their burdens on the tops of their heads. Though it may be the only outfit they have to their name, the vivid colors and intricate patterns of the lapas tied proudly around their waists are mesmerizing against the dark background of their graceful skin. Together, they are a beautiful collage of colorful grace that speaks hope into this broken place; and that is how I will remember Africa.

Thank you so very much to each and every one of you who supported me with your finances, emails, thoughts and prayers. I am incredibly blessed to have had such a network of friends and family standing behind me for this journey! My understanding of the world and of the scriptures has been challenged, and my faith has been strengthened. I hope that through this journal I may have also given you a glimpse into a world not your own, with all its tragedy and beauty.

God bless you!

*see Ephesians 6 for more, I probably shouldn't have tried to tackle that subject in a paragraph...

Life Aboard

2007-06-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

As the Anastasis is slated to begin its final sail for the ship graveyard within the next few weeks, I thought this would be an opportune time to describe life aboard, sort of a monument to a unique culture on the brink of extinction (tear).

The Anastasis is a world all its own. A young land-based missionary in Liberia, jealous of our amenities and comraderie, labeled it “floating Europe,” and proceeded to take every opportunity possible to come aboard and fraternize. Because the ship docks in countries with minimal infrastructure, it is almost completely self-contained, with everything the crewmembers need: A post office, health clinic, Starbucks-stocked coffee bar (woohoo), hair salon, bank, water purifying system, large kitchen and dining room, library, seamstress, and a state-of-the-art satellite system with (relatively) speedy internet and a U.S.-based telephone exchange. The ship is air-conditioned (usually), with running warm-water showers. It really is a rather cushy life, especially compared to what our land-based missionary friends endure. Poor things.

That said, it is an old ship. It has been in operation for over fifty years, first as an Italian cruise ship before its conversion a hospital ship. Things go wrong. The air conditioning breaks and we start to think the outside air is “refreshing”, cockroaches periodically triumph in battles with the housekeeping department, some of the toilets have seen their final flush and are completely out of service, and sometimes we’ll hear announcements like: “Anyone with a bucket, please report to C1 as soon as possible” (C1 is where I live; that was an actual announcement heard two nights before my departure when a pipe on the water tank broke off).

We also have to deal with the realities of whichever country we are in at the time. In Liberia, for example, water is scarce, so we were on water restrictions for a good portion of our time there: One-minute showers and one load of laundry every other week. As you might imagine, this leaves little room for vanity or personal hygiene: People smelled, and could be seen wearing the same outfits for days on end (or maybe that was just me). Liberia was also just coming out of a prolonged state of war, and was extremely dangerous, so we weren’t allowed out on our own. There was a strict 11:00pm curfew, which we struggled to make on several occasions, pulling up to the ship at 10:58 to the tune of Chariots of Fire (a throwback to high school – if Dad had any idea how fast I drove to make those curfews…).

I think that the culture of the Anastasis is most defined by the fact that it houses about 300 crewmembers from over 30 different countries, all living within 300 yards of each other. There are some nice big cabins reserved for important people and families in the upper decks, but most everybody else lives in tiny cabins with up to five other crewmembers. “Intimacy” takes on a whole new meaning: Nothing is sacred, not even your digestive habits, as there are only a few restricted toilets on the ship that aren’t reserved for “liquids only”. You have to sign out with a destination every time you leave the ship, so there’s really nowhere to hide (favorite pastime: Studying the signout sheet to see where everyone is, and with whom). When you get a phone call, an announcement over the PA tells you to dial 151 and the people around you cheer, then later they all ask you who it was. Budding romantic relationships are impossible to keep private (this not from personal experience, unfortunately), which I imagine can be frustrating, but it’s also a good thing in that it forces partakers of such romantic ventures to be deliberate and honest in their intentions – 300 other people holding you accountable has that effect.

Mercy Ships is a volunteer charity (as you all know from that time I begged you for money) and as such, there are things to deal with that other hospitals and NGOs don’t face. There is an incredibly quick turnover of staff, so there is a constant need to train newcomers and adapt to the way new people do things. We also have to conserve everything, as supplies aren’t readily available in the West African countries that we serve – if I had a nickel for every time I washed and re-sterilized equipment with a prominent “do not resterilize” label, I could pay for a year of Medical School. Unfortunately, the kitchen is forced to reuse everything as well, i.e. food, and we’ll often see the same meat four or five days in a row in various casseroles, quiches and stews. I do applaud the chef’s ingenuity; it often took me all the way until the end of a meal to realize we had just eaten a different version of the previous three days’ leftovers.

With so many very different people working hard together in such tight quarters, there is a sizeable potential for conflict. While there were little tiffs and dramas that broke out, however, I was shocked by just how little drama there is, largely as a result of the shared Christian faith uniting the crew members. There is a common spirit of grace and forgiveness that takes into account one others’ imperfections, allowing for bad days and bad attitudes and providing supportive encouragement. There is no better way to end a fight with someone - while maintaining and even strengthening your relationship - than to ask forgiveness and pray together for humility (and yes, that is from personal experience).

Living in this Christian community was an incredible experience, and with all the different cultures present, I honestly think it may have been a sort of microcosm of heaven (except in heaven the rooms are bigger). Surgeons are friendly and humble, they thank you for scrubbing blood off the instruments they use, and actually care about your answer when they ask how you’re doing. People do things like fold your laundry, clear your plate after a meal, and send encouraging notes (with cookies!) if they think you’re having a bad day. I often found myself wondering why my friends were being so nice.

Life on the Anastasis is difficult to put into words. It isn’t perfect by any means, and it tries one’s patience to no end, but living there has taught me many things about tolerance, grace, and friendship – and I already miss it dearly.

*Final batch of pictures: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbNWTNo0cN2E_

Goodbye-O!

2007-05-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

(that’s Liberian for goodbye)

Five months have somehow passed me by, and my (embarrassingly huge) bags are all packed to leave Liberia in less than an hour! I’ll be stopping in Greece, Scotland and London on the way home to visit friends and relatives (and to make sure the Greek islands are still there – you never know), and I will be back in Connecticut on May 30, at which time I’ll tidy up this blog and post some more pictures. I’ve come to love it here and will miss it dearly, but I won’t pretend I’m not looking forward to a chicken ceasar salad and fresh milk, and seeing everyone at home, especially Homer (I find I miss Homer more than anyone else –sorry Mom – I think it’s because he’s hard to talk to on the phone, or communicate with via email; it’s hard to type without opposable thumbs).

Goodbye-o Mercy Ships! Over and out :)

Ch-ch-cha-anges

2007-05-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

(That title is meant to be sung, so if you don’t know the tune to which I refer, then just…well…I dunno, ignore it or something, and get yourself some culture for goodness’ sake)

This is a very exciting time to be on the Mercy Ship. The ship on which I am currently working, the Anastasis, has been in service since 1979. It is a classy ship – every time I walk onto the dock and its elegant white hull comes into view, I can’t help thinking how beautiful it is, in both its design and in its function – but it has served its purpose, and is slated to sail next month for some Asian ship graveyard where it will be scrapped.

A newer, bigger ship – called the Africa Mercy – has been in the process of conversion from a rail ferry to a floating hospital for quite a long time now, having been delayed in its departure from English shipyards by about seven years for various logistical and technical reasons. The waiting time has been an emotional and spiritual trial for many people involved, turning plans upside down for entire families and necessitating superhuman patience and flexibility. Finally, to the tune of a collective sigh of relief, the ship set sail for Liberia last week, and will be here by the end of the month.

The final surgeries on the Anastasis took place last Wednesday, and it was a privilege to be a part of the historical day. I did my traditional annoy-the-surgeon routine and poked in to watch Dr. Parker perform the last of 25 years of surgeries on this ship, a routine cleft lip repair. We now have a little over a month to pack up the ship and prepare to move everything across the dock to where the Africa Mercy will berth when it arrives (two weeks after I leave – bummer).

The day after surgeries ended, Thursday, we had a mass screening day in order to fill up the surgery schedule for the Africa Mercy, once its operating rooms are up and running. Screenings are usually done at the beginning of an outreach when we first arrive in a country, but we didn’t know until after the outreach started that we would be allowed to hold one in Liberia – for the past two Liberian outreaches we weren’t allowed to because of the security risk involved when large groups of people gather in unstable countries (I used to think that was silly, but after being here it makes perfect sense; fights break out over less than nothing).

The screening was held at a large stadium in the middle of Monrovia, and information was disseminated through posters, radio and word of mouth. A few nurses went at around midnight the night before to start turning people away whom we definitely couldn’t do anything for; most of the people slept at the stadium anyways, as it’s too dangerous in Monrovia to travel in the middle of the night. When the rest of the crew arrived in the morning, the line was long but manageable: A disturbing array of massive tumors, shrivelled limbs, facial deformities, bullet wounds, and disfiguring burn injuries, often endured for years in quiet desperation. Many of these people have spent a good deal of their life hidden from view in shame and embarrassment, only brought out of hiding into a brave position of public vulnerability by the hope of being freely restored to normality.

Patients were pre-screened at the entrance to the stadium, and only sent inside if there was a good chance that we could help them. They snaked through an assembly line of nurses taking histories, surgeons examining their various ailments, and lab tests to determine fitness for surgery. If they were lucky, they received an appointment card at the end, with a date for them to come to the ship for a surgery. The final station was a prayer station, where they could receive prayer whether or not they had an appointment, if they so chose.

My job was to usher people from the prayer station to the exit. Many of them had either come to the stadium the night before or very early in the morning, and were exhausted, so that the completion of the long-awaited process released a flood of emotion. Those with appointment cards clutched them jealously, reciting to me the date on which they would return, at times crying tears of relief. Of those whom we were unable to help, some were frustrated, many seemed too tired and resigned to be upset, and still others were somehow incredibly grateful despite their situations, praising God and joyfully thanking us for even trying.

No matter their state, each person who walked with me through the stadium had been wounded more deeply than I can understand by forces beyond their control, either from the war or from the rampant poverty and lack of healthcare resulting from the war. To listen to their stories of endurance and suffering was intensely saddening to be sure, but also in a way inspiring: The human spirit can endure far more than we give it credit for, I believe, and if these people can find joy and resilience after all they have been through – some at the hope of pending relief, but others for seemingly no reason at all – then perhaps our concept and expectation of joy is quite a bit smaller than it should be.

More pictures and an official article (what, mine isn’t good enough for you?) can be found on the Mercy Ships website.

A Taste of West Africa...

2007-04-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

...in five true short stories:

Hospitality: One evening, a few of us girls were trying to go out for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant on the other side of Monrovia. We happened to be leaving at the same time as one of our OR translators, Vicky, so she flagged down a cab for us all to share and haggled with the driver for a decent price. When she asked us how we were getting home, we told her we would just take another taxi. Concerned, she said to wait for her outside the restaurant after we were done; she showed up right on time in another taxi, came with us all the way back to the ship (about 20 minutes), and then finally took another taxi home for the night. It made me think – my thoughts went something like, ‘oh how nice of her; I would NEVER even THINK of doing that. Is that bad?’

To the point: Conversations with Liberians are notably bereft of euphemisms. If I miss a free kick in a soccer game, the fans say, ‘You play bad. Why?’ If it’s someone’s birthday soon, they say, ‘It is my birthday. What are you going to give me?’ If I have a zit on my cheek, they say, ‘Your skin is bad!’ And if I gain a few pounds (ok maybe more than a few), my soccer captain tells me, ‘You look two-month pregnant. With triplets.’

African Time: Last Sunday, I was supposed to meet up with one of my Liberian teammates at 2pm at the gate to main road to go see her house. My friend Kristen who works on one of our construction teams was supposed to meet a hired worker at the gate so that she could teach him how to read English, also at 2pm. And another crewmember, Renee from Guinea, was waiting for a friend that he had met who wanted to come tour the ship – also at 2pm. The three Mercy Shippers arrived at the gate promptly at 2. By 2:30, Kristen and I assumed our friends weren’t coming, so we went back to the ship, but Renee, being West African himself, stayed to wait longer.

At 4pm, I saw Renee arrive at the gangway with his visitor. We later discovered that Kristen’s visitor had actually come, but at 8 that morning. My teammate just plain old never showed up. None of us was particularly bothered, or surprised; this, my friends, is African time.

Friends: It’s very easy to make friends here. When you meet a Liberian, they will shake your hand with a finger snap at the end (hard to describe – ask me to show you when I get home), ask for your name, tell you their own name, then tell you that ‘You are my friend’ (often followed by a marriage proposal or a request for contact information). This Sunday, I went to a local church that I had never been to before, the Jamaica Road Evangelical Fellowship. I sat next to a little old lady bursting with energy, who led a church-wide dance party during the praise and worship; at the end of the service, she handed me a piece of paper with her name and address. A few minutes later, a man with a tailor shop told me that I should come by next week so that he could make me a dress. And on my way out, another woman asked me if I am married (no) or if I have a fiancé (no), because ‘I like you for my son.’ All in a day’s church service…

Remembery: I’m often amazed at how well - and for how long – the people here remember the things that we tell them. I think it may be a consequence of simplified lives, minus the over-stimulation to which we technologified people tend to expose ourselves.

One example: All the UN soldiers wear these distinctive powder blue baseball caps that I’ve been coveting since I got here. Five weeks ago, I had a sudden flash of inspiration while walking by the Ghanaian UN soldiers who guard our gate, and asked if there was any way I might be able to get my hands on one of these hats. One of the guards, Seidu, told me that he would try to get me one next time they were being issued, and asked for my name so that he could bring it to me. I gave him my name while thinking ‘yeah right, great talk, seeya again never!’ and 30 seconds later had moved onto more important thoughts (probably something along the lines of, ‘mmm, fried plantains taste gooood…I wonder how they would taste with ice cream…mmm, ice cream tastes gooood…).

Two days ago (five weeks later!!!), I was paged to the gangway – and imagine my surprise when there was Seidu, immensely proud of himself, holding a brand sparkly new powder blue hat in a bag with my name on it!

Suffer the Little Children...

2007-04-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

The children of Liberia have suffered dramatically for the atrocities of preceding generations. Unknown numbers of children were orphaned, abandoned or separated from parents or relatives during the war. The lucky ones lived, and now the orphanages are overflowing.

Bowie Buverud is a crazy Norwegian welder/biker/bus driver with wild curls and a braided beard who has led efforts with other crewmembers to sort of adopt the Fatima orphanage, located just outside Monrovia on a beautifully fertile plot of land. The orphanage is run by an elderly woman named Mother Young, who rules 180 children with an iron fist (it’s incredible, really – she raises her hand and the place goes from deafening to deathly silent). Like the rest of Liberia, Fatima is a place that reeks of sorrow mixed with hope. Although many of the children are true orphans – often either from the war or from AIDS - a good number of them were simply abandoned by parents incapable of feeding them. We’ve been visiting the orphanage on Saturdays to spend time with the children, and a girl named Signa who was here last year went home to Norway and raised enough money to start building a dining hall and latrine; an agriculture project has also been started, so that eventually they will be able to grow some of their own food.

Mother Young is an amazing woman who has devoted her life to loving and caring for these children, but she simply has had no resources to work with and as a result the conditions in the orphanage are horrendous. 40 boys sleep in one room the size of my senior year bedroom at Yale, three or four to a musty, urine-soaked mattress. Keeping the children fed is an endeavour of faith, and although they receive some food from an NGO, the delivery is sporadic and they never know if there will be enough for the next day. Many of the children have obvious health issues – skin diseases, umbilical hernias, crossed eyes, and facial disfigurements. One of them, Jimmy, came to the ship last week for a hernia surgery, but he is the exception, and most of them will go untreated.

Most Liberian orphanages face the same difficulties as Fatima, and to compound their problems, the government and some international agencies are now attempting to implement stricter regulations for orphanages. This means that many of them are in danger of being shut down (‘shut down’ means they can’t receive food shipments or any other form of help from NGOs or the government) because of poor conditions and the high proportion of children who have living parents or relatives who theoretically should be able to take care of them. This might make sense in a completely detached hypothetical way, but in reality the relatives – if they can be found - have no interest in acquiring another mouth to feed, and the poor conditions are impossible to overcome without adequate funding (rock and hard place?).

To hold the children after hearing these things and seeing how they live is to invite emotions that will change you forever. They have nothing in the world save the ratty, wreaking clothes on their slim backs, and maybe a pair of flip-flops (often broken). Mother Young and her panel of fellow matriarchs (all dressed in white and named Elizabeth) do love the children indeed – but the women are getting old, and there are just too many children. Not surprisingly, the kids are starved more for affection than they are for food. As we drive up in the Mercy Ships Land Rover, village children start running beside the car and word of our arrival reaches the orphanage before we do. They start chanting Bowie’s name – BO-WIE! AH-AH-WEE! – and crowd around the car, a sea of white teeth and wide eyes. Searching hands reach out for ours, they stroke our skin and pet my hair, fingering the Greek Orthodox cross around my neck, hungry for loving touch.

Sometimes we’ll play games with them, like soccer (or a variation thereof, i.e., kick the ball and chase it, try not to trip over kids or bushes) or Miss Mary Mack, if I can remember the words (you know you’re old when you’ve forgotten the words to Miss Mary Mack). One time Lucy and I learned how to cook pepper soup from some of the older girls (I’m SO good at pounding hot peppers with a stick, you have no idea), and last Saturday the children took us down to their ‘creek’ where they all wiggled out of their clothes as if they had caught fire and dove in before we knew what was happening.

Most of the time though, I’ll just sit, holding them on my lap and simply being with them, which I think is what they crave the most. When it’s time for us to leave, they get a little quiet and their faces fall, and as we drive away I always feel as though a piece of my heart has broken off and been left behind.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" - Mark 10:14

Note: In response to the dire situation of many orphanages in this country, some ex-Mercy Shippers have actually moved to Liberia and started a group called Orphan Relief and Rescue (http://www.sharingonline.org/orphan-relief/); although there are only five of them, they’re doing what they can to help – take a look!

Bong Mines (and more pictures)

2007-04-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

There aren’t very many options for weekend outings here in Liberia, so we have to get a little creative. One of the most popular Saturday trips amongst the Mercy Shippers is the train trip up to the Bong Mines.

The Bong Mines are up country about a 3 hour drive, or 2 hour train ride. The area used to be home to iron mines and a massive electrical plant that supplied all of Monrovia and the surrounding towns, until about 17 years ago when it was attacked at the beginning of the war. They (either the rebel forces or Taylor’s people, can’t remember) wouldn’t allow the operators to put it on bypass, so all the machinery promptly broke and nothing has functioned since.

The train from Monrovia to the Mines, however, is back in operation, making the trip once a day and carrying some small cargo. The last time the ship was here, some of the crewmembers got to know the guys who operate the train, and started a new fad of taking Land Rovers on the flatbed cars up to the Mines. So, last Saturday, I joined a group of 20 or so other crewmembers in an early morning trip to the train tracks, where we drove the Land Rovers onto the train, climbed up on the roofs, and settled in to watch the country go by.

The Liberian countryside is a lush green jungle dotted by typical Africa villages – a few huts in a clearing, connected by footpaths. Most of the people we saw waved as we rode by, after an initial look of confusion to see a bunch of white people on top of cars, on top of a train; the children usually shrieked and ran towards us, arms flailing wildy. We were also waved at by some women taking their bucket showers outside, and a gentleman in the middle of doing his business by the side of the tracks – people are very comfortable with their bodies around here. There was a noticeable lack of wildlife in the jungle, which I was told is attributable to the prolonged war – not because ‘all the animals left during the war’ as one girl put it (I can just see them, a long solemn line of animals refugees fleeing the violence), but more likely because they were eaten during the widespread food shortages.

Bong Mines itself is an eerie place. The colossal skeleton of the power plant sits in a vast valley, stripped bare of everything but its steel frames. The mines have filled in with water, making two or three crystal clear lakes. It was next to one of these lakes that we parked the Land Rovers, unloaded our picnic lunch and set up a tent to shield us from the sun. The whole area seemed dead; the air was still and heavy, and there was nothing alive in the water except for some gray mossy plant-type stuff (I’m sure that was alive – it even tried to eat me a few times, and I only narrowly escaped with my life.) We also found it much harder to swim there than in a normal lake, though I’m still trying to figure out the physics of that (any ideas?).

Despite the unnatural aura of the place, it did have a striking beauty, and we had a lovely time. I spent most of the day in the water, floating around on noodles taken from the ship’s pool and jumping into the water from the surrounding cliffs (ok everyone else jumped, I mostly just floated). On the way home my friend Kristen and I further confused the locals, as if they weren’t already confused enough by the whole white people/Land Rover/train thing, by playing the ipod game most of the way back, which consists of sharing headphones and finding songs you know the word to so you can shout them at the top of your lungs.

All in all, the trip was a great way to explore some of the countryside, understand better why exactly there is no electricity around here (and won’t be for a while), and enjoy some ironic beauty in the midst of Liberia’s ruins.

Shutterfly pictures - third batch

Update from the Chop Shop

2007-04-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Some notable excerpts from the surgical schedule for this week (Chop Shop = the operating rooms, according to one dry-humored nurse from New Zealand). Don’t read while eating, and don’t try this at home:

Naval hernia repair – 17 year old male. There are a ton of kids running around with belly buttons that protrude out almost like a banana, some as big as 3 or 4 inches. It’s a result of weakness in the abdominal wall where the umbilical cord used to be so that the intestines kind of hang out, and it usually disappears in children by around 3 years old (from what I can gather online), but it may require surgical repair if it doesn’t fix itself naturally (I’ve been told that it’s exacerbated by incorrect cutting of the umbilical cord, hence the high incidence of it around here, but I haven’t been able to confirm that). Of course, surgical repair is rare in West Africa, so there are a whole lot of belly buttons around that give new meaning to the term ‘outty’, and Mercy Ships takes some of the worst cases to fix.

Removal of bullet from leg – 41 year old male. Pretty self-explanatory. Gun shoots bullet, bullet hits leg and stays there…

Creation of anus – 1.5 week-old infant. Yeah, ouch. Apparently some babies are born without an anus, a condition called imperforate anus, and if they’re lucky, there’s a pediatric surgeon around who can make one for them. If they’re not lucky, they can live for a little while but not too long, and they have other problems during their short lives that I won’t get into. This tiny baby was certainly lucky, as an American pediatric surgeon was in the country at the time, and we happened to have a child anaesthesiologist on board to make the operation possible. Oh, and the baby’s name: Surprise!

Release of ankylosis on right mandible with temporalis muscle flap – 24 year old women. This woman had a disease called Noma when she was 4 year old, which when it goes untreated basically eats at your body, usually your face. The right side of her face was kind of caved in, and her jaw was fused shut by the Noma; she’s been eating through a hole created by several knocked out teeth. The surgeons removed part of the mangled jaw and then used a muscle flap from the top of her head and a piece of bone from the side of her eye to recreate her right cheek, filling out her face and allowing her to move her jaw again – for the first time in 20 years!

Note: I’m trying to describe these conditions as accurately as possible, but strangely enough there’s very little information about, for example, how long a baby with imperforate anus can live without surgery – these sorts of things going unattended in a first-world country is so absurd that the survival rate without treatment isn’t even an issue worth mentioning…

How to Start a Business in Liberia

2007-04-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Gas Station: Fill some jugs with gasoline. Buy a funnel. Sit by the side of the road.

Car Wash: Find a river near the road. Make a sign that says ‘Car Wash’. Buy a sponge; soap is optional.

Barber Shop: Buy a razor and find a chair. Set up shop near all the other people with razors and chairs.

Music Store: Obtain a wheelbarrow, a stereo with a speaker (the ones that look like megaphones), and some tapes. Tapes may be used or bootleg. Pile them in the wheelbarrow, tie the speaker to the wheelbarrow, and play tapes really loud while walking around Monrovia.

Super Sterilizer AWAYYYY!!!

2007-04-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

My Sierra Leoneon supervisor Dorothy is on vacation, so I’m the new head sterilizer. I’ve started calling myself the Super Sterilizer and humming superhero theme songs whenever I enter the operating rooms. This behaviour is a direct result of the fact that I spent five days in a row last week either on the ship or on the 400-yard stretch of dock in front of it, and only encountered direct sunlight once on Wednesday when I took out the trash, and then again Friday night when I finished work a few minutes before sundown. Point being, I didn’t have much to write about except for skin meshers and dermatomes, so I stole someone else’s story for the week.

Chris is a Canadian (almost American, but not quite…here I digress) who recently started working in medical supply and is planning on going to med school. As far as I can tell, he spends most of his time playing hide-and-seek with his poor boss, and can usually be found hanging around the OR, entertaining us in the sterilizing room or peeking in the operating rooms to see what’s going on. He had Thursday off and went out to work with our land-based Eye Clinic; he came rushing into the OR upon his return to the ship to tell us of his adventures.

Characteristically, he had wondered off from the Eye Clinic to the nearby Redemption Hospital and asked if he could see their OR. Seeing his Mercy Ships scrubs, they brought him right in without further questioning and let him watch three Caesarean Sections. The first delivery was the fourth child of a woman whose previous three babies had died; this was her first living child, and even better in a culture like this where the male offspring of a woman is a reflection of her value, it was a son.

The second operation was on a woman who had already had 17 children, with 10 of them still alive. The doctors decided during the surgery that they were going to tie her fallopian tubes to prevent any further pregnancies; when Chris asked if they had asked her permission, they informed him that ‘No. But it is good.’ Chris then asked if he could take a picture with the surgeon after the operation, and the agreeable surgeon said that of course he could take a picture, and in fact he could take it right away. So everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to smile in the middle of the operation, the surgeon still holding the poor woman’s ill-fated tubes.

Medical ethics, oh my...

Pro Anchor Women's Football Club

2007-03-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

Say hello to the newest female professional soccer player in Liberia. Yes, that’s me. I had my first game Sunday, against a village/town called Paynesville on the other side of Monrovia (it was a friendly match - the season starts ‘soon’, but I have yet to pin down what exactly that means). Allow me to elaborate, in yet another entry concerning the beautiful game:

There’s a field near the entrance to the port where we saw some women with soccer balls the first week we were here. Intrigued, we introduced ourselves, and they invited us to come play with them on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Having no idea who they were, we showed up the next Tuesday. It turns out that there’s actually a professional women’s league here, and this is one of the teams. It’s financed by the port, hence the name Pro Anchor. After the first practice I filled out a form and they took a picture, and now I’m on the team.

Last Sunday I was told to be on the side of the road at 2pm, and lo and behold, a taxi drove up at 2:15. I was shuttled inside with my friend Lucy, whom I took along as my manager (i.e. water-bottle holder and fellow stare-attracter; she also provided a good deal of entertainment for the fans as the main topic of discussion on the sidelines was whether or not her curly hair was real). We were taken to a schoolhouse somewhere downtown where the rest of the team trickled in, and they handed out uniforms (long-sleeved, in 1239847 degrees, no big deal) and cleaned my cleats for me (the purpose of this was unclear) as we waited for the bus. The bus arrived; a rusty hippie van that comfortably seats maybe 12 people, 14 uncomfortably. We counted 27 passengers when we left, and picked up three more on the way. Two were hanging out the door. I would have felt unsafe except that I was wedged so tightly amongst my teammates and various coaches (I think there are 9 of them) that we could have driven into a concrete wall and I wouldn’t have budged.

We finally arrived in Paynesville at 4:30, for a 4:00 game. We parked in the middle of a village and were escorted by the villagers another half-mile through huts, other soccer games and banana fields to find the field: A rolling sand dune enclosed by weeds. The penalty areas and stick goals were on the weedy bit, so they were a few feet higher than the rest of the field, making life difficult for the goalies. There weren’t any lines, but there were very enthusiastic linesmen with branches that they waved when they thought the ball might be out of the bounds, usually after someone got tangled in the brush or body-slammed a spectator - of which there were plenty, as the entire village had turned out for the game. They crowded the sidelines, including behind the goals where they were frequently hit by shots gone askew. There was a contingency of children who gathered on one corner of the field and scattered every time the play approached their perch, only to return when the coast was again clear. The fans participated fully in the pre-game and halftime talks, crowding the huddle and listening solemnly to the coaches’ admonitions, and shaking the hands of their favourite players.

Surprisingly, no one twisted or broke anything, and the play was quite competitive despite the conditions. I was very well taken care of; the coaches made sure no one tried to marry or buy Lucy and me, as per the usual offers, and when I was pushed by an opposing player she received multiple threats from my enraged teammates (‘You kick her, I kick you! You kick her, I kick you!’ – I tried to convince them that I really wasn’t upset). The final score was 3-0, Pro Anchor victorious, and the white girl (me) scored one goal and had an assist (thank you, bumpy unpredictable ground in front of the goal), enough to garner her a following of at least 849375 scantily clad child fans wanting to shake hands and tell her their name. This made it difficult for her to manoeuvre her way through the throngs and into the car of the club’s President, but she made it eventually and he very kindly escorted her and Lucy all the way back to the port.

Oh, the glorious randomness of it all…

Daily Miracles

2007-03-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Last week was our first week of surgeries here in Liberia (finally!) and it’s been amazing! Some highlights:

We’ve started eye surgeries again, which had stopped by the time I joined the Ghana outreach so they’re new for me. They make us very busy in the Sterilizing Room, but they’re fun to watch. We do mostly cataract removals, which are just a short 20-30 minute operation, allowing us to see 8-10 or more patients per day. There’s nothing quite like watching someone walk into the OR completely blind, being led by both hands, and walk out less than an hour later with an eye patch indicating that they’ll be able to see again later that day. I got to watch one of the surgeries, and the patient was squirming a bit (as would I, if I had never seen a hospital before and all of a sudden I was strapped to an operating table with someone stabbing me in the eye) so I held her hand throughout. When Dr. Glen finished removing the cataract in one eye and inserting a prosthetic lens, she could already see his two fingers held in front of her – the first thing she had seen in years. She left praising God for her sight.

Many of our current patients are from up north in a region called Maryland. These patients were actually flown in on a Red Cross plane because transportation is either too difficult, too expensive or both. My own ‘adopted’ patient is named Esther, a shy teenager from Maryland with a large tumor that has been growing on her right eye for 3 years, claiming her sight just two months ago. She had surgery to remove the tumor and insert a prosthetic eye, not restoring her sight but giving her a normal face again at that oh-so-painful age of 16 – I would imagine the problems of adolescence transcend most cultural barriers, and my heart goes out to her for having had to deal with disfiguration in addition to rampant hormonal mood swings.

And now for the tearjerker: One of the patients onboard is an older man from Monrovia who was separated from his daughter 18 years ago due to the war when she was forced to flee outside the city. They had no contact during that time, so he didn’t know that she had married and given birth to several grandchildren. She recently was able to return t Monrovia, and found a cousin who had heard that the father was coming to the Anastasis for a surgery. She came to the port to find him, and the nurses working on the ship’s ward were privileged to witness their reunion here – after 18 years!

I feel so blessed to be here and to be a part of writing these stories, and I want to thank you all for being a part of it too. It’s amazing to think that behind every one of the 300 people working on this ship is a network of families, churches and friends supporting them with their encouragement, prayers and finances. It wouldn’t be possible without you!

The No Mercy Team

2007-03-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

Our dock here in Freeport is guarded by two UN units, one from Nepal and one from Bangladesh. They’re thrilled to have us here, and since the second day we were here they’ve been coming over to ask if we can come out and play, kinda like when we were 10 years old and would go over to the Bansals’ house next door to see if anyone wanted to build a snowman. A friend was recently telling me how intimidated she was by the armoured UN tanks that can be seen patrolling the area, until one drove by with guards yelling back at her to come over later for volleyball. Tonight we asked them if we could use their field for ultimate frisbee, but they don't know how to play, so they asked to borrow the frisbee for the night and practice so we can all play tomorrow.

The Bangladeshis plays volleyball mostly, but the Nepalese have a space big enough for a soccer field, so we’ve been going over once or twice a week to play them with some yellow uniforms that someone bought a few years ago for the ship (we're the No Mercy Team). It’s a pretty big deal. They’ve tried to fix up the ‘field’ by filling in the potholes and putting up fencing, and once when we didn’t have a ball I was escorted in a speeding UN vehicle on a mission back to the ship to get it. Spectators from both sides line the field and cheer, and news of the score circulates the ship in minutes. There’s even an impartial Liberian referee who I think may actually have a whistle implanted in his throat – it’s difficult to tell if he can breathe without blowing it, and he certainly can’t talk without whistled punctuation on every word.

I sometimes feel like I’m at summer camp, until something happens - like my ball goes out of bounds and gets popped on the massive coils of barbed wire surrounding the complex, or I fall lightly but get up looking as if I’ve been in a fight with a cheese grater because the field is covered with rocks – to remind me that nope, I’m still in Liberia.

Are You The Mercy Ship?

2007-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

Wherever we go here in Monrovia, and to a lesser degree when we were in Ghana, people shout “Mercy Ship!” or ask us “are you the Mercy Ship?” (yes, as a matter of fact, I am the Mercy Ship, the whole thing, I’m a large white boat). Even though there are other white folk around here, apparently most of them don’t regularly go walking in the heat and squalor to explore the markets and sample random foods on the side of the road (strange). Often people are just being friendly and welcoming us, but there are also a LOT of people who need medical care, and want to describe their problem to us in the hopes that we can help them (despite the fact that there are only about five or six actual doctors aboard out of 300 crewmembers). On any given day, we’ll have three or four people describe to us their malady on the sidewalk; one man pulled up his pant leg to show us a bullet lodged in his shin, a woman needed glasses, someone else wanted medication for their sick mother. Almost every crewmember has one or two interesting stories, many of them involving public disrobing to reveal the affected body part, whatever that might be.

Sadly, there is nothing we can do for most of these people because of the limited range of surgeries that we offer and because there are just so many people in need. It’s the most difficult thing in the world to tell someone who is clearly suffering that all we can give them is our prayers, and I thank God for my own health every time I encounter such a case. However, when it’s a problem that we can solve, like a tumour or cataracts or a sore tooth, then we’ll tell them to listen to the radio for the time and place that we will be doing a major screening in early May (the surgery schedule has been booked in advance until then), or give them information about the land-based dental and eye clinics. And when it is the case that yes, there might be something we can do for them – even if it’s a small ‘might’ – then their eyes light up with hope, and the elated Mercy Ships (that’s us) sail home on the clouds :)

Afterthought: Last night we met the head of security from the hotel we ate dinner at, and he was thrilled to learn that we were from Mercy Ships because he has eye problems that he desperately needs fixed (cataracts, I think). He neglected to acknowledge the irony of the fact that he was in fact driving us home in the dark at the time of this conversation...

Patient Stories

2007-03-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

Some of you have been asking more about what goes on here - this website was made by a photojournalist who spent some time on the ship, it's worth some time to read through the stories...

Life in a Five-Star Resort Hotel

2007-03-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Monrovia is built on the coast, at the mouth of some wetlands (euphemism for a swamp, did someone say malaria?). One can see how it must have been a breathtakingly beautiful setting at one time (it’s still breathtaking, but now it’s more just because you don’t want to breathe in), and I think I would have decided to build a city here too, if I were into that sort of thing. There is a small raised bit of land protruding out into the ocean, which some say is the highest point in Liberia but I think that’s a lie because it really is more of a bump than a hill, never mind a ‘peak’; but anyway, this slightly elevated real estate was at one time home to a beautiful seven-story five-star resort hotel, overlooking the city on one side and the ocean on the other. Sometime in the early 1990s, the hotel was taken over by Charles Taylor’s people, beginning a steady decline during the war years into its current eerie dilapidation.

Approaching the hotel (barely breathing hard, it’s really not that high), the first thing one sees is the swimming pool, empty but for some garbage in the deep end. The pool deck has been swept clean by the same women who are scrubbing their laundry and laying it out to dry, a few of the hundreds of displaced Liberians who have taken up residency in the empty rooms. We were met by a hoard of children in a random assortment of used clothing (Bugs Bunny t-shirts, Charlotte Hornets jerseys, etc.) who took us inside to see their ‘school’: three blackboards (one with drawings and words to match – ‘cup’, ‘chair’, and ‘mortar’ - !) and a few benches built by one of the Mercy Ships crewmembers during the last outreach, in the stripped ballrooms whose floors still smack of marbled decadence. Everything of value in the hotel has been absconded with long ago, so all that remains are clues to its former elegance – spiral staircases, balconies overlooking the palm-lined beach, elevator shafts and the lifeless entrails of electric circuits – and the effect is quite spooky.

Walking up the stairs while descending into darkness, a little girl named Blessed and her brother Franklin who had attached themselves to my hands - they thought it was funny that I kept tripping in the shadows - took me to meet their mom and aunt, living in a stark but neatly kept room on the sixth floor and making a living by selling little plastic bags of charcoal in the hallway. Blessed’s mom gave me a picture of her ‘to carry’ (I can’t really figure out why, but it’s cute so it’s hanging up in my room). From there we continued to the old restaurant on the top floor, where we could see the entire city, including the port where the ship is docked. I showed Blessed and Franklin ‘my house’, the big white boat in the distance. I think they were a little confused by that, but they still wanted to come home with us. I would have taken them too, but kidnapping is generally frowned upon here at Mercy Ships, so we left them with a ‘God bless you’ and headed back down the gently inclined slope of the highest point in Liberia, photo of Blessed in hand.

Signs

2007-03-10T05:55:00.000-08:00

Kids

2007-03-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

Ghanaian kids love the camera - we were often inundated with requests for a 'pictchah!', and if we complied then they would try to outpose each other until we called off the photo shoot; then came the gleeful attack of the grubby hands as they tried to see themselves on our tiny camera screens. Here's a sampling of the results :)

Harbor Swimmers

2007-03-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

With four-fifths of the country unemployed, Liberians are forced to devise creative ways of staying alive, giving rise to some interesting careers. One of these is harbor swimming. Although night swimmers aren’t unique to Liberia – we encountered many of them in Ghana as well – they are more prolific and easier to spot here.

Harbor swimmers, as the name suggests, swim in harbors. They scout out the docks during the day to see if there’s anything worth stealing, then swim back at night, climb up and take whatever they can float with. With cargo ships going in and out and goods being constantly loaded and unloaded, there’s quite a bit worth stealing, though the most common item to see bobbing along is rice bags.

Mercy Ships has been here twice before, and experience has made the ship’s security particularly vigilant. There is a night swimmer watch that volunteers sign up for in two-hour shifts; seven swimmers were arrested just last night (that’s a record for this outreach), and a few days ago the security officers, along with the U.N. soldiers that guard the dock, spent an hour and a half trying to catch a swimmer in broad daylight who was trying to escape onto one of the defunct barges that litter the harbor. They finally got him by bringing in another Liberian to swim after him.

During the last outreach, one swimmer who had already been arrested twice was seen walking around on the docks during the day. One of the security guards recognized him and asked him what he was doing here. His response: “Deciding what to take tonight.”

Ha.

Welcome to Liberia

2007-03-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Monrovia Thursday afternoon, and were warmly welcomed on the dock by our Advance Team, singers, dancers, and some Liberian dignitaries including the Vice President. It already feels worlds away from Ghana - I wasn't prepared for the desolation of the city, and I haven't even been very far beyond the dock yet. The port in Tema (Ghana) was frightening in its activity: crawling with heavy machinery, hundreds of ships coming in and out every day, a high-walled city of shipping containers. The Monrovia harbor is empty, with just two or three other ship - and it is the only commercial port in the country. There are sunken ships visible in the water, marooned ships on the beach, and even a massive barge that was tipped over in 2001 from improper loading - still resting on its side, half in the water. Something like 40 people have drowned trying to steal goods from its underwater containers.

On the bright side, the air is much cleaner, the view from my porthole has water and sky instead of containers, the sunset view is gorgeous, and we have a good stretch of dock all to ourselves. Because the entrance to the port is guarded by the United Nations it also feels much safer, though once we leave the dock it's far more dangerous than Ghana was, and we certainly won't be taking any 5-day excursions to little surfer villages.

We've spent the first few days here learning about the history and status of Liberia through speakers and films in order to better understand the people that we'll be serving - and it's been heartbreaking. Conceived in America and established by liberated slaves in 1847, Liberia was once a posterchild for independent Africa. It was peacefully democratic from its inception until a 1980 coup ignited 23 years of civil unrest, with a bloody civil war lasting from 1989 through 2003. The final standoff between the Liberian Government, headed by Charles Taylor, and the rebel army, called LURD, occurred in Monrovia and is documented in the film 'Liberia: An Uncivil War.' We watched the film last night, and it was a bit unsettling to see images of such recent fighting right outside the gates of our port. Charles Taylor ended up stepping down and fleeing the country after Nigerian peacekeeping forces arrived, but not without first bankrupting his country, leaving it the poorest country in the world at the time according to some estimates.

Successful elections were held in 2005, and massive improvements have been made under President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and the first female president in Africa. But the situation is still dire: 14 years of civil war produced a generation of uneducated and unemployed ex-child soldiers. Unemployment is around 85%, leading to problems with rampant theft, prostitution, teen pregnancy, and civil unrest. More than 1/3 of the population lives on less than $1 per day, and access to basic healthcare is rare. The lack of infrastructure, including electricity and water, continues to discourage foreign investment. If you're interested in reading more, it's definitely worth some time on Google, and here is a link to a good blog that I've been following (thanks Michael).

Needless to say, this is the closest I've ever been in time and space to such violence and destitution. I'm apprehensive to leave the safety of the port, and I've managed to make excuses to stay mostly on the ship so far - a vestige of my experience in Ghana, I think (or maybe I'm just a wuss, I'm ok with that). However, I can't think of another place where the services of Mercy Ships are more needed, and though it's overwhelming to think how our minor contributions are dwarfed by the desperate needs of this broken country, I'm thrilled to finally be here and anxious to get to work!

Sailing!!

2007-03-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

I'm somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can't see land, but I can write on my blog. As one H. M. Plum put it, 'things have really changed since the Titanic days. I don't remember Leo DiCaprio being on instant messenger when they hit the iceberg.'

Things got off to a slow start, as there was something wrong with the engine that only became apparent when it wouldn't start on the day of our departure. The engineers stayed up all night, and a prayer meeting was held, and the engine was revived by around 3am. They say that this ship is held together by prayer, and I'm beginning to think there's a good deal of truth in that.

In the days leading up to the sail, we were all warned against seasickness and given preventative medication to take. It seemed to work as I didn't actually hear of anyone getting seasick - but on the first day of the sail, either as a result of over-medication or staying up all night to bid farewell to Ghana - the majority of the crew could be seen stumbling around half-asleep and hardly able to keep their heads from rolling to one side, nevermind carry on a polite conversation. If this weren't Mercy Ships, I would've thought someone had spiked the Tang. Add that to the fact that no one could walk in a straight line anyways due to the motion of ship, and it was all quite surreal.

Sailing has been delightful - the clean air is most welcome after the smut of the Tema harbor. Dolphins can be seen playing around the ship (often noted in announcements by the captain, immediately after which the ship tilts a bit towards the side that they're on due to the mad rush of crewmembers with cameras). There was a stunning sunset worship service on the bow, and afterwards a large cohort of young ladies secretly dragged mattresses out for a massive slumber party under the stars (it's hard to keep things like mattresses secret though, I think a few people caught on).

Because there wasn't too much work for the OR staff to do, with everything in the OR tied to the wall or duct taped to the floor (kudos to the man who invented duct tape), I volunteered to work in the Engine Room because they had asked for people to help with something called 'tunnel watch'. Having no idea what that meant, I signed up for a four-hour shift.

It turns out the Engine Room is right around the corner from Purgatory: 902849754 degrees Celsius, monstrous black metal bellowing enginey-type machines closing in from all sides, grated floors covered with oil so you constantly feel like you're going to plunge to a feiry death in the bowels of the ship below, and a roaring sound that vibrates every part of your thoracic cavity. My job was to take the temperature of some metal things (I dunno...they hold these big shafts that turn?) every 15 minutes to make sure they didn't overheat, check the oil of the same metal things and top it up when needed, and move the water pump around so the engine room didn't flood. I'm sure it's much less responsibility than it seemed at the time, otherwise I don't see why they'd let me do it, but I felt pretty important, and I don't think I broke anything.

At the end of four hours I was sweating profusely, black all over, and in awe of the poor, poor souls that spend 8 hours a day down there, making this ship go. As for my contribution to ship maintenance, I think I'll stick with the (air-conditioned) prayer meetings.

Leaving Ghana: Pomp and Circumstance (and more pictures)

2007-02-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

Our last few days in Ghana were full of visiting dignitaries and the accompanying flowery speeches. On Thursday we were told that the President of Ghana would be stopping by for a short tour and speech at 11am, so we got all dressed up and were out on the Promenade deck to greet him at 10:45. At promptly 4pm, his motorcade pulled into the port. I missed it, partly because I didn’t actually believe he’d show up and partly due to afternoon napping obligations, but I woke up in time to hear his impromptu speech, which was quite moving – I don’t think he knew exactly what he was coming to see, and he was clearly struck by what Mercy Ships does.

An excerpt: “I am convinced you are a vessel of God, and I’m praying that you will continue to do this work. Ghana is grateful for the work you have done…You’ve come in a way to let us see the goodness that still resides in man.” He also spoke of how in the same way the crew uses their medical and other abilities to help humanity, he believes that politicians should use their power and influence with integrity and for the good of mankind. What a blessing to be able to demonstrate the power of God’s love to the leader of one of the most influential nations on this troubled continent!

The next evening, we were all invited by the Minister of Health to a cocktail in our honor, MC’d by the Minister. We weren’t sure what to expect, and most of us expected it to be painful in one way or another – painfully awkward or painfully long speeches -but it was wonderful. We all dressed up in our best white-man African clothes (I’m sure we looked ridiculous) and waited on the dock until our police-escorted buses came. There were delicious finger-foods and a live band waiting for us at the ministry, and the dancing commenced - again, we looked ridiculous, but that’s why it was so fun. The Minister of Health was a delightful host, joining us on the dance floor and sincerely thanking us for the work that was done by Mercy Ships in the past 9 months. We left with a lifetime’s supply of fried plantain chips, T-shirts and hats to commemorate Ghana’s upcoming 50th anniversary, and again, an overwhelming gratefulness to God for allowing us to do His works in such a way as to win the attentions of and to inspire the leaders of this important country.

‘But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God, and not from us.’ – 2 Cor. 4:5-6

Some stats from the 9-month Ghana outreach:
*639 general, reconstructive and gynecological surgeries; more than 19,000 eye consultations resulting in 1,364 eye surgeries; and 10,211 dental procedures for 5,435 patients.
*A 6,000 square foot maternity ward built for a Tema health clinic (Tema is the region’s largest slum), a 2,150 square foot youth health center, and additional classroom space for a school.
*24 new water wells dug in remote villages with trained local technicians to maintain them.
*Training for Ghanaians to educate their peers on maternal health, basic health and hygiene, and HIV/AIDS.
*Training for 206 poor women to start small businesses, and agriculture training for 23 female prisoners.

Really Long Entry: Vacation

2007-02-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

Last week the OR staff was given five days’ vacation to relax and refuel in Ghana before the start of the Liberian outreach. I went on two budget (read: dirty) excursions with friends, first to Ada, a small village to the east of Tema at the mouth of the Volta River, and then to Busua, another village on the beach to the west, near the city of Takoradi. We came back filthy, exhausted, and absolutely in love with the Ghanaian culture and landscape – I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to see more of this beautiful country!

The Transport

Transportation, as always, was a pleasure. We traveled by tro-tro (thus precluding personal cleanliness), Ford Van (a glorified tro-tro, meaning it used to have air-conditioning, now it just has tinted windows), taxi, canoe (to get to our beach huts at Ada), the back of a pickup truck, and foot. The traveling by foot part was actually an accident – we asked a man at the Green Turtle Lodge, the most remote place we stayed, how long it would take to walk back to another hotel in the village, with our massive backpacks. We were told, “One hour. Just one hour. Maybe less.” Twelve kilometers and three and a half miserably hot and sweaty hours later, we finally arrived, and the locals told us we were nuts.

Taxi rides usually provide the most entertainment. One taxi driver, from Takoradi to Busua, was reluctant to take five of us through one of the ubiquitous police stops because he might get fined for “overloading” so he asked Robin and Lucy to get out and walk through the barrier so we could pick them up on the other side, and he could go through the police stop with just three passengers. You can imagine the confusion this caused when the girls informed the police that they were ‘walking to Busua,’ without backpacks or water, 30 miles away, to ‘stretch their legs.’ Again, nuts.

Incidentally, just two nights ago we actually did get pulled over for overloading, this time with seven people in a small taxi. The policeman first asked us to take him to the restaurant we were going to and buy him dinner; we wouldn’t, so he asked for one of us to marry him; shockingly, we wouldn’t do that either, so finally we settled on the equivalent of a $4.50 bribe, which he pocketed before letting us all pile into the same taxi and drive off.

The People

I could write a thesis on the people here, but I’ll spare you and just say instead that they are different. They’re all beautiful for one thing; their skin seems ageless, and their average body fat percentage nationwide might actually be below zero. Typical of West African cultures, relationships are prized over efficiency (infuriating at times, but endearing when you’re not in a hurry), and their concept of time is entirely foreign. Sitting on a bench on the side of the road in the dark in Busua, Lucy and Robin and I spent several hours with one extended family, entertaining them by trying to learn their songs and teaching them some of our own. I remarked to Robin that I felt absolutely no obligation to ever leave the bench, and I think that is quite descriptive of the general feeling of inertia that pervades social situations here. This attitude has even prompted some crewmembers to christen a new time zone: GMT, Ghana Maybe Time.

The Accommodation

In Ada, we stayed in primitive huts made of braided banana leaves on the thin strip of beach separating the ocean from the Volta river – peaceful and picturesque, and I’ve never reveled quite so much in my own filth (lots of dirt, no showers). In Busua we split time between the Green Turtle Lodge, a remote backpacker’s paradise, and a little hotel near the beach in the village where we got to know the owners quite well. The beach is usually cleaner the further one travels from villages as it is mainly used as a latrine and landfill, but it is still quite nice in Busua because of the small but growing tourist presence. Ghana’s first surf shop just opened up there, and we had all but moved in by the end of the week, commandeering the biggest and most beginner of their boards (like small aircraft carriers) despite our lack of proper rash guards (resulting in heinous rashes on our legs), and even pretending to be real surfers in pictures for their new website.

On the morning of our departure, our hotel was being set up for a wedding, with tents and sound equipment. As we were packing, we heard through the megaphone: “Wedding today at 1pm! Best foo-foo in town! All participants welcome!” We were invited to stay and attend, despite never having met the happy couple, but knew that 1pm GMT could mean anything from 3pm to nightfall, and we had to work the next day so we left as planned – I'm sure the newlyweds weren't too upset.

The Food

Emboldened by the dares and blatant peer pressure of my friend Lucy, this trip turned me into quite a connoisseur of Ghanaian street food, meaning anything from little tables set up by the side of the road with various fried or cooked objects, to baskets on top of children’s heads on the side of the highway containing bags of plantain chips or FanYogo (Ghana’s premiere frozen yogurt, in a bag like everything else). This new passion of mine may sound unwise, but I look at it as a competition between my digestive tract and the parasites that commonly afflict Western travelers. So far, my digestive tract is enjoying sweet, sweet victory.

Fried plantains with ginger and peanuts, mangos, pineapples and coconuts (deftly carved by teenagers wielding machetes), omelette paninis, banana pancakes, loaves of sugar bread, rice in a bag with unidentified spicy sauces, white mush of uncertain origin called foo-foo, in a bag with more unidentified spicy sauces, and everything accompanied by newspaper napkins, which I now consider somehow sanitary. I just can’t get enough, and the best part is that it’s difficult to spend more than 50 cents on any one meal. I do draw the line somewhere, though – usually at the fish heads. I don’t like the way they look at me.

The Machete: Ghana's Answer to the Swiss Army Knife

2007-02-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw someone using a machete for a toothpick here. They’re used for everything, and everyone seems to have one. On the side of the streets, teenagers can be seen with carts of coconuts to sell, using machetes to carve the top into a point, cut open a hole to drink the milk, chop open the shell, and then intricately remove the delicate flesh for the customer (me) to eat. At the hotel we stayed at in Cape Coast, we were awoken by the sound of a man mowing the lawn – with a machete and a stick. One of the community development ministries run by Mercy Ships is to teach agriculture techniques to the women at a women’s prison. At the beginning of the program, the prisoners were all given (drumroll please) their own personal machetes. For serious. Ha.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...A Biomedical Engineer!!

2007-02-25T13:42:00.000-08:00

I’ve been meeting so many closet amazing people here – you know, the type who pretend they’re normal until you ask a few questions, and then they reluctantly reveal their true superhuman identities - that I have decided it would be selfish to keep their stories to myself. Here’s the first one, enjoy!

Carmen Walker is a fiery, talkative biomedical engineer from Florida. She flies in every few months, sometimes in response to a frantic phone call at the last minute, to fix and maintain our medical machinery and avert disasters of all sorts. In her civilian life she runs an anesthetic supply company; I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, so she described it to me: Essentially, when a patient is on the operating table and something goes wrong with any of the machines, she is called in and has about 3 minutes (1 minute for a child) to figure out the problem and fix it. Carmen is smarter than me.

The path that brought Carmen to Mercy Ships is quite fascinating. She took a few years off after college and eventually decided to go to medical school. She was in her final year of residency for cardiac surgery (that’s six and a half years, folks) when she had an experience that changed the course of her life: She had a woman on the operating table all cut up and prepared for open heart surgery, when someone from the hospital came rushing in and told her she couldn’t operate because the patient didn’t have insurance. They had to sew the patient back up without fixing what needed to be fixed. Disillusioned, Carmen walked out on her career as a surgeon.

After looking around for a new profession that would suit her qualifications and abilities, Carmen decided to go into biomedical engineering, choosing anesthesia as a specialty because everyone said it was the hardest. Some years later, she was reading a Reader’s Digest article about Mercy Ships’ chief surgeon, Dr. Gary Parker, and felt an inexplicable compulsion to call the ship. After being passed around from department to department, as one is wont to do when calling Mercy Ships, she finally spoke to someone in a position to help her. She told him who she was and that she didn’t really know why she was calling; he told her that he knew exactly why she was calling – it was because they had just finished a prayer meeting where they were asking God for a biomedical engineer to call.

So, five years later, Carmen is still swooping in to save the day, with her little blue suitcase containing everything she needs to work her magic and keep the Operating in Operating Rooms. Thank God for the smart people!

The Beautiful Game

2007-02-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

I am convinced that soccer is the greatest game on earth. I think this for several reasons: (1) it’s the foundation of at least half of my friendships, (2) it got me free trips to Greece for a while, (3) it provides an athletic outlet for people who are useless from the shoulder to the hand and therefore can't play basketball or volleyball or tennis or golf or baseball or most other popular sports (that's me), and (4) it’s much easier to play soccer with strangers than it is to randomly strike up a conversation (hence my first point). So, when I want to make friends in Africa, I find myself using soccer as a crutch for my feeble social skills.

Everybody here plays – the ship’s crew, the patients, and the locals. On a Sunday evening, every flat surface in the country is host to a game or two, or several.
Even the tiniest village has a flat dust ‘field’ with makeshift ‘goalposts’ at both ends. On the ship, due to the international nature of the crew, if word gets out that there will be a soccer game on the aft deck – an open area about the size of half a basketball court – there will be such a mass of players of all shapes and sizes that one might mistake it for a carnival.

Most of the time I spent with the patients on the ship’s ward was on the aft deck, playing soccer (again, mostly because I want to be friends but I’m too awkward to actually go sit by their bed and start a conversation). It was a sight to behold: Hospital gowns flying like superhero capes, feeding tubes sticking out here and there, sweaty bandages sliding off. Those who couldn’t play would sit on the sideline to cheer and keep score.

One patient in particular, Daniel, won hearts of everyone he met, including me. A spoftspoken 11-year-old from western Ghana, he had come for surgery on his shrivelled hand, a result of an accident with hot oil when he was a baby. He was always up for a game, and would sometimes come out to watch the crew games as well. During one of the crew games last week, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me in his adorable accent that ‘I would like for you to teach me every day how to play soccer, please.’ He could have asked me to swan dive into the filthy toxic waste-filled harbour and I would have, so we started private lessons. He was the best student I’ve ever had; every move I taught him he would somehow practice at night (with a shoe or something, he didn’t have a ball in the ward) and have mastered by the next day. He went home last Friday, and we were sad to see him go...

Playing on the Aft deck is all well and good, but the floor is quite slippery and it’s hard to avoid the big wrought iron anchor and varied heavy machinery, so a few days ago I gathered up some fellow football players and went on a mission to find a field that doesn’t float. There were six of us, perfect for 3 and 3, and we thought that if we were joined by some locals then that would be all the better. A taxi driver took us to a large dirt patch, and as soon as we took out the ball we were swarmed by barefoot little kids. It was like something out of a scary movie (or Field of Dreams - if you can kick it, they will come...).

I appointed the biggest kid as the coach and instructed him to pick out a team of 8 (they’re little) to play against us. He did his best, but as soon as the ball hit the dust, the subs rushed the field and we were playing about 387 men down. It was like an obstacle course – sprinting through a mob of moving children should be added to every agility training regimen. One kid dropped his pants and urinated at half field, adding another obstacle to be avoided (I thought I was cool so I was playing barefoot - bad move).

I couldn’t tell you the score, I actually couldn’t even tell you who was on our team because I think some of their players defected, but it was a good time – and we made a ton of friends :)

Church With Pastor Peter

2007-02-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

A few Sunday mornings ago (before the ship's internet went down, and then went down again)I went to Pastor Peter’s church. Pastor Peter worked in the OR with us as a translator, so we got to know him quite well, and had been planning to visit his church for a while.

Church started at 9. We were supposed to meet Pastor Peter outside the port at 9:30, he showed up at 10, and we got to church at 10:15. Right on (Ghana) time. Singing and dancing had already started, and we were led in by the assistant pastor to the seats of honor at the front of the church while Pastor Peter joined the team of generator-fixers who were huddled around the machine outside the church hall. This would become a theme of the service; every time the microphone stopped working, Pastor Peter would run out and do something to the generator – pray over it? - so that the sound system was resurrected and the service could continue in deafening fashion.

It happened to be children’s Sunday, which is similar to our children’s Sundays – the Bible verse recitation, cute kids and singing – but with a lot more...coolness? rhythm? Something like that. As guests, we were very involved in the service; we were called to the front to introduce ourselves (Pastor Peter yelled at someone to get a camera and take pictures), then the entire congregation prayed over us, and at the end we were enlisted to help give out certificates to the children.

The sermon was given by a British man who had just arrived to teach at the YWAM base here (Youth With A Mission – a missions organization associated with Mercy Ships), and it was translated into Twi by Pastor Peter. The Twi bits were twice as long and three times as animated as the English version, and punctuated by raucous ‘Hallelujahs!’ and ‘Amens!’. Halfway through, the assistant pastor brought Pastor Peter a towel to mop up the sweat, but the British guy was still bone dry.

The offering – to go towards the children’s ministry - was my favorite part. It was more of an auction. Pastor Peter shouted numbers, people danced to the front to put money in the large offering bucket, and they couldn’t go back to their seats until someone else danced up and matched their donation, taking the original donor by the hand. If you didn’t want to go up during the auction, then you could just wait until the children got good and sweaty during their (really really good) dance performance, and bring up bills to stick to their foreheads. It was perhaps the most fun I’ve had giving money away in my life. Hallelujah and Amen :)

(A note on Ghanaian toilets - perhaps the most interesting toilet I’ve seen in any of my travels is the one in back of this church, shown in the picture: A cement and tile floor, surrounded by a shoulder-high wall with a door. No hole, nothing to indicate where to put one’s feet, etc., no ceiling, and no way to avoid it during a four-hour service during which you’re drinking like a camel to keep from passing out in the heat. Ick.)

We fought crime, and we tied

2007-02-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Ave Marie Health Farm (they farm health!) is about a mile and a half from the gate to the port, and crewmembers often go there on weekends to swim in the pool, watch the ocean waves from the balcony (high enough above the trash heaps on the beach to make it serene), or get massages and pedicures.

Last Sunday afternoon I went to the Ave Maria with a bunch of Mercy Ships folks, and decided to come back to the ship with three other women at around 6 in order to make it back for a 7:00 service. People often walk from that ship to the Health Farm and back, but it was dusk, and we're female, so we thought we'd take a taxi. Because there is usually a surplus of them driving by, we started walking towards the port with the intention of flagging the next one down.

Thirty minutes later, several taxis had passed us by, it was dark, and the shifting figures in the shadows of the barbed wire-adorned port walls were making me uncomfortable. I remarked to my roommate Sabina that I was glad I didn’t have anything in my bag that I would be too upset to lose should it be stolen (one might call this foreshadowing).

Two men passed us walking quickly, and a few minutes later one turned back and came towards us again. With a big smile, he asked Sabina who we were and where we were going. She answered his questions (she’s a sweetheart), and he abruptly turned nasty, grabbing her backpack. She asked him what he wanted, and he showed her a knife; she let the bag slip off her shoulders, and we helplessly watched him run away. Score one for the criminals. Two minutes later, a Mercy Ships crewmember drove by and gave us a ride the rest of the way home.

Sabina is quite shaken up, to say the least; I’m upset that I ever let us walk home, especially once it got dark and I started hearing that voice in my head saying, “You’re being stupid” (that voice always sounds a lot like my dad...I hate it when he’s right). But it could have been a whole lot worse, and despite the emotional violation of having our lives threatened, we’re physically okay - and we learned our lesson; we won't be walking around in the dark anytime soon without an entourage of card-carrying meatheads.

In the end, when we calmed down enough to sit down and list the things in Sabina’s backpack, we realized that the most valuable item in it was actually her Bible. Score one for the missionaries...?

(To explain my blogging hiatus - I know you missed me - the internet on the ship has been down for a week and a half, and was just fixed today. A lot has actually happened, but I'll just post bit by bit, I wouldn't want to overwhelm anyone with too much procrastination material in one entry...)

How Mercy Ships Nurses in Ghana Have a Good Time

2007-02-01T02:33:00.000-08:00

1. Go to the meat market.

2. Buy a cow heart, a knife and a tray, all for around $6.

3. Hide it in the fridge for a few days.

4. Take it to the aft deck at night and dissect it.

5. Throw it overboard.

Cape Coast

2007-01-30T14:25:00.000-08:00

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:

2007-01-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-18T01:30:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-01-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-01-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

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)

2007-01-10T03:55:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-01-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-05T04:54:00.000-08:00

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...

T minus 15 days

2006-12-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

Hello! Welcome to my blogging debut! I never thought I'd have anything interesting enough to say to merit one of these, but I think it will beat mass email updates - this way you can either read all about or remain completely ignorant of my travels, at your own leisure...

I'm still in New Haven now, with just two days left of work. If all goes according to plan (i.e. medical school next year), this will be my last week of gainful employment until I'm 28 or so. After moving home to Willington on the 23rd, I'll have a week of shopping and packing (any suggestions as to where in middle-of-winter Connecticut I can buy clothes both ultra-conservative AND appropriate for the hottest and most humid place on earth?), Micah (brother) and Amanda's New Year's wedding in Hanover, and then it's off to Ghana on January 3rd (!!!), with a quick stop in London. I can't wait to take off, but I'm not sure how ready I actually am - although at least I'm armed with all 396 required vaccinations (now I'm invincible!) and a lifetime's supply of DEET.

For those who don't know, I'll be spending January through May (tentatively - I don't have a return ticket yet so who knows) working with Mercy Ships, a Christian charity organization that runs hospital boats providing healthcare and community development services to the poor in underdeveloped areas (www.mercyships.org). I will be working as an Operating Room Sterilization Technician while the ship is stationed first in the port of Tema near Accra, Ghana, and then near Monrovia in Liberia. I have no sterilizer skills as of yet, but I'm banking on a great training program once I get there :)

In this first entry, I'd like to thank everyone who made this trip possible with your fabulously generous donations. I was truly terrified when I began my fundraising, intimidated at the thought of asking so many people for what seemed like a massive sum of money. However, as is usually the case, I was surprised and humbled by the outpouring of support from family, friends, church members, and complete strangers. I'm honored by your gifts, and it's true - "I thank my God every time I think of you." I'm praying that God will use your investments to richly bless the poor communities that we will be serving in Ghana and Liberia.

Hopefully my next entry will be from a boat off the West African coast! Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!