News from Liberia - Newsletter May 2005
Dear All,
Zoom! That was April and May... With 4 weeks remaining on the ship now I'm excited about coming home, but also somewhat saddened to say goodbye to Africa and to my friends on the ship. Perhaps it's a little early to tell, but I don't feel like this will be my last trip to Africa
In the operating theatres in March and April since we arrived in Liberia, as well as the maxillo-facial procedures, opthalmic surgeons have performed about 190 eye surgeries (removing cataracts, correcting strabismus/crossed-eyes, and removing eyes that have been damaged beyond repair by trauma). So I have scrubbed, disinfected, put back together, wrapped and sterilised 190 fiddly little eye instrument sets - not the most exciting task ever, but in some ways it is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. One day I walked past the eye theatre just as Dr Russ, a visiting opthalmologist, had finished a surgery. An hour earlier I had watched a middle-aged gentleman totally blind with cataracts slowly led by the arm up the corridor to have his surgery. As Dr Russ removed the drape from the man's eye, and asked him whether he could see anything, the man sat up in astonishment. He looked across the operating theatre and Dr Russ asked him what time it was: he glanced at the clock and said "Ten past ten!". On this occasion the change was instantaneous - the man walked down the gangway later that day and his son will no longer need to lead him around. As I walked away from the operating theatre to carry on with my work in the sterilising room I was re-inspired. It's so hard when everything you do is only a drop in the ocean, but I remembered the verses from Luke describing Jesus' authentic ministry: "The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." In a small way this ministry is being continued here - and that is an exciting thought!
I've also been enjoying the opportunities to get off the ship and involved with various activities. On Saturdays I've been heading out to a local orphanage. 70 or so kids, orphaned by war, AIDS, or even just abandoned by parents who cannot afford to support them are living under the care of a small but dedicated team of Liberian nationals. Christian Aid provides the food for the orphanage, and so the children appear to be reasonably well-nourished and clothed, but with so many children they get little one-on-one attention and they are starved of human affection. I have been "adopted" by a little girl called Hawa. She is 4 or 5 years old and doesn't really talk. I don't know what horrors she has already witnessed in her short life - the director of the orphanage tells stories of rescuing children from beside the dead bodies of their parents during the war. Anyway, Hawa just wants hugs - lots of hugs. Every week when the team drives up the children are assembled outside the orphanage singing exuberant African Christian choruses in harmony. My favourite has to be "The devil cannot do me nothing, the devil cannot do me nothing. They can put me in the fire, they can take me suma-suma (?), I can run away - hey! The devil cannot do me nothing". We teach them ridiculous action songs in return - Father Abraham has become a great favourite. After they've sung we organise games and activities for them: face-painting, story-time, friendship bracelets, ultimate frisbee, skipping, duck-duck-goose (which changed to duck-duck-tree whilst I wasn't concentrating last time - there aren't any geese in Liberia!). All the team members have been able to build special relationships with some of the children - Hawa sticks to me like glue and I have become adept at organising team games with a five-year old on one hip. I found it very difficult to accept that there was little long-term change that we could make for the children although their need is so great. But we are able to help in small ways. One of my cabin-mates on the ship is a nurse and had been visiting a different orphanage where she'd noticed some tropical ulcers. A grazed leg here can quickly turn into a raging flesh-eating infection with the heat, humidity and poor sanitation. And with 70 rampaging 4-14 year old kids I'm sure you can imagine the potential for grazed knees. So when I returned to "my" orphanage the next week I noticed the same problem - lots of infected cuts and scrapes, including a few serious ulcers. We brought large quantities of simple dressings supplies and taught the leaders and the older children how to clean and dress wounds - that the water must be boiled and cooled, that hands must be washed with soap, to clean away the dirt and grit and to put a simple gauze dressing on the cut. It has to be said that the would-be doctor was in her element as we set up a mini-clinic in the chapel and dressed their wounds. We took photographs of anything that looked more serious than just a scrape and showed them to a real doctor back on the ship - I am returning to the orphanage this afternoon with some more supplies including some antibiotics for a couple of the children. We are also taking a team of puppeteers with us this afternoon and I can't wait to see the childrens' faces! The puppet team will be presenting their varied performance of songs and dramas which tend to leave Africans and Westerners, young and old alike in gales of laughter.
All in all I'm finally feeling pretty much at ease in West Africa - I've mastered the art of hailing a taxi and negotiating a reasonable price (10p per person to get across town), I can conduct myself properly in African church and know to divide the amount I want to give to the church by 4 so that I can put some money in all four of the separate offerings to avoid embarrassment (not forgetting the all-important men vs. women offering competition....), and I'm even getting better at the sense of humour - I've discovered that the best way to turn down a marriage proposal whilst avoiding causing offence is to make the proposer laugh - "Not Today" seems to go down quite well.
A few final praise and prayer requests:
- Praise God for the amazing people who I have met and who have become friends here - for wise help and advice I've been given, and for everything I've learnt from watching these young men and women as they seek to serve God with their lives.
- Praise God for the fun and opportunities I've had at the orphanage and for the evident joy in the kids' faces when we turn up each week
- Praise God for the work that is being done in the operating theatres and for the many amazing stories of new life.
- Please pray for us for continued physical and emotional energy at the end of the outreach - many people are tired and a bit run-down and I have the beginnings of a cold and have a distinctly dodgy tummy.
- And please pray for me as I prepare to come home that I would have a sense of "closure" (sorry, I've been on a ship full of americans for 8 months) and that good-byes would not be too painful!
I guess that's it for April/May - I'll try to write another quick (ok, long and meandering) email before I leave for home. I hope you are all well. I continue to think of you all often and am really looking forward to catching up with everyone in a few weeks!
Lots of love,
Rosie/Rosalind
xxx... Read more!
Zoom! That was April and May... With 4 weeks remaining on the ship now I'm excited about coming home, but also somewhat saddened to say goodbye to Africa and to my friends on the ship. Perhaps it's a little early to tell, but I don't feel like this will be my last trip to Africa
In the operating theatres in March and April since we arrived in Liberia, as well as the maxillo-facial procedures, opthalmic surgeons have performed about 190 eye surgeries (removing cataracts, correcting strabismus/crossed-eyes, and removing eyes that have been damaged beyond repair by trauma). So I have scrubbed, disinfected, put back together, wrapped and sterilised 190 fiddly little eye instrument sets - not the most exciting task ever, but in some ways it is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. One day I walked past the eye theatre just as Dr Russ, a visiting opthalmologist, had finished a surgery. An hour earlier I had watched a middle-aged gentleman totally blind with cataracts slowly led by the arm up the corridor to have his surgery. As Dr Russ removed the drape from the man's eye, and asked him whether he could see anything, the man sat up in astonishment. He looked across the operating theatre and Dr Russ asked him what time it was: he glanced at the clock and said "Ten past ten!". On this occasion the change was instantaneous - the man walked down the gangway later that day and his son will no longer need to lead him around. As I walked away from the operating theatre to carry on with my work in the sterilising room I was re-inspired. It's so hard when everything you do is only a drop in the ocean, but I remembered the verses from Luke describing Jesus' authentic ministry: "The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." In a small way this ministry is being continued here - and that is an exciting thought!
I've also been enjoying the opportunities to get off the ship and involved with various activities. On Saturdays I've been heading out to a local orphanage. 70 or so kids, orphaned by war, AIDS, or even just abandoned by parents who cannot afford to support them are living under the care of a small but dedicated team of Liberian nationals. Christian Aid provides the food for the orphanage, and so the children appear to be reasonably well-nourished and clothed, but with so many children they get little one-on-one attention and they are starved of human affection. I have been "adopted" by a little girl called Hawa. She is 4 or 5 years old and doesn't really talk. I don't know what horrors she has already witnessed in her short life - the director of the orphanage tells stories of rescuing children from beside the dead bodies of their parents during the war. Anyway, Hawa just wants hugs - lots of hugs. Every week when the team drives up the children are assembled outside the orphanage singing exuberant African Christian choruses in harmony. My favourite has to be "The devil cannot do me nothing, the devil cannot do me nothing. They can put me in the fire, they can take me suma-suma (?), I can run away - hey! The devil cannot do me nothing". We teach them ridiculous action songs in return - Father Abraham has become a great favourite. After they've sung we organise games and activities for them: face-painting, story-time, friendship bracelets, ultimate frisbee, skipping, duck-duck-goose (which changed to duck-duck-tree whilst I wasn't concentrating last time - there aren't any geese in Liberia!). All the team members have been able to build special relationships with some of the children - Hawa sticks to me like glue and I have become adept at organising team games with a five-year old on one hip. I found it very difficult to accept that there was little long-term change that we could make for the children although their need is so great. But we are able to help in small ways. One of my cabin-mates on the ship is a nurse and had been visiting a different orphanage where she'd noticed some tropical ulcers. A grazed leg here can quickly turn into a raging flesh-eating infection with the heat, humidity and poor sanitation. And with 70 rampaging 4-14 year old kids I'm sure you can imagine the potential for grazed knees. So when I returned to "my" orphanage the next week I noticed the same problem - lots of infected cuts and scrapes, including a few serious ulcers. We brought large quantities of simple dressings supplies and taught the leaders and the older children how to clean and dress wounds - that the water must be boiled and cooled, that hands must be washed with soap, to clean away the dirt and grit and to put a simple gauze dressing on the cut. It has to be said that the would-be doctor was in her element as we set up a mini-clinic in the chapel and dressed their wounds. We took photographs of anything that looked more serious than just a scrape and showed them to a real doctor back on the ship - I am returning to the orphanage this afternoon with some more supplies including some antibiotics for a couple of the children. We are also taking a team of puppeteers with us this afternoon and I can't wait to see the childrens' faces! The puppet team will be presenting their varied performance of songs and dramas which tend to leave Africans and Westerners, young and old alike in gales of laughter.
All in all I'm finally feeling pretty much at ease in West Africa - I've mastered the art of hailing a taxi and negotiating a reasonable price (10p per person to get across town), I can conduct myself properly in African church and know to divide the amount I want to give to the church by 4 so that I can put some money in all four of the separate offerings to avoid embarrassment (not forgetting the all-important men vs. women offering competition....), and I'm even getting better at the sense of humour - I've discovered that the best way to turn down a marriage proposal whilst avoiding causing offence is to make the proposer laugh - "Not Today" seems to go down quite well.
A few final praise and prayer requests:
- Praise God for the amazing people who I have met and who have become friends here - for wise help and advice I've been given, and for everything I've learnt from watching these young men and women as they seek to serve God with their lives.
- Praise God for the fun and opportunities I've had at the orphanage and for the evident joy in the kids' faces when we turn up each week
- Praise God for the work that is being done in the operating theatres and for the many amazing stories of new life.
- Please pray for us for continued physical and emotional energy at the end of the outreach - many people are tired and a bit run-down and I have the beginnings of a cold and have a distinctly dodgy tummy.
- And please pray for me as I prepare to come home that I would have a sense of "closure" (sorry, I've been on a ship full of americans for 8 months) and that good-byes would not be too painful!
I guess that's it for April/May - I'll try to write another quick (ok, long and meandering) email before I leave for home. I hope you are all well. I continue to think of you all often and am really looking forward to catching up with everyone in a few weeks!
Lots of love,
Rosie/Rosalind
xxx... Read more!
posted by Rosie @ 11:29 PM
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