A Transformation Story

“Alberta loves dancing and singing gospel songs,” said Mariah of her five-year-old granddaughter. “She helps me shop, and when I do the dishes, she rinses them. She always wants to help.” 

Since Alberta was eighteen months old, Mariah has raised her, allowing the child’s young mother to finish her education. Three years ago, Mariah was cooking over an open fire in front of her Liberian home when Alberta awoke from her nap. Still groggy from sleep, the little girl walked too close to the fire, falling near the cooking oil. It splashed over her left arm and leg, up her back and over the back of her head. The fire quickly followed. The little girl’s left arm was terribly burned, immobilizing its position at her side. Her leg, back and the back of her head were also severely burned and scarred.

For the next two years, Mariah searched in vain for someone who could surgically release Alberta’s arm so she could raise it above her head. The frozen arm caused much embarrassment for Alberta at her day care, where the children constantly taunted her and called her names.

Mariah is a member of the Eden Church in Liberia, where she coaches football for a group called LACES. This group organizes teams for boys and girls, ages 10 and 11, teaching them about Christ through sports. The team members collected enough funds to send Alberta and Mariah to the Africa Mercy, a hospital ship where the volunteer plastic surgery team released Alberta’s burned arm.

Because burned skin and nerves were cut during the surgery, Alberta spent several weeks in recovery. An infection added more weeks of recovery time. But her bubbly personality helped her to make many friends among the crew, including the physiotherapy team that coached her through new exercises and the medical team that gave her post-operative care. Much of that care was painful, but most of the time she remained very brave, generously sharing her brilliant smile and even singing while the nurses applied new dressings. Such behavior is very rare among West African children.

“Sometimes she would fall asleep while I was changing her dressing,” said Nurse Becca Noland. “I love that girl. She’s amazing!”

“I am HAPPY!” said the five-year-old as she approached the end of her stay. “I can play and go to school!”

“She’s going to remember this. I will remind her repeatedly of everything she has seen here,” said Mariah. “It’s a miracle of God that she can have this surgery.” 

Details in the Fabric

I was inspired to write this blog by something that a friend of mine here on the ship posted a few weeks ago. He was able to sum up an aspect of life here on the ship that is not always easy to convey (unless of course you have spent any period of significant time on the ship before) but is such a central facet of our reality that in order to fully understand what it means to live and work on this ship - it is something that needs to be shared.

I so often hear, as I remember saying to others myself before I came to Africa, that what we are doing here is 'amazing' work, 'life changing', 'living the dream' and all of those other well meaning phrases - which for the most part are true. Sharon and I have to regularly stop and take stock of just how fortunate and blessed we are to just have the opportunity to be apart of this vision, to be apart of something that is so much bigger than ourselves. That big picture dream, those very beautiful broad brush strokes are the life line that keep us going and got us here in the first place - and it is those stories that we so often send home.

However, there are also the fine brush strokes, the delicate details which make the picture what is it, the subtle nuances that often don't get talked about which make up so much of life here on this ship - and we have been finding to an increasing degree over the last few months that these fine details, the difficulties of living and working and playing and learning and eating and chilling and crying and laughing and so many more things, all within a tightly confined ship that we call home can really drag a person down.

We live in the constant tension of never being able to escape from where we are. If you've had a bad day, if something is getting at you, if you just need to be alone, away, isolated......then this 500 foot ship is all you have. Yes, you can get off the ship and walk, or get a taxi somewhere - but for any of you who have been to West Africa, i'm sure with a wry smile you remember just how relaxing, freeing or isolated you can be as a westerner out here.

I'm not all that sure why I am writing this? I guess to help you all understand a little more of what life is like for us here. Yes, we are part of a living, moving entity that changes lives. Yes, we get to see things which shake the foundations of a persons worldview and re-direct a purpose for living, and yes, for all of our frailties and faults, we can often forget that. We can lose our sense of direction and purpose and focus on things which, even as I write them I cringe at, but nevertheless are so very true for so many people who have been here for so long. We can focus on the fact that for 98% of our time here, we have no choice in what we eat, we can focus on the fact that there are only so many movies a person can watch in a week to pass time in an evening, or so many card games we can play. We often remind ourselves that if we do want to go out to one of the 5 or 6 ok restaurants in Freetown, it is more than likely going to take us 2 hours to get there, but 20 minutes back. And yes, we can always remember how so many friends have come and gone in the time that we have been here. But to top it all off, we remember how we should feel a lot more grateful for this opportunity that we are.

I guess I write this to help you to see that no matter where you go, there you are. That no matter how good things can be, human nature is to so often want more. And I guess I write this to help you to see that the life that we live out here on our floating home is not easy, it can be messy, it often is painful and it is still life.


In a matter of weeks it will be 2 years since I left England.

As I wrote that sentence above, I had to stop and ponder on it. 2 years......

Freetown

I dare not look at how long it has been since my last blog....and the phrase 'way too long' would probably be cliche. But either way.....here is my first Freetown Blog.

We arrived in this lively, colourful, busy, manic, congested (this list of superlatives could continue on and on) at the end of February, after a long sail up from Durban, SA - with a wonderfully surreal 24 hour stop off in Cape Town.

Freetown is the kind of place you don't describe, it's the kind of place you experience. In other west African cities we've been to, there are usually designated market areas. Here, the whole City is a Market, and the vehicles just have to deal with that. It can and regularly does take up to 3 hours to travel a matter of miles in a car - and more often than not - will be quicker to walk than drive anywhere. A few weeks ago we went out for pizza. We left at 5.30 pm (rush hour) and we reached our destination nearly 3 hours later. When we left, it took us 20 minutes to get back to the ship! 

Along with getting use to the uniqueness of the City, we are obviously here to work - and that so far has had its highs and lows. We held a mass screening, as we usually do, at the start of the year at the national football stadium a week or 2 after we arrived. It did not take long for the entire ship community to get a very large and painful wake up call to the desperation of poverty in this country and the heart breaking after effects of the brutal civil war that ravaged this land. There were many converging factors that took place on the morning of our screening - of which I do not need to go into detail. But there was a heartbreaking conclusion as the crowds of many thousands crushed and crammed and eventually broke down into a mass surge of people, resulting in groups of people getting trampled and injured, and eventually led to the death of one man waiting to be seen by the medical staff. Our screening had to be halted as we did what we could to restore some order and our medical staff did all that they could with the beyond limited means that they had at their disposal to aid the victims. Needless to say that we all returned to the ship in a somber mood as we had to face up to the events of the day.

However, some surgeries had been booked and we were able to begin our surgery schedule, and within a few weeks, we held another screening at a new venue and this time it all went to plan. So the Hospital has been up and running for 8 weeks now and we have already done hundreds of life changing and life saving surgeries. Our dental team have seen well over 2000 people and our eye team around the same figure. Tumors have been removed, cleft lips repaired, bowed legs made straight and club feet re-aligned. 

It is wonderful to see the changes in peoples lives and the relief on their faces as they come to terms with the knock on effects that their surgery will have on their lives. They can now work, go to school and most importantly - have the opportunity of a normal life within their community.

But it is, as always, sobering to take a step back and look at life - real life - on the streets, in the villages, in the communities of this City. Freetown has doubled in size within a matter of years since the end of the war, and the place just cannot handle that many people. There is not enough water to go around. The local government turn water on and off at different times of the week to different areas of the city, in hope that everyone has at least a chance once a week to get some water. There is not enough room for people to build homes, so the suburbs have spread up the side of the mountains that encircle the city. 

Clay houses build on clay foundations on the side of a mountain. 

Rainy season lasts a few months each year, and each year, everyone of the people who live on the mountain go to bed at night hoping and praying that their house will still be standing in the morning and that they have not been washed down the side in a mud slide. 

I've been on this ship for over 18 months now....and I still do not feel that I can yet process what I have seen. How people live here, how I lived at home. What people here are willing to do in order to get medical treatment, what we at home do when our taxes are raised a little or we have to wait a few hours. How people are happy and content that their house is still standing after the rains have come and gone to 

how we watch reality make over shows and 'wish' we had a house that cool, nice, beautiful or whatever.

I find it hard to process life in West Africa, I find it scary to think of life in the West. 

I hope that you can join me in being willing to openly live in this tension.

South African Adventures

We've been here in the Durban area now for four and a half months, waiting for work on the ship to be finished (which i'm happy to say is pretty close by now!) and it's been an interesting period. As most of you know, hopefully, the highlight of our time here was waaaaay back on the 14th Sept when Sharon and I got married; and as I think back over all that we have been up to since then, I begin to realise just how large of a blog this could become - so I am going to endeavor to make this as fun, informative and easy to read as possible! So hear goes........

SEPTEMBER:

Highlights; GETTING MARRIED, honeymoon in Zanzibar, 

Funny moments; Our first full day of married life I begin to feel even more under the weather than I had been the previous few days (no funny comments needed!). A few pivotal things happen that result in us deciding its probably best for us to visit the hospital. After a few quick tests they decide to keep me in over night - did I mention this was our first day of being married!? - run more tests and return the diagnosis as Malaria! A few simple drugs and within 48 hours and up and kicking again. However, nothing will top the moment that the Zulu and Indian nurses who are taking wonderful care of me realise that we got married the day before, look at sharon and exclaim in loud laughter....."what did you do to him????" 

OCTOBER:

Highlights: Visiting Morning Star HIV/AIDS day care centre and all of the wonderful people and children there. Going to a large cat breeding sanctuary and playing with the lion and tiger cubs. Staying with some old friends from back home who live in Johannesburg and hanging out with them, and to top it all off, going on Safari and seeing White and black rhino, buffalo, elephant, cheetahs, giraffe and many other animals!

Funny moment: As happens when animals are involved, funny moments are never far behind, but two really stick out. The first was on the safari when we saw two cheetahs - a young boy and a young girl - basking in the mid day heat. As we sat quietly and watched, it became quite clear that more was going on than initially met the eye. Our young female feline was trying, in vain, to arouse our romeo from his slumber - if you see where i am going!! However, young romeo was in no mood to play, and kept batting our eager little friend on the head in a very matter of fact way!

The second moment, which was not so much funny as intense, was when we by chance (as happens of safari) we came across two white rhinos in the midst of a territorial land disagreement. Nothing I say will quite capture the power and force that two large male rhinos exude when charging one another - especially when you are no more than 15 meters away.

November: 

Highlights: ......well I say highlight....november ushered in a new season of work, as we returned from our wonderfully long honeymoon. We returned to the base at Appelsbosch, which is where Mercy Ships has been housing the majority of the crew while the ship was in dry dock. I was working with the Land Rovers, as we took the opportunity to bring them up to tip top shape, as well as helping out in the Kitchen preparing the meals. We also had a few weekend trips away, to the beach, the mall, wine tasting and a very fun weekend away camping and hiking - with the odd cold beer and bbq steak thrown in there!

December: 

Highlights: December ushered in the Christmas period, with Sharon decorating our room with a little tree and things that she had made, the crew gearing up for our move back to the ship as well as getting excited making plans for the few days holiday that the crew got over christmas. We were lucky enough to go away to a World Heritage park called the Drakkensberg, which is listed for 2 reasons, 1) an area of outstanding natural beauty and 2) because the area holds over 1200 examples of cave art paintings that date back thousands of years. We also made it up to Lesotho, which for those of you who don't know, is a country the size of Belgium that is completely surrounded by south africa.

Funny Moment: Without doubt, one moment stands out. We were staying in this tiny middle of no-where back packers when we went away for our christmas holiday. The last night we are there a monumental rain storm comes thundering over the mountain that we are in the shadow of, which forces all of the campers to huddle like damp refugees in the small common room that we had been hanging out in. As all of these rain sodden people come pouring in - pun intended! - a see someone who i instantly recognise. I say to sharon, im sure i know that guy, and after a few awkward moments of trying to figure out who and from where i know him, I 'accidentally' bump into him and we quickly figure out that we went to University together! Random as always, and yet another example of how I am my mothers son!

So, all in all, its been a great few months and I am once again massively thankful for the opportunity to be hear with such wonderful friends!