Cute Mama

This is a picture of and old "mama" as we affectionately call them here, who has had her right cataract removed on the Africa Mercy. She has been confused throughout the entire process. She came alone to the screening clinic, missed her first surgical appointment, came back with the card, and we gave her a new appointment, but told her she needed to bring a family member back with her to get her new card, in order to make sure that someone would take her on the right day. After the operation, she never went back to the ship to get all her post-op care done, never got her medications, then turned up back at the clinic the next week, because her eye hurt (if you can imagine it, since she wasn't using any medication, sunglasses, etc.) She now still turns up regularly with complaints to see us in the clinic. I always get a huge grin on my face each time she arrives, grab her hand, and pull her inside. I'm beginning to suspect that she just likes seeing us and being warmly welcomed in. Usually there are too many patients to actually be able to remember their faces, but she is just too adorable and forgetful to forget. The other person in the picture is Robert, one of our day volunteers who I work very closely with. He translates into French, Fon, Goun, Mina or Yoruba (possibly more dialects that I'm forgetting...) which just amazes me! We couldn't accomplish anything without our translators.

The masses

The eye clinics are now well underway, and we have already scheduled 700 patients for surgery.We keep hearing the the numbers will decrease after a little while, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. We still seem to have between 400 and 600 people turn up every day, and we are able to see only about 175, so we have had many that have had to go home unahppy. I have learned much through the process of beginning to deal with such crowds with such great needs. I have learned that many people just want to be seen, and heard, to be completely content. They don't need a surgery to go away happy. I have learned that the more violence and anger you put into a crowd, the more you get back out of it. I have learned of the destruction that Satan has in mind, in that we have been so frustrated with the unruly, violent crowds, that we have often wanted to just go home and say "forget it, that will teach them", but when I really stop and look at it, we came to serve and want to see the people, and they want to be seen, but somehow in all the desperation, things have become heated, and everyone has been more frustrated. So, now, after several weeks, we are slowly learning, and praying, and beginning to deal with the crowds in a way that honors them, and finds those that are most in need of help. I am so grateful. I wonder how Jesus managed the desperate thousands why followed him relentlessly, and was always so compassionate.
At the end of each day, we return to the ship, to see a handful of patients still on the ship, with their eye patches covering their surgical eyes. Some of them remember us and welcome us with a big grin and a hearty thank-you, while others are also too blind in their other eye to know anything that's going on around them. It is always a good reminder, seeing them, as to why we have gone out and done all this work again, and why we will do it again tomorrow.

Not exactly Harleys

The name: Zimmijahn
They way they're driven: recklessly
Who travels: everyone! even infants.
What travels: goats, doors, chickens, water jugs...anything.
They seem to be the first mode of travel, thankfully, I'm a ship driver.

Just say no

So, we've arrived here in Cotonou, Benin, and the work has begun. It is good to be here, and I am excited for the work I am doing. I am working as the eye field team coordinator, which means that I drive to different areas of town and help to organize mobile eye clinics that are held each week. Surgeries started today. We had 600 patients waiting for us yesterday, and 400 today. My crowd control skills are weak, at best, and my French is about 10 levels below that, not to mention my Fon speaking (the most common local dialect). Today we had to go to a window one floor above where the hundreds of patients were waiting, just in order to speak to them and try to gain some order (Shakespeare comes to mind...).
Despite all the stress and pressure of seeing so many people, I have a joy in the work we are doing. I have often worried that I was suffering compassion fatigue, and could easily "just say no" to people, when I would watch the hearts of other staff around me be wrenched and tortured. Today my heart was moved deeply, for one young man who had an infection that the ship simply could not treat, and I felt forced to turn him away, toward what I saw as inevitable, impending death. My heart ached, and I broke down and shed tears for him, as Pastor Florent and I prayed for him, and we sent him away. They simply couldn't pay for x-rays and treatment. It's hard for me even to conceive of. Lack of money causing someone's death. Obviously, it happens every day, and yet it's shocking. It does not often happen in the world I know. The realities we know in life can differ so greatly. I could only pray that God would intervene on this man's behalf, and show him mercy. Then I had to go see the next patient.

Uncle Tom

So, I just read the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and if you haven't done so, I recommend it. For those who aren't familiar, this is an anti-slavery fictional novel written in the early 1850's, depicting the life experiences of several slaves living and working in varying conditions in the American South. What does this have to do with your work in Africa? Seems kind of random or unrelated, but it actually is unbelievably tied to the work here. The people in the book are the people we're serving in West Africa. They are from the same place, and many of them (particularly in Liberia) also returned there.
As good as the book was, my purpose is not to sell you on picking it up for yourself, but to reflect. "Uncle Tom" has become a derogitory term used to describe a black man who "is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to white American authority figures". Despite this common current day reference, the real Uncle Tom encountered in the novel is the epitome of a follower of Jesus Christ. What an unjust distortion. Ms. Stowe reviews the viewpoints of many individuals involved in the slave trade in different capacities, blacks and whites, Christians and pagans, kind and cruel, men and women. She is not afraid to make generalizations about her own, African race, and whether or not I can say I agree with them or understand them, they're interesting to read and consider in light of my experiences with the people of West Africa.
Most surprising to me, though, was the reference to the new slave state being formed, called "Liberia". She says, "I grant that this Liberia may have subserved all sorts of purposes, by being played off, in the hands of our oppressors, against us." and she goes on to say that forming Liberia may have actually been a means of "retarding our emancipation", yet she is assured that God's plans are greater, and He may have "overruled their designs, and founded for us a nation by them?" She is hopeful for the future of Liberia. What would be her reflections to see it now and how it has progressed? What wrongs are still being felt through the consequences of America's choice? I wish I could hear her commentary and reflections.
At the end of it all, though, the question is how could a "Christian" nation allow and endorse such injustice and cruelty? The appeal to her brothers and sisters in Christ is strong and convicting. What injustice do we endorse, allow by our silence or ignorance, or condemn from a distance while failing to be moved into action? Those giants in history who have dared to stand against injustice in their own time should inspire us to look around a little more, pray a little longer and more sincerely, and to stand and fight in the ways that we can. God forgive and help us.

journey

Journey: an act or instance of travelling from one place to another.
0705 Run out the door into the English fog to try to find the bus stop
0712 Catch the bus for 2 pounds 20 while being referred to as "luv"
0725 Inquire of supposed Englishman which stop for the tram
0735 Board tram towards Meadowhall Interchange for 2 pounds 10
0755 Arrive at Bus stop to realize there are 55 minutes to spare, walk around aimlessly.
0850 Board bus, mentally prepare for 3 hour trip to Birmingham
0850-1150 Watch quaint english countryside pass by, enjoying the "scenic route"
1230 board bus to airport
1300 Check-in with Monarch airline
1500 Takeoff for Tenerife
1930 Arrive in Tenerife south
2010 Find and board bus to Santa Cruz
2100 Arrive Santa Cruz and begin 1 1/2 mile walk to Africa Mercy
2200 Home sweet home, what a day...

Next 3 days - listen to people tell me they didn't think I would make it back before the ship sailed. I did, and I'm so grateful!

Home sweet home

I've come home to Maine for a quick visit before we sail back to Benin, and I was met with quite a warm (as in cold) welcome. We Maine folks experienced a record low at -25 F a few days ago, and we all threw on our long underwear and an extra pair of socks if we even thought we might have to walk past a window...no seriously, it's really that cold. We went out for a walk on one of the coldest days, and as I blinked my eyes, I realized that my breath had been projected upward by my scarf, and my eyelashes had frozen into little icicles. A new phenomenon, for sure. Despite the cold, I relish the beauty, stillness, and newness of this remote world covered in snow and deprived of heat, and I go out for walks/cross-country ski trips to soak it all in. Tonight we had fresh snowfall, and I headed out just after dark with my ski goggles, headlamp, and some music to travel across our lake. It's strange to be gone away (in a rather tropical environment) during the freezing process, and then to come home and just trust that sheet below me with my life, instead of watching the process slowly occur, until I know it's ready for me.
My Maine visit was made nearly complete on Saturday, by taking a handgun safety course. I'm not really sure exactly why I was taking it, because the "everyone's doing it" logic seems rather ridiculous for such a subject, but that really was my reasoning. My mom and sisters took the class, along with some other women, and one, token man, so that someone's eyes could light up when a 44 was mentioned (for those of you who don't know guns, that's a big one with mucho power). Most of us were more concerned about what we had baked to snack on than which gun we would get to shoot, but it was a good day, which got much better (and much more hick-ish) when we actually did our shooting practice from inside our teacher's bedroom, through the window, to our target in their yard. It topped my list of hick experiences and kept us out of the cold. I'm no great shot, so don't worry.
Tomorrow I will hit the slopes on the fresh powder that fell today, and continue to enjoy my family's company. I could almost say I wished it was always winter, but I suppose I'd risk being called the white witch.

Hola Tenerife!

This island is strikingly beautiful. A few days after we arrived, a group of us went and hiked Mt. Teide, a volcanic mountain which is the highest point in all of Spain at over 3,700 meters. The hike meanders through lava fields, long stretches of pumice stone, and finally some larger boulders where you can actually see/feel the gases coming from the side of the mountain. The summit consists of a large crater reaking of sulfur, and gives an amazing view of the whole of Tenerife, and at least 3 of the other Canary Islands. Mom and Dad summitted last year when they came to visit, with a little help of a cable car, but the last 200 meters of elevation the earned all on their own!