Florence the Welder

Florence told me Pray & move
Don't Pray & sit unless God tells you to Wait!

Florence was forced to marry a man when she was 15 yrs & he was 40 yrs & this forced her to quit school to her great sadness. Her father owed someone money & didn't have it so he gave his daughter to this 40 yr old man to pay his debt.
They had 2 kids & 1 died at 5 yrs due to hunger & poor conditions during the war. Her husband died when the children were very young & she was left alone.  She mentioned brutal things she had to endure during the war, people getting their feet shot so they couldn't move & then their heads were cut off with knifes.  She says sometimes she just can't talk because the memories haunt her & she needs to be silent.

She became a christian during the war & it was not an easy task because she said her parents shunned her for this decision as they were Muslims.  She decided to learn a trade, Arch Welding so she could support herself as a single parent.  She didn't have the money to attend the welding school but she was fortunate, the fees were paid for her by someone who was willing to help her. She studied for 3 yrs & graduated the program but was not able to get a job welding. She did finally get a welding job with the Anastasis (Mercy Ships) when they last visited Freetown.  

After that outreach work with Mercy Ships she was able to purchase a plot of land, but has not been able to erect a common structure due to financial difficulties. She has such a generous heart after she bought the land she gave half to her church.  Here on the ship she is the only women in her department & maybe the only female welder in Sierra Leone, she is known for her hard work. She did get married again. Florence & her husband now have a 2 yr old son they named Precious because they are both so happy to share a child together & you can see the sparkle in her eyes as she speaks about this little boy. She said there is so much more to her story but this is all she could say for now. I am trying to find a way to help her build her house.  She has had great sorrows & has worked & tried so hard. The structure she wants to build is extremely simple compared to most western lifestyles.  We connected when she was in her welding gear, you couldn't tell that she was a female, but she called me over as I was passing by on the ship & from then on we have had a friendship. I was set to visit her outside of the city but her father died & she had to go upcountry for the burial.  She said she forgave her Father for forcing her into the marriage & causing her to lose out on her education. In fact 2 weeks before he died she said she wanted to bless him & she sent him some money, which she said he appreciated.She has great courage & determination but you can also feel her pain & sorrow that she has experienced.

Can You Imagine

Can you imagine leaving your house every day & someone is outside needing shoes, clothing or asks you for help with a serious health problem?  That's how it is here.  Or even simple requests are made, like today can you get me an umbrella? This is the rainy season & in one month Freetown will get the amount of Rain Petaluma gets in one year, so you get soaked & most people have no rain coats or umbrellas. A young bare foot teenager who has no parents asked me for shoes,(I know this young man, as we have established a friendship), an older gentleman requested help for bad stomach pain.  A young man asked me for help to get his hernia repaired.  I carry a camera & it is best if we have a photo of the problem so I asked the boys at the gate to take a picture. Even inside the ship the day workers will say Mary I have a friend outside who has a hernia can we bring him in, or they bring pictures in of loved ones with health problems many of which the ship doesn't have the means to take care of b/c Mercy Ships addresses specific surgical procedures.  The needs are great & their desires are so strong, hoping we can help them & you feel the hard times they are going through. It can be difficult to hear & see these problems. Then I carry on with my walk pondering all that I have just encountered to be soon welcomed by the sounds of many, many children greeting us & giving hugs as we pass by.  Many of the kids on the street call me Marian or in the hospital it is Auntie Mary, my new name!
I will miss so much the smiles & the welcomes people give us as we walk through town b/c it adds a richness like nothing else.

I Need Africa

I Need Africa More Than Africa Needs Me

This was read tonight at a meeting we had on the ship, I love it & I think you will too.

When I think of Africa, the following images immediately come to mind: Starvation. AIDS. Child soldiers. Genocide. Sex slaves. Orphans. From there, my thoughts naturally turn to how I can help, how I can make a difference. "I am needed here," I think. "They have so little, and I have so much." It's true, there are great tragedies playing out in Africa everyday. There is often a level of suffering here that is unimaginable until you have seen it, and even then it is difficult to believe. But what is even harder is reconciling the challenges that many Africans face with the joy I see in those same people. It's a joy that comes from somewhere I cannot fathom, not within the framework that has been my life to this day.

The images spilling out of my television showed circumstances that could seemingly only equal misery, and I was fooled. I bought into the lie that circumstance defines happiness. The truth is, in Africa I find hearts full of victory, indomitable spirits. In places where despair should thrive, instead I find adults dancing and singing, and children playing soccer with a ball crafted of tied up trash. Instead of payback, I find grace. Here, weekend getaways are not options to provide relief from the pains of daily life. Relationships and faith provide joy. Love is sovereign.
My new reality… I know now that my joy should have no regard for my circumstances. I'm ashamed by my lack of faith, but at the very same moment I am excited by my new pursuit. I'm forced to redefine the meaning of having much or having little. I'm uneasy with the prospect of change and of letting go, but just the thought of freedom is liberating. I want what I have learned to trickle down from my head into my heart - I no longer want to need the "next thing" to have joy.
I'm not saying that Africa does not need our efforts. It absolutely does need our partnership. But for me, I've come to understand that I NEED AFRICA MORE THAN AFRICA NEEDS ME. Why? Because it is Africa that has taught me that possessions in my hands will never be as valuable as peace in my heart. I've learned that I don't need what I have and that I have what I need. These are just a few of this continent's many lessons. I came here to serve and yet I've found that I have so much to learn, and Africa, with all its need, has much to teach me.

Mirror mirror on the wall...the nose

I was called to see a young man in the ship's hospital who had undergone some maxillofacial surgery. He was taking nutrition through a gastric tube and was breathing fast, using accessory muscles of respiration, and had a rapid heart rate. He has no history of any breathing problems and many things ran through my mind, but he had some moderate wheezing that cleared with asthma medicine, his chest x-ray was clear, and he settled in for an event less night.

Most of the time when I passed by his ward after the surgery, he would be looking in a mirror, which never left his hand or his lap. His story is typical of many of the patients that come to Mercy Ships. They have a normal life and then one day it all changes. For him it was a little spot on the nose which in 10 years had grown to the point that it probably came to define who he was, at least to others if not to himself. His humanity was practically swallowed up in the the giant mass that the spot had become. He was shunned by society and treated as an outcast. Many a person here with either birth defects or acquired defects are thought to literally have a demon or devil, and must be put outside the circle of compassion to "protect" those that are normal. Such was his fate.

He was once evaluated by Surgeons from Saudi Arabia, but they determined he had to come to their own country to have the surgery, and it was impossible for him to make the trip (about 50% of the population make less than $1.00 a day).

The growth is benign ( in the cancerous sense, but neither you nor I would consider it "benign" if we had it!!), a form of ossyfying fibroma or fibrocystoma. He had a debulking of the mass with placement of a titanium plate to support the anterior maxillary wall. These are his before and after pictures. What a difference this makes, not just to his appearance but to how he thinks of himself. It will undoubtedly completely change the arc of his life, as he once again joins society and starts to live a more normal life. A priceless surgery for a priceless human being.

Easter Weekend

I had the relative misfortune to draw the “on call spot” for Easter weekend, despite me being the one who puts out the schedule. How does that happen? Anyway, this afternoon the nurses called me about a 7-week-old, 5.3-pound girl who is in our Infant Feeding Program (IFP). The program is designed to allow them to have months of nutritional supplementation in preparation for their cleft palate repair, a defect that limits their intake and development in the first place. They are taken care of at home, but the guardian brought her in because of a fever of 102. She had been feeding less than usual (not a good sign in any infant) and had only had 2 wet diapers. Her head was out-of-proportion to her body, she had large doe like eyes, and her skin was wrinkled without much turgor. She was subdued with a mildly pronounced fontanel-not a good sign either. As we finally located the information on her in the IFP files, we discovered that she was HIV positive, her mother seriously ill, and the baby had recently been started on retroviral medications. This was going to require a major septic workup and an automatic admission on multiple IV antibiotics until her cultures were either negative, or identified the source of her infection. There are no pediatricians on the ship, and this could take a lot resources that would ultimately lead to many other patients not receiving the surgeries they needed as well as being, frankly, beyond our ability to handle. Sierra Leone had just enacted a law that allows all children under 5 years old to get free medical care, so I gave the local children’s hospital a call. I couldn’t reach the administrator on call, so rang the “Wellbodi” doctor.  I was actually surprised that the call went through, and to hear an American accent on the other end of the “line”. To my further amazement (given the unfortunate lack of trained physicians and medical resources this country has) the doctor knew the patient by name before I could tell her. She said to bring the baby to the Emergency Department and she would notify the pediatrician on call that the infant was coming. Remember that this doc was not on call, but still available by phone. I was blown away and said so to our nurse supervisor. She agreed and said that the pediatrician is a great doctor, nice person and was surprised that I hadn’t met her. Come to find out that she had grown up as a child on Mercy Ships, left to go to medical school and train as a pediatrician and now practices in Sierra Leone. I was sobbing in tears as I was telling Mary the story. How wonderful and frankly Divine to encounter a person who, having seen as a youth what a dedicated life can mean to those who have been forgotten by most of the world, then decides themselves to train for years in order to make a difference in this neglected corner of the world. I was humbled and broken.

The House of Jesus for the Disabled

We met some people at the House of Jesus for the Disabled recently in front of a store & they invited us to come to their place. There are 64 people living together most have some sort of  physical disability. One couple just had a baby boy and as I was invited into their small tin shed I felt concerned looking up to their ceiling seeing daylight coming through because the roof is not solid, knowing the rainy season is coming starting in May with July & August being the heaviest months where the rain is 35 inches each month.  One of the men living there is an artist & I posted some of his art here.  I am amazed he is able to do art in such a difficult environment with survival being your main priority & art supplies not readily obtained.  He had a small room the size of a closet where he showed me his art & I think this was where he slept too.  He gave me a beautiful beaded necklace another artistic talent he has too. I so enjoyed talking to him about his art & seeing his art & felt a bond with him sensing his love for his work.

Our project manager invited a high ranking police official to the ship and I arranged some dental and minor surgical procedures for him. He was the head of the special investigation of some people involved in a coup attempt in 1997, and had the suspects in jail. The RUF broke them out, and subsequently a coalition was formed between the existing government and those that had freed. This officer became #1 on their hit list. His daughter was 2 months old at the time and they came looking for him at his house. As he hid under the bed, his wife went out with the baby in her arms and screamed that when the child was born he deserted the family, she had not seen him since and if they found him they should put a bullet in his head but not before they brought him back so she could tell him how much she despised him. They bought it and he then had to flee to "the bush" and eventually Guinea because if anyone saw him around the house, those looking for him would know his wife lied and would kill his whole family. Some of his co-investigator/friends were rounded up into a building and burned alive.  What this country has seen is unbelievable, in fact, the officer said when he thinks back on it all it seem like a dream.  I started out my "being on call" day with a page from the Duty Nurse about a crew member who had pulled a maggot out of his scrotum. This is Africa!!!  What's the diagnosis docs?. It was a Mango Fly larva (Google and read). The Bot Fly has a similar and even more interesting life cycle: It "captures" a mosquito or smaller fly, lays its eggs on the abdomen of the smaller insect and when that smaller insect lands on a warm mammalian body, the heat stimulates the eggs to hatch into larvae that painlessly bore into the host mammal, sometimes through the mosquito bite, sometimes through intact skin, and then go through several larval transformations before they burrow back out of the skin to escape and continue their life cycle to a full grown fly. Nifty!!! We are settling in, finally, and had a second, very calm screening in a safer venue with heavy police assistance to control the crowds. There is a feeling that during the Civil War a whole generation of child soldiers were ripped from their heavily parent/elder respecting, socially stable traditions and introduced to extreme levels of selfishness, disrespect, power and blatant cruelty. There were child soldiers that would bet a cigarette on the sex of the baby of a pregnant villager and then slit her open to see who won. People were burned alive. Cannibalism was not unheard of, and the chopping off of hands and feet were common, dare I say routine. The child soldiers of that war are now the twenty-something youth that roam the streets with an unemployment rate of 70%, and an literacy rate of 36%. If you make more than $1.25/day your are ABOVE the poverty level. Since the majority of those who broke through the gate at the first screening were males in this age group, coming through with clenched fists and raised hands, one wonders if they are some of those young kids who have never integrated back into society. Why did they surge through the gates? What were they doing there? What did they want? When the rebels were asked what they were fighting for during the civil war, they were usually unable to give an answer, and likely to kill you for asking.

Our project manager invited a high ranking police official to the ship and I arranged some dental and minor surgical procedures for him. He was the head of the special investigation of some people involved in a coup attempt in 1997, and had the suspects in jail. The RUF broke them out, and subsequently a coalition was formed between the existing government and those that had freed. This officer became #1 on their hit list. His daughter was 2 months old at the time and they came looking for him at his house. As he hid under the bed, his wife went out with the baby in her arms and screamed that when the child was born he deserted the family, she had not seen him since and if they found him they should put a bullet in his head but not before they brought him back so she could tell him how much she despised him. They bought it and he then had to flee to "the bush" and eventually Guinea because if anyone saw him around the house, those looking for him would know his wife lied and would kill his whole family. Some of his co-investigator/friends were rounded up into a building and burned alive.  What this country has seen is unbelievable, in fact, the officer said when he thinks back on it all it seem like a dream.  I started out my "being on call" day with a page from the Duty Nurse about a crew member who had pulled a maggot out of his scrotum. This is Africa!!!  What's the diagnosis docs?. It was a Mango Fly larva (Google and read). The Bot Fly has a similar and even more interesting life cycle: It "captures" a mosquito or smaller fly, lays its eggs on the abdomen of the smaller insect and when that smaller insect lands on a warm mammalian body, the heat stimulates the eggs to hatch into larvae that painlessly bore into the host mammal, sometimes through the mosquito bite, sometimes through intact skin, and then go through several larval transformations before they burrow back out of the skin to escape and continue their life cycle to a full grown fly. Nifty!!!   We are settling in, finally, and had a second, very calm screening in a safer venue with heavy police assistance to control the crowds. There is a feeling that during the Civil War a whole generation of child soldiers were ripped from their heavily parent/elder respecting, socially stable traditions and introduced to extreme levels of selfishness, disrespect, power and blatant cruelty. There were child soldiers that would bet a cigarette on the sex of the baby of a pregnant villager and then slit her open to see who won. People were burned alive. Cannibalism was not unheard of, and the chopping off of hands and feet were common, dare I say routine. The child soldiers of that war are now the twenty-something youth that roam the streets with an unemployment rate of 70%, and an literacy rate of 36%. If you make more than $1.25/day your are ABOVE the poverty level. Since the majority of those who broke through the gate at the first screening were males in this age group, coming through with clenched fists and raised hands, one wonders if they are some of those young kids who have never integrated back into society. Why did they surge through the gates? What were they doing there? What did they want? When the rebels were asked what they were fighting for during the civil war, they were usually unable to give an answer, and likely to kill you for asking.