Yes, it has been a rough few months. It is my prayer that God would show me why I am here. What my purpose is and what the ultimate goal is. I feel like I have been spending so much time behind a computer screen and not enough with the patients and nurses. Late this afternoon I decided to just sit with a few patients at the tables they use for crafts and teaching. Seibatu was sitting there alone and although I know I should not have favorites, I really have a special place in my heart for her. Once I sat, a few more patients came up to sit as well. Seibatu has been here for months, it seems, and she has at least another month to go. Her VVF is too bad for Dr Lewis to fix but she also had an RVF where she was left leaking stool as well. She was sent to another hospital where she had a colostomy placed and her RVF fixed. She will have the colostomy for three months to give her body time to heal, then later this month she will have it reversed. She can't wait. She speaks Mende or Temene, I can't remember but I can't speak either anyway. My krio is still awful as well. Seibatu has been here long enough that she is turning into my translator for certain things. She has picked up on my sign language and I hear her yell across the ward sometimes when she knows I am struggling to speak to a patient. She is starting to learn English as well. It makes us both laugh. I have spoken of her a few times before but I laugh right now because I just realized she has been one of the constants in my life since I got here. I have no idea how old she is. I asked her today "how many years?" and she looks away shy and flips over her hand to let it fall on the table in a sign that she doesn't know. She is old enough to have four children. The oldest is maybe up to her shoulders in height so whatever that means in years... she only looks about fifteen or sixteen though. Her husband still comes to visit at least once a week when he can. In two weeks she will head back to get her colostomy reversed then come back to the centre for dressing changes, then home. She was telling me she would come back two weeks later for her VVF to be fixed. She kept telling me she is so ashamed. So ashamed. It is hard for her to understand and accept the truth. She is beautiful.
The longer I sat at the table, the more women appeared. Haua came and sat across from me. She took my hand and stretched out my arm. She pointed to my white skin and kept saying, "Fine, fine." I pointed to her black skin and said the same thing. We were bonding. She then opened my hand and looked confused as she looked at her hand then back at mine. She felt hers. Then felt mine. I could tell what she was getting at. Her hands are rough and calloused from years of work. Mine are not. She took my pen and pretended to write. She then put it down and pretended to be chopping things. She was telling me she works hard with her hands. I work hard with my pen. All the women laughed. How true was that comment? They all turned over their hands to reveal years and years of hard physical labor. I turned mine over to reveal a different world.
Another West African country. Another fish lips moment...The time had come. I looked at Seibatu and did fish lips. She looked at me confused until I said her name. She smiled and after a little struggle, hers too appeared. Haua... crooked, but there. Satta...Satta took a bit of time but eventually she too could speak the language of the fish. Everyone tried. Everyone laughed. This was good, especially for Haua who when she said down I asked, "Haua, you happy?" "No." She wouldn't tell me why and she had this concerned looked on her face but she wouldn't talk. She laughed though. Someone walked by and asked if I was teaching life skills. No. I wasn't, but the women laughed together today and I think that was big in itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment