The Women Danced!

VVF is upon us! This is the time I have been waiting for. Since I cared for VVF women in Liberia three years ago, my heart has belonged to these women. What is VVF? VVF stand for vesico-vaginal fistula. Basically, it's a hole which is formed between the bladder and vagina which causes a women to constantly leak urine. The most common way this occurs is during prolonged childbirth.

Picture this: You are a woman in a remote village and you are pregnant. As you start going into labor, the other women around you come to help. If there is a problem, what do you do? What can you do? The nearest hospital is at least a days walk and since you have been laboring for at least a day already, it is too late to start that journey. You labor another day. And another. And possibly a third or a fourth before the baby passes, stillborn. You grieve for the loss of your child as you start to notice you are unable to control your urine. It runs down your legs without any control. Pads can't stop it. Medicine can't stop it. Because the baby was stuck for so long, and it pushed so hard on parts of the vagina that it killed the tissue there and caused this hole into the bladder or into the ureters or maybe even into the rectum so you are leaking stool as well. Nothing can stop this. You constantly smell. Flies swarm. You can no longer stay in the house because of this. Your family disowns you. Your husband leaves you. You have lost your baby. You are on your own. What hope do you have for a future?

Last monday was screening day for VVF. 66 women showed up. 60 were able to get surgical slots. That is an amazing number! Tuesday was the first day of surgery and today was the first dress ceremony. After a women has her surgery and she is dry, as we call it, she is given a new dress to go home in. Makeup is put on her face. Her nails done. A head wrap on her head to match her beautiful new dress, and we dance. Five women danced today. Five women who were wet but are now dry danced today. One was leaking for a year. Another for ten years. Another for thirteen years. They had all been left by their husbands. Ostracized by their communities. One of the women I saw smile for the first time today in a week. Hope is being restored. Lives are changed in ways I could never understand.

These women remind me of the passages in Luke 8:42-48:

As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

"Who touched me?" Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you."

But Jesus said, "Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me."

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."

These women ache to touch the edge of Jesus' cloak. To be healed. Not only did Jesus heal her physically, he healed her body and soul. We have a wonderful surgeon here right now to help heal their bodies. Pray for this healing, but also pray that these women can start to experience emotional healing as well. To not harbor bitterness or anger, but to forgive and be able to go on living their lives in joy.

Five women danced today. They danced. They danced. They danced!

Dzinye le Africa

Tonight I went on an airport run to pick up a load of new arrivals to the ship. This was my first time doing it here but I remember always loving to do it when I worked at camp. I love seeing and hearing first impressions. It reminds me of my first time landing in Africa. Ghana was my first African country three years ago and I remember the fear and excitement and just knowing my life would never be the same when that plane touched down. When I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac, I remember standing there, feeling the hot, humid air, and a man came up behind me and told me I looked scared. That was probably true. I had traveled overseas before but Africa seemed so big. So...far away and so different. True, it seemed like the differences outnumbered the similarities from where I come from, but it's just another way of living. Not right or wrong, just different.

Tonight, driving home with three people, first timers to Togo and to Africa, I had to laugh. "How many people can you fit on one of those motorcycles?" Ummm...five or six is the most I have seen, depending on the size of the kids in the family. No helmets. If babies don't fall off mama's back when she is walking, why would it fall off on a moto-taxi? Cheaper and faster way to travel anyway. "Not many streetlights, huh?" Nope. The lights from the zimi-johns light up the road, if the bike has one. "How many lanes on this road?" We still haven't figured that one out. However many cars can fit...

I wish I could be the first to take them all to the market to see their impressions of that too. The noises and smells and colors and touches and people yelling "yovo, yovo" over and over and over...

Dzinye le Africa.

My heart is in Africa.

Aicha

A few posts back I wrote about noma, the infection that invades your face and within days kills 90% of the people that it infects. Aicha, the seven year old girl that arrived on the ship from Camaroon with this, is doing amazing. The skin graft to the right side of her face is taking and she is healing more by the day. I had to laugh today because as I was working in A-ward, I realized every other patient in there knew her by name. Even the patients who were new to the ward. It's not because they know her history. How she was abandoned by her parents and taken in by her grandmother. How the last year of her life went from being moments from death to having the massive hole in the right side of her face being covered over by skin from her thigh. How her uncle has given up so much to be with here here and only having one other person besides Aicha that he can talk to in his own language. No, the reason everyone in A-ward knows Aicha is because of her bubbly, spunky, fighting spirit. This is definitely a girl familiar with the hospital setting. She no longer has her feeding tube in, but when it was in, she would give herself her own feeds. She would put on the syringe and draw back to see much of the previous feed was left in her stomach. She would push the medications down the tube. She would pour the food into the feeding bag and roll open the clamp to get the feeds to run. When it was finished she would let us know and she would flush the tube then go back to playing. I can't begin to say how funny this would be to watch. The day her tube came out was a big day on the ward. She had been wanting to eat for so long! Meals, even now, are an experience with Aicha. She can't eat rice because of her incision, so that doesn't sit well with her, but this girl likes to eat! If the meal trays are late, she will let you know. If she doesn't get enough, she will let you know. In the past year she has gone from perhaps a day away from death, to a bubbly, spunky little girl who knows what she wants and she will tell you. When you sit and think about it, it's amazing to see all the different people God has brought into her path, how far she has come and then to think about her future. She has one. What more is there to say?

Two Babies

So many times I have sat here staring at this blank page. I feel like there is so much to say but I don't know where to start. This past week especially. Such sadness and grief and so much joy all mixed together.

One of the tiny, tiny babies on the ward went home to be with Jesus. Obre had been with us for about two months. He came in with a bilateral cleft lip and was too tiny for surgery so he became part of the infant feeding program to be bulked up and have his surgery when he was at a safer weight. He became known as the "miracle baby". Some nurses and doctors had seen a miracle happen at one point when he was in the ICU. There was talk of putting him on a breathing machine and as the nurses were getting everything ready for it, the doctor and anestheologist stopped to pray. Before their eyes, Obre's oxygen levels began to rise. He didn't need to be intubated any longer and he returned to the ward. It was a miraculous healing. He was doing better for a bit, then last week he started to turn. His heart was having trouble and his breathing was even worse. He died in his mothers arms. Her only son. It's hard not to question why. To see a miraculous healing, then to have him taken. He is now fully healed and in the arms of grace and mercy and being loved more than anyone here on earth ever could. Please pray for his mother. I couldn't even begin to understand the hurt she is experiencing. This is a picture of Obre in the ICU with Jen, one of my friends and one of the great PICU nurses here on the ship.

Around the same time Obre came in to the hospital, Marius was admitted too. He too had a bilateral cleft lip and palate and weighed less than three pounds. He was also admitted to the infant feeding program and when we saw him after he came back for his surgery, he was a new baby. Nice and plump and ready to go! This chubby baby was ready! He had his surgery but was having trouble breathing as well. He ended up needing a trach to breathe through. I have to say, this is the calmest, most amazing baby with the biggest eyes. When I would walk into the ICU I would ask what they were giving him to make him so calm. Nothing. Marius would lay there, eyes wide open with his tiny little hand just holding his breathing tube. He wouldn't pull on it. This six month old would just lay there and look at you and just hold the tube. What I will always remember about Marius is his mother. The night they were putting in his trach, I saw his mother at the end of the hospital corridor. She was praying. More than praying, she was fighting for her son. Pounding on the wall, pleading for her sons life. You could tell she was in a hand to hand battle. She never stopped praying. In the ward she would pray over him. It didn't matter who was there, she would sing over him and pray over him like I have never seen before. Yesterday, Marius and his mother went home to Benin. Such a celebration! Sadness in seeing friends go, but such joy in healing! Here is a picture of Marius and his mother in the ICU.

Possotome

My spirit was filled this weekend. I traveled about two and a half hours east to a small town in Benin called Possotome. I went with three friends, Alainie, Jane and Hettie. There isn't much in Possotome. No waterfalls. No hiking. No large, grand scaled African adventures, but I came home more refreshed than any of those weekends.

We left late Friday evening after everyone was done with work and arrived at our hotel close to eleven. It was dark but even in the darkness you could see the beauty. Our hotel was right on the lake. They were in the process of building a dock into the lake and we grabbed a drink and sat out on the unfinished dock. The stars were amazing, along with the moon. I knew this was the start to a great weekend.

Waking up on Saturday we ventured to breakfast. Sitting there at breakfast we sat and watched some men making the boards for the dock. No power tools here. All power came from their hands. Splitting logs with axes and peeling the logs. So much work went into each board being made. At breakfast we planned our day, to find a fishing boat so we could go out onto the lake. We figured we would walk into town and see who we would meet. We went back to our room to get some things and while there we looked out our window to rain. Lots and lots of rain. It went from a sunny, humid day to torrential down pore within minutes. Plans quickly changed and we decided to go back to where we ate and wait out the storm there with some scrabble. By the time we ran back we were drenched! I love African rain storms. The amount of rain that can come from the sky is like nothing I see in Washington, and I have seen some great rain storms in Washington. The day quickly turned into a day of scrabble, tea and talking. Relaxing day for our souls!

That evening after the rain stopped we journeyed into town to see what we could find. The air was cool as it happens just after rain storms. Pretty much the only time you can go outside and not be immediately drenched in sweat. We knew Possotome, and Benin for that matter, was big on voodoo. We came across fetishes on our walk. There were statues made of mud and stick and shrines erected. Small skulls of animals tied around trees to protect the tree from vandals. Hollow is the only way I can really describe it. I prayed a lot on that walk.



Sunday morning we woke up and knew we had only a few hours to find a fishing boat. That was our goal for the weekend. We walked into town again and came across a group of kids playing foosball on the side of the road. We stopped and talked with some of them for a bit and asked one boy, ten years old, if he knew where we could find a fisherman to take us out in his boat. He said he knew as he took us down a road toward the lake. When we got to the lake we saw a boat tied up and he said it was his fathers boat and he would take us out. His friend, Francois, came along too, a boy of 18. We figured this would be a great adventure so we all climbed into the narrow boat. I don't know how the boat didn't flip. It was the rockiest boat I think ever made but they took us around to see the fishermen and parts of the lake.

They told us they had a coconut tree and asked if we wanted to see their house and have a coconut. Who would say no, so we pulled into some reeds and the young boy shimmied himself up to the top of the palm tree. He walked around up there like he was on solid ground and kicked down the coconuts. We put them into the boat and went back to where we started and tied up the boat. They took us up to their house and cut open the coconut and we drank, then they cut it open so we could eat the inside. I had another coconut moment like this a few weeks ago but I liked the taste of it so much more this day. Maybe it's because of the sheer randomness of this moment. These two young kids showed such hospitality. Their father walked by at one point and we all figured he was thinking, where did my kid find these crazy yovos! But there we sat, eating our coconut and as Alainie had said, this was a John 10:10 moment, living life to the full!







Driving back to the ship in a taxi Sunday afternoon, my spirit felt full. It was a weekend I needed to get away and have John 10:10 moments. To sit and play scrabble in a rainstorm, have an adventure with two kids, and most of all just talk and get to know three great friends.

Noma

I have seen pictures of noma before. I remember seeing pictures the first time I served on board and during my orientation this time, the same pictures. I didn't think I would really see patients with noma though. I don't know why I thought this. We are here to help and serve the poor and that is who noma affects.

Noma is a gangrenous infection of the face that spreads very quickly and leaves you severely disfigured. It starts, usually, as a sore in the mouth or as a small infection and it eats away at your face. It eats through skin, muscle, all the way to the bone. It thrives in poverty ridden places. Places of very poor sanitation and poor nutrition. The last time it was seen in the West was in German concentration camps.

A few days ago an 8 year old girl flew in from Cameroon with her uncle and a PA from a hospital there to meet up with the ship. She's a bubbly, outgoing little girl not seeming to be affected by all the yovos or being on this large floating vessel. She has been in and out of hospitals for the last year trying to get help so she already seems pretty comfortable in her surroundings. On the right side of her face is her bandage. It completely covers her cheek, up to her eye and right up to her lips. Yesterday the doctors took off her bandage and I couldn't believe what I saw. I was looking at this precious little girl with noma. It was like the pictures I had seen. No skin. No chubby cheeks. I saw right into her mouth. She still has her gums and some of her teeth, but when the doctors were talking, it hit me how extensive it was. She was sticking her tongue out of this hole and poking it with her finger. She has her mouth and now this other hole. How she is able to eat, I don't know. She has taught herself how to avoid this hole somehow so she can get the nutrients she needs.

She has had many surgeries before. Other hospitals have tried skin grafts and things but nothing has worked. It always excites me to hear Dr. Gary talking about what the surgeries will entail. Taking muscle flaps and manipulating them around to form chubby cheeks and thinking through the best way to give this little girl back normalicy in her life. Her surgery will be sometime this week so please pray for wisdom for the doctors and healing for this little girl.

Baby got back!

I have so much to write about but it seems like the days fly by so fast! I will share just a quick story now and try to write more this weekend since I will have a few days off.

I have been working now as a charge nurse which comes with its own challenges and moments of excitement. Yesterday was my first day shift in this position and I was getting pretty frustrated at the computer. I was trying to get all the new patients entered in and for the life of me I couldn't get the fonts to match or the size of the typing to do what I wanted. In the midst of all this I looked to my left and standing there was Monique, a four year old patient on the ward. She has become quite the cuddler. If a new person walks into the ward, she will raise her hands up to be picked up and held by anyone. I was working quite a bit of the morning with her on my lap trying to keep her from typing on the keyboard. At this point, though, when I looked over and saw her standing there I noticed she had a baby doll in one hand and her blanket in the other. When she knew I had seen her, she walked over to me and turned around. She proceeded to bend over, throw her doll on her back and hand me her blanket. As all the mommas carry them on their backs, Monique wanted to carry her baby on her back. I tied the baby on and obviously didn't do it right because she looked at me, looked down at how I tied it, looked up and me and back down, then handed me the other two corners of the blanket so I could tie it correctly so the baby would be better supported and wouldn't slip out the bottom. After it was all tied correctly, she went about her business as if she was the momma carrying her baby on her back. It definitely made my morning and helped to calm my frustrations a bit!

The wards can be pretty busy at times, but when you take the time to look around at all the different patients and see what each individual has to offer, it really is life changing!