Urine is the Oppressor

The first two VVF surgeries were done today and the women are doing well and are dry! The day started of rough, which you will read about later, but it is impossible to not laugh and smile when you are with these ladies. Oh, how I love them!

I told you in my previous post about “the tree”, the place the women congregate. They lay their mats out and eat there and talk there and spend their days at this tree until it is time to be seen or have surgery. After the first woman left for surgery this morning I went over to that tree, my small book in hand which I am scribbling down the hausa I am trying to learn and attempted to talk with the ladies. My name in hausa is Sarahtou. I love hearing them say my name. Inakwana was all I said when I walked up and they started laughing and claping. I learned to say goodmorning, a change from yesterday when all I could say was sanu, hello. I have already learned more hausa in the few days I have been here than all the ewe I learned in my six months in Togo. Ina sunauki, what is your name. I am really bad at remembering names, but as they started telling me theirs I realized I would only have a few names to remember: Aicha, Howa, Mariama...if I say one of those three I will have a good chance of getting the name right.

Singing. I needed to hear them sing. After church last sunday, I needed more. The singing isn’t like what I have heard in Liberia or Togo. It’s not accompanied by the chicken dance or any other form of wild dancing. It’s slow and almost monotone. It’s really beautiful. I started moving my feet and clapping and they got the hint. I’m still trying to find someone to translate the words to the song they sang for me, but it was glorious. I could sit and listen to them sing forever. If they aren’t singing or telling me their names, we just smile and laugh at each other.

I feel like I have so much more to share but don’t know where to start.

For those of you who follow my blog, I wanted to let you know too that I received an e-mail today from Michael, Lovelace’s father. She went home to be with the Lord last week. I don’t know any details or how they are coping, but the last time Jane and I went to visit we had talked a bit about this time. He told us that he was never angry at God but that he trusted Him and knew that if Lovelace was going to be healed it would be and if she wasn’t going to be healed, then that would be. He trusted fully in the hand of the Lord and never spoke of anger or bitterness. She was loved so dearly here on this earth and I picture her now, asleep in the hands of God, no pain, no more dressing changes, she was a small girl who knew nothing but Love.

Under a Different Sky

I arrived in Danja yesterday and it feels like I have already been here for weeks. So much has happened and so many new experiences in such a short time. Niger is like no other African nation I have visited. The red dirt gives it a sort of pueblo feel. The red brick changes the color of the houses and the ground. I hear this July has almost set a record rainfall. I'm not surprised as it has poured the last two nights. Tonight I have only seen lightning but no rain yet. I'm sure it will come. The heavy rains are making the fields green which I hear is uncommon. Great for the crops though which this country is in need of.

We flew into Niamey, the capitol of Niger on thursday afternoon and stayed at an SIM guesthouse for the night. Yesterday morning we got up early and got on a small six seater plane. Dr Steve once asked what we were most afraid while planning for this trip. I said this plane ride. I was not looking forward to it but it turned out to be amazing. The takeoff was so smooth and to see Niger from the air was beautiful. Dry land, many small villages, small lakes, different types of irrigation for the fields, dirt roads and more dirt roads...

As we landed on the small airstrip in Maradi we passed many farmers tilling their land right next to the runway. When we stopped, people came to watch us. Going into this trip I knew modesty was a must, but almost immediately I felt like I needed to cover my head. I was wearing a long skirt to the ground but I needed to cover my head. I had made us all head coverings from fabric I saw at a VVF dress ceremony on the ship. It's of birds flying out of a cage, symbolic of the freedom these women receive with the new lives they get after they are dry. Long skirts and head wraps will be my clothing for the next two weeks. Within a few moment of landing, a man said he would have no problem finding us all husbands and yet a different man, as we were driving out, asked our driver were he was going with all these brides. We had to laugh.

Driving through Maradi and out to Danja took about fifteen minutes. On that drive we saw real cowboys. Small boys, maybe ten, shepherding their sheep and goats, but also sitting on large, very skinny cows, driving them. The real cowboys of Niger! We drove quickly around the hospital grounds and took a look at the VVF center being built. The walls are going up and it is amazing. I couldn't help but think of the women who will soon be using that center. It's a great gift to the country and such a need. During the flight into Maradi, seeing one, maybe two paved roads that whole time and seeing villages out in the middle of nowhere, it hit me again why VVF occurs and why we are here. The women in these villages, even if they wanted to go to a hospital for delivery, can't. There is no way to get to one. They would be walking for days, weeks. By then the baby would die and they would still end up with fistulas.

Today we got to work. We were told there were already some women here waiting for us by "the tree". They had been screened the last time Dr Steve had a team here and they are ready! My eyes teared up as we walked over to them. About fifteen women sitting on their mats waving as we walked up and smiling. I only know how to say hello in housa and that amused them as we shook their hands. I can not wait to get started! These women are sleeping on their mats under "the tree" just waiting. ..

Lindsay and I set up the ward with Mariama, one of the head nurses here working at the leper mission. We made their beds, cut black plastic garbage bags to use as pads on their beds and hung mosquito nets. Hanging the mosquito nets made me laugh. I never thought I would be here, hanging mosquito nets on beds to do VVF surgeries in Niger. At this moment, I would not want to be anywhere else though.

When we were done in the ward we helped Alainie and Ginger finish setting up the operating room. A few more things to do tomorrow and we will be set and ready for Dr Steve to arrive monday for exams and start surgeries on tuesday!

Here are a few more random stories of the last two days:

Today one of the guys working here took us to town to a "tea house". The tea house turned out to be a tea tent on the corner of a busy street. Maybe the best tea I have had. Spicy, had a good kick to it. The owner came and told us all the states he knew in the US and all the presidents he knew. A TIA moment at its finest (This Is Africa). Great place to sit and watch the city. Cows pulling carts, a man and a boy on a motorcycle carrying hands full of ginny hens? Women in their burkas. Men at prayer in a mosque. Trucks with too many people to count hanging on. Trucks loaded down and overflowing with goods. A gas station where you get gas poured into your gas tank from old glass or plastic bottles via a funnel. Sometime in the next two weeks I hope I make it back there.

After an afternoon out, it was dark as we drove back to the hospital. We were stuck behind a taxi coming up on a checkpoint. The taxi was full of women dressed in their finest. One woman was pretty glittery with all her sequins. We were stopped on the road talking about her sequins when a sheep slowly pops its head up in the back window from behind the back seat, looks around and slowly goes back down. We wondered if the people knew it was even there. It looked like a puppet. We all had a good laugh with that.

I'm trying to upload pictures on here but it's not working. Check back tomorrow and I will keep trying!

Danja

I thought I would take a moment to fill you in on my life after Togo. It's only the first two weeks after Togo, but that's a start. More to come later on my life after two weeks after Togo...

My time here on the ship is starting to wrap up and I can't believe how quickly the past six months have flown by! I leave two weeks from today and I feel like there is so much I haven't done or seen but those feelings are always swept over by the memories of the things I have seen and experienced and tasted and seen and touched.

In two weeks I head to Danja, a small town in Niger. I am flying there with three other amazing nurses I have met here on the ship. We will meet up with Dr Steve, the surgeon we had here on the ship for the season of VVF. He works with The Worldwide Fistula Fund and they are building a VVF clinic in Danja. When this clinic is complete they will have a 42 bed fistula ward! That is so exciting for Niger which is one of the worlds poorest countries and has so many women suffering with fistulas. Click here to see some pictures of the site and where it will be. Here is a picture I took from The Worldwide Fistula Fund website which shows the current SIM hospital and the outline on the left is where the fistula hospital will be.

Because the clinic is not yet complete, WFF partners with SIM, another NGO, which has a leper hospital on the same grounds where the VVF clinic is being built. They give WFF use of their operating theater a few times a year for two weeks at a time so Dr Steve can bring a team in to do surgeries. I will be working with Lindsay as a ward nurse while Ginger and Alainie will be working in the operating room.

Please keep us all in your prayers during this time. Pray for safety and health for us all. For protection from dehydration and the heat and anything man might throw in our paths. Please pray for the ten women who will be having surgery. For physical and emotional healing. That we all can meet the women where they are at.

Yovo Chicken

Last weekend I went back to Ghana with some friends. We went back to Wli Falls and this time climbed to the upper falls. It took about an hour and a half to get up. Scrambling up rocks and using roots to pull ourselves up. It was wonderful! A great weekend with wonderful friends.

After the waterfall we went and visited Lovelace and her family again. We decided to bring them some food so off to the market we went. It's nice to be out of the big city and in a smaller town market. People don't yell at you and you can just look around. You still get the occasional "Yovo!" but it doesn't seem to bother me as much. Fish, eggs, spices, rice, bread, fruit, roasted corn, palm oil... we were ready to surprise them with our purchases. We started down the road and came across a man selling live chickens... Yes! We walked away carrying a plump yovo chicken! There are many sad, scary looking chickens, but this was going to be a good meal, I could tell! We were all so full of excitement and laughter and we carried the yovo chicken to meet its new family.

When we arrived at their house, they were not there. Finding out from the neighbor boy that they were still at church, we waited for an hour and a half before they returned. We had been followed to their house by a small mob of children so we had plenty of kids to keep us occupied until their return.

They all pulled up in a taxi looking their finest from church, then my heart dropped. Lovelace looked lovely, but you could tell she's not doing well. She is now unable to walk because of the pains in her legs and hips. She is getting thinner as the tumors are growing. Michael, her father, has told us she is not eating much either. Esther, her mother, went and bought her a fan ice, ice cream in a sachet, and squeezed it into the corner of her mouth. She is so uncomfortable. We can offer ways to help her be more comfortable, but please pray her pain will go away.

Mighty Ships

On the sail here from Tenerife to Togo we were joined on board by a video team from the discovery channel in Canada. They were filming Mercy Ships for their show Mighty Ships. Tomorrow night, June 23, you can finally watch the show! For those of my friends not from Canada I am pretty sure you can watch it online. If any of you watch it, let me know how it is! We can't watch anything online from the ship. They were everywhere here...waxing the floors and setting up the wards, screening day and eating, we had video cameras filming us. I would love to see it but I will have to wait until I get home. Check it out!

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/Showpage.aspx?sid=13057

Knitting

I get asked what I do when I'm not working. Well, Tuesday evenings I go with a small group to the hospitality center to knit. The hospitality center is a place where patients go after their surgeries, if they are from far away, so they can come back to the ship daily or a few days a week for post-op appointments. It's a wonderful place for them. The wards don't have windows because they are below the water line. They get to go outside once a day to deck 7 for an hour. At the hospitality center they spend the majority of their time outside. They have room to run and play. It's a great place to go to hang out with the patients. I love going on Tuesday nights. I am never able to speak with the patients because there are very few translators there, but that's ok. Somehow you don't need verbal language to teach knitting.

Every week I think of Grandma Daphne, my grandmother who taught me how to knit. I know it would make her smile to know what I am doing with a skill she taught me. She was a wonderful knitter!

Faces of VVF

Before posting pictures, I want to share a couple stories of the VVF ladies.

First, Rosali. Rosali had her surgery and although she was dry, she was retaining urine. She wasn't able to fully empty her bladder after she went pee. She was taught how to catheterize herself as she was going to have to do this at home. The longer she was on the ship though, the more she was able to empty her bladder and the day she left she didn't have to catheterize herself anymore. Rosali went home dry and healed! The day she left I went to give her a hug and to celebrate with her. She gave me a hug then grabbed my hand and rubbed it on her bottom and exploded with a huge smile and loud laugh. She had wanted me to feel how dry she was and this brought her so much joy!

Then there is Adjovi. What to say about Adjovi... She occupies a corner bed and I can't help but smile and laugh when I look at her. She has had two surgeries already in the short time she has been here and although she is finally dry, she too is retaining urine like Rosali. Please pray this changes and she will be able to empty her bladder and not have to go home with catheters. She just makes me laugh though. Whenever I look over at her bed she is always sitting up talking. Talking to who? Maybe she's praying, but this woman likes to talk. She speaks Tchicossi, a dialect from the north of Togo that only one translator on the ship speaks. When I walk past her bed or she comes over to where I am, she will talk and I will nod my head and smile. She knows I can't understand her and I'll talk to her knowing she can't understand me. I love these moments of speaking but not having a clue what the other person is saying. It happens so often here with patients, with friends from other countries, with taxi drivers or people in the market. I think Adjovi just needs someone to talk to.

Here are some pictures of the ladies. Some are from the screening day and some are from the first dress ceremony on the ship when the women are dry and get a new dress and we celebrate!