Thankful

Last year when I was living in Sierra Leone my sister sent me a book called One Thousand Gifts. It was a great book that helped me changed my outlook on my situation there. It helped me find joy in everyday things I encountered. In the stressors I had, I was able to think about and notice the little things which caused me to see each situation differently. It helped me to persevere through some difficult times.

Last Sunday I decided to start a list. I have been making a list of things I am thankful for. It has helped me change the way I have looked at some of the situations I encountered this week. As I started writing this list I kept having an overwhelming urge to write a list of challenges this week as well. I didn't. I needed to focus on the blessings of my days. Yes, there were days I just wanted to come home and crawl back into my bed, turn on my ac and sleep, but when you take the time to stop and look around, you notice blessings in the midst of challenges. Here are a glimpse of things I have been thankful for over the past six days:

• Having a flashlight on my phone
• I have not gotten malaria this year
• Packing nyquil/dayquil when I came
• Purple flowers growing among the corn stalks being harvested
• Patients being discharged to the village
• Dead earwigs
• Bananas erupting from their pods on the pigmy banana tree
• Moringa trees growing larger
• Women returning on time for their surgical appointments
• Ants marching creating veins in the sand
• A newly hired nurse
• Long walks home
• Skirts that make you walk a step slower
• Receiving two roosters as a thank you gift inside the hospital
• A finished malaria policy
• Kosai
• Old patients returning dry
• Watching people harvest their crops
• Women pounding their grains
• Listening to country music in the car
• With the windows down
• At night
• Turning down country music and rolling up the windows while passing through checkpoints
• Water filters that make brown water drinkable
• Friends who will protect me from bats
• Two hens purchased for the roosters so we can have eggs
• Air conditioning in my bedroom
• Watching patients doing rounds on each other--on the fresh post-op patients to make sure they are ok
• Losing patients but then finding them sitting under a tree in the dirt behind the OR
• Training nurses to take over my jobs
• Nurses who work hard
• Rice and beans for lunch
• Learning a new word in hausa and using it appropriately 
• Just standing in the pharmacy (the only room in the ward with air conditioning)
• Being told I can go to Niamey with Ashley to say goodbye
• The way the young patients wear their gowns
• Having my massive set of keys reduced by three
• Excitement by patients who are brought into the ward for surgery 
• Bottle of some sort of sugared nuts
• Chocolate in the grocery store
• Buying a purple shirt at Wrangler
• Witnessing an ultrasound of a patient who did not know she was pregnant
• Showing this woman her child inside her womb
• Seeing the tiny hands, feet, spine and all four chambers of this tiny heart beating inside her

Family

Yesterday we had one of the largest clinic we have seen. 30 women in four hours. Most were new women we have not seen before and the majority of them were scheduled for surgeries this month. We have a very busy month ahead but it's exciting to have so many women who will be able to come through our doors. For now they will be staying in the village where the village manager will be starting her literacy classes. 

Today there were two women who came to the hospital. One was here a few months ago and had surgery but she needed to return for a planned follow-up surgery. I walked her out to the village and when we were half way down the path, to the point where the women in the village could recognize the patient I was walking with, claps and yelling started coming from the huts. Many of the women recognized this patient from before and it was like a home coming. There was even one who jumped up and danced down the walkway to us so she could carry her baggage and give her a huge hug.

I love how the women become a family to one another. So many of them travel from one fistula center to the next hoping for a permanent cure and they get to know each other. The one who danced down the walkway to greet this patient I was admitting knew her from her previous surgery done here. Even on the ward it is incredible to watch the women and how they interact with one another. Not just with each other, but with the nurses. Last night one of the patients walked around to all the doors making sure they were closed tight and locked before the patients went to sleep. Another is sick with malaria and just feels awful. The other patients come, carrying their catheter bags, to help change the bed and pads of this women. They bring her water and talk with her. We are not short staffed with nurses and we don't expect this of our patients. We have never asked the women to do this. They do it because they know better than any of us what they are each going through. I watched as an older woman helped a girl about half her age use a pot to pee in because she had an IV running. When a woman returns from the operating theatre, there are patients on the ward who will make their own rounds. They will make sure the women have water or someone to talk to since they can not move in bed because of the anesthesia. They love each other and care for each other more than I ever could as a nurse. 

Food

I made a new friend. The boys who live next door lost their ball in a pile of bushes. The local boys they were playing with did not want to help them look for the ball because they saw two chameleons living in the bush. Most people here don't like chameleons because they think they bite. I don't know if Simon found his ball, but he did find this chameleon. I was in my house when he yelled for me to come out because he had caught one. It wouldn't be too hard to catch because they move so slow. 

I get a lot of questions about what I eat. This picture is bissap. I had it first when we went to Park W in April and I have been wanting it again ever since. Hauwa, my boss, picked me up some at the market. They are leaves that you boil and it makes a deep red, bitter tasting drink. Add some sugar and it's pretty amazing. 

In the mornings as I walk to work there is a small market right outside the hospital. Many people will stop and buy this, fanke. There is another fried ball like thing called kosai which I prefer to this, but it's more difficult to make so that will be for another days lesson. Ashley and I had a fanke cooking lesson this past Sunday. Hannatou, our translator in the hospital, and Hawa, one of the nurses, came to Ashely's place for the lesson. It's basically flour, yeast, sugar and water, then you fry it in oil. The kosai that I really like is similar and looks the same but it is made from bean flour. Add some yagi pepper to it and it's fabulous!

Moringa

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time now. I love that we hired a gardener/landscaper. He has been working here for a couple months now. What I didn't realize until yesterday is that I have been calling him the female form of his name for the last two months but no one wanted to correct me. I feel so bad. He just laughs and says ba matsala, no problem. He has done a great job landscaping the area around the hospital. I was really excited to talk with him about planting moringa trees when he was hired.

I first heard about moringa trees about ten years ago when I took a Mercy Ships class about tropical medicine and they spoke on moringa trees. These trees are incredible. They were basically created to grow here. Everything I read about these amazing trees calls them nature's medicine cabinet. One ounce of moringa contains 7 time the vitamin C found in oranges, 4 times the vitamin A of carrots, 3 times the iron of spinach, 4 times as much calcium as milk and 3 times the potassium of bananas. What else is there to say? I get so excited when I think about these trees and what they can do for this area of the world if people would tap into them. I can't wait for ours to get big enough to have pods. I read they can produce 400-1000 new seeds a year. Plenty to send all the women here home with some seeds! I have a great vision for these trees and the ways they can first help our women, and then teach the women how to take them home and help their communities with them.

So, my first talk with our gardener was about planting these moringa trees. Two days later he brought in about 25 of these trees to line the walkway out to the village. Yesterday we had our first moringa harvest and ate of the abundant leaves. Another great thing about moringa is how quickly it grows. Our trees were planted about six weeks ago and we are already eating from them. I have a book on all that you can do with the leaves and plants and pods. Everything from antibiotics to skin infections to diabetes and low blood pressure, anemia, diarrhea, water purification... the list continues of all the ways it can be used.

Moringa

Crops and Painting

On my walk home from work today Ashley pointed out how tall the crops are getting. I am 5'8'' tall so you can see the height. These crops are huge! We have been getting a lot of rain which is fabulous for the crops but not so fabulous for Niamey. If you have not heard, Niamey is flooding. It has completely flooded the SIM school there and they are having to look for another place. Please pray for Niamey and the flooding. It has left many homeless and destroyed many crops with the rising river. Check out the BBC news on it here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19384377

Last week we painted again. Again, when I told the women to paint whatever they wanted they giggled and just looked at me before they painted random shapes. I painted the picture in the upper right then they all started copying mine. I think I will make some postcards as samples and see what they do with those as far as copying them. I really love what they came up with!

I don't eat a lot of meat here. When I go home, one of my major food cravings is for Red Robin. Here, we pulled over and got guinea fowl from this guy. It was pretty pretty good. There are some things I continue to struggle with food wise. Meat is one of them. I was excited that when I bought this because  he cut it up and cooked it longer on the fire. When I took it home and started pulling if off the bone I hit a vein and blood came spurting out. Overall it was good meat, but I don't know if I will buy meat again here.

Painting

Painting on the ward

The other day was painting afternoon on the ward. First, it was the painting of the fingernails. Then we pulled out the paints, paper and brushes that my parents and Anita and Cal donated. Thanks! When I told the women what we were doing, they looked very confused and asked what they should paint. We told them they could paint anything. It took some time for them to get into it but when they did they enjoyed it and painted some great things.

A bladder stone

This picture was taken on a short trip I made here to Niger in 2010. It is a picture of an X-ray of a bladder stone which was in one of our fistula patients. This woman was transported to another hospital where she had it removed. We had to send her in an ambulance because she was very sick and we wondered if she would survive. She returned to the center two weeks ago and on Tuesday she was discharged home. Dry. She has had multiple surgeries for this problem and she is finally leaving happy! I love it when patients from my first trips here come back so I can see how they are doing.

Nurse Picture

My ward nurses

It's difficult to get lined up. Smiling is even harder for some. It always makes me laugh because you can be talking with someone and tell them you will take their picture and they automatically put their arms to their sides and don't smile. For many of the patients, if I want them to smile I ask to see their teeth and you will at least get half a smile. 

We started this week with a couple surgeries on Monday and that was all. By the end of the week we were all learning more about what it means that things happen best in God's time. Wednesday and Friday we had surgeries. The new moon is coming soon to signal the end of ramadan. Hopefully along with that we will have more women arriving for surgeries. Please pray for this.

If there is something specific you would like to hear more about, leave me a comment and I'll fill you in on what you would like to know more about.