This news story was filmed while I was working on the ship.  These are all the places and people I've seen and known.   If you were curious of what my life looked like in Guinea this captures it pretty well.  The catch is that this was filmed for a Belgium news station so it's not narrated in English.  There are a few interviews with English speakers.
http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/mediatheek/programmas/terzake/2.26015/2.26016/1.1517474

Here is a link to a story on the Mercy Ships blog.  This woman they speak of was a patient in the ward while I was there.  I had always wondered what her story was and after reading this I finally know.  While this is one story about a person with a cleft lip there are many just like it.

http://www.mercyships.org/hadiatou-the-girl-with-the-well-loved-name/

I'm home!  My time in Guinea was a wonderful experience.  I am so grateful for all the time I was able to devote to working on the Africa Mercy in Guinea.  I'm sure as time goes on I'll reflect even more on how the experience has changed my life.  As my service ended a few weeks ago I had some sad good-byes.  It was hard to leave such close friends behind.  I hope our paths will somehow cross again in this lifetime.  It's great to be back though.  Celebrating the holidays with my family was a great blessing.  Now it's time to move on to something new.  I have to find a job, and move.  Hopefully those things will happen sooner than later.
  Thanks for reading my blog.  I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences.

Final good-bye to my friends.  This was taken on the dock just before I left.

 Family Christmas.

While I’ve been here over the past month I’ve dwelled a lot on the parts of life here that are not so exciting or inspiring.  I’ve felt frustrated over the loss of much of the autonomy I had back home.  My choices of how I spend my time, where I spend my time, what I eat, where I eat, etc. have all been very limited here.  On a day to day bases life is basically the same-old same-old as a Mercy Ships crewmate, so it’s been hard to see the important things that have been going on here.  I’ve been overlooking what Mercy Ships really does for people.

  As an example, for the past month the hospital has designated an entire ward to treating women with vesico-vaginal fistulas (VVF).  You may not know what this is.  I didn’t until I got here.  A VVF is a hole that develops through the wall of a woman’s vagina during child birth.  This doesn’t happen to just any woman.  It is caused by both circumstantial and physical factors.  These women have little to no access to health care.  They mostly live in rural communities that are several days journey away from a hospital.  They have no health professionals nearby to aid in the delivery of their child.  Often these women are married at a young age, like 14, and have not fully developed.  The other women that are older may have poor nutrition and have not grown to their full stature.  These women that are small do not have pelvises that are large enough to deliver a child through their birth canal.  As a result of these factors when these women become pregnant they often times have difficulty delivering the baby.  The baby is unable to pass through birth canal, and can be stuck for several days.  While the baby’s head is stuck it is blocking off the blood supply to the wall of the birth canal.  Without blood supply the tissue dies and a hole is left behind.   In almost all cases the baby is lost.  In addition to the immense amount of emotional damage, these women are left with physical damage too.  The holes that are created run right through into the bladder and/or the rectum and therefore these women become permanently incontinent without medical treatment.

  The thing that grabs my attention the most about these women is the social stigma they face.  The incontinence is what pushes them out of their homes, families, and villages.  Because of the holes in their vagina they can’t control their urine and feces, so they constantly leak.  With constant leaking comes constant smell.  People don’t want to be around smelly people.  They are often rejected by their family and community because of their inability to function in normal life. 

  Mercy Ships tries to locate as many VVF women as they can when they arrive in the country.  They sent a screening crew into the interior of Guinea to evaluate women with incontinence problems.  Once enough women were screened and selected to fill-out the surgery list they were scheduled to be admitted to the hospital.  They arrived over a month ago.  When first they arrived they came in clothing that had been soaked in their own waste.  The smell was so strong that it permeated through the whole hospital.  I wasn’t even involved in caring for them, but I could still smell their presence.  It was hard not to be bothered by it.  I was challenged to remember that it’s not the fault of these women that they smell.  After showering and having their clothes laundered the smell was a lot more controlled.

   The surgeries have been going on for about a month now, and while there have been many challenges fixing these women, some have been healed and are now continent.  The amazing thing about these women is their joy and appreciation for being loved and treated like a normal person by the Mercy Ships crew.   Another extraordinary thing is that they have now found other women who have the same problem and have faced the same challenges.  Not only is the hospital a place for physical healing, it’s a place for emotional healing too.  Even if they’re not fixed yet you can tell that they are happy. 

  I have not personally cared for these women, except for one shift when I got floated to that ward, but from what I’ve learned about them I find a challenge for myself when come back home.  My challenge is to not be one of the many people that reject or ignore people with unsightly or unpleasant physical disabilities.  I think a common thing I do is blame people for their problem.  I think, “Why can’t they clean up better?” Or “Why would they let themselves be that way?”  It’s a strange human impulse to blame people for their diseases.  If only I had the wisdom to always consider that they may have no fault in their physical or mental disabilities.

  If you’re interested in learning more about VVF and the emotional struggle women go through with this disease you should check out the documentary “A Walk to Beautiful”  It’s very good.

Weekend out in Kindia

I have a week and a half left on the ship.  Crazy.  When I started 4 months ago I couldn't imagine there ever being an end.  Now it's just up ahead, almost in view.   As I mentioned in my previous post, things are really changing here.  Even more people left in the past week.   Our evening Dutch Blitz game crew is getting pretty sparse.  It's harder to find people to sit with at meals.  Those of us who remain have stuck together, but soon I will be another one to jump ship.  Over the holidays the crew (especially hospital crew) will be quite small because there will be no surgeries performed for a couple weeks.  All the patients will be combined to one ward.  Once the holidays have passed a new influx of crew will come to the ship.  I imagine this place will breath new life in January.
  Despite all the sadness of saying good-bye every other day the holidays have made ship-life fun.  This past weekend people put Christmas decorations up all around the ship.  There are Christmas trees, wreaths, ornaments, Christmas lights, and garland everywhere.  The international lounge where we have our church services is so nicely decorated that it almost made me want to cry.  It's amazing to be able to celebrate such an important holiday with Christians from around the world.  I'm grateful for not being in America right now.  There are too many distractions from the the true purpose of the holiday back home.  There's no talk of sales, toys, or new gadgets on the ship.  I think Americans could learn a thing of two from the Dutch.  They celebrate the Santa Claus part of Christmas on a different day than the celebration of Christ's birth. Today is Sinterklaas.  The day when the Dutch celebrate Saint Nick bringing gifts to the children of Holland.  I put my shoe outside my door last night and this morning I had a carrot in it.  I think the carrot was for Sinterklaas' horses, so it should have been what I put in my shoe last night. Oh well, at least I didn't get any coal.  Tonight Sinterklaas will even come to the ship. That should be fun.  Later this month on December 25th the Dutch will Celebrate Christ's birth.  I think this makes more sense that what we do in our country.
  Work is going well for the most part.  I only have 6 more shifts.  Hopefully they're fun and worthwhile.  There is one patient who has been with us since the hospital opened.  He has not been doing well.  About a week ago he developed meningitis as a complication of his surgery, and while he's mostly recovered from the meningitis he has a long road ahead.  His name is Abou and he's 16 years old.  He was born with a myelomeningocele (look it up) and the surgeons thought they could help him by removing it.  The surgery site took very long to heal.  He was leaking CSF for a long time and now he has a CSF drain to control his leaking.  The drain is only a temporary fix.  What he really needs is a shunt.  It would drain the extra spinal fluid into his abdominal cavity.  The surgery can probably be done on the ship, but it again would only be a temporary fix.  The shunts get clogged occasionally and can sometimes get infected.  The ship leaves Guinea in June and probably won't be coming back for several years, so there be no chance of us offering follow-up care for him if he has complications.  It's a sad situation all together, because he may not get past this.  His mother said this week that she didn't think she would see him leaving the ship.  We've had several 24-hour prayer days for him and it seems that God's answer is not to let him be healed at this time.  The crew is still earnestly praying for him and hoping that we can see healing on his body.  It'll hard for me to leave and not know his outcome.
  Other than those updates there's not much more to say.  Hopefully I'll get one more blog entry in before I leave the ship.

A picture of Bintou and me.  She's back home now and I miss her.

Some of the HOPE Center crew.  I can only visit this place a few more times.  Hard to believe.

 

Life is changing on the ship.  Over the past few weeks I've said good-bye to several friends.  The numbers keep thinning every week.  Of course there are new people coming in, but it will take time to build the same depth in friendship that I had with those that have left.  This is the hard part of Mercy Ships life.  You meet such amazing people and make great memories together, but we all come for different lengths of time so over and over again we say good-bye.  I'd love to believe that we'll all be able to reunite again soon, but most of us are from different countries and the probability of meeting again is low.  The moments of joy and excitement I've experienced with friends here outweighs the pain of saying good-bye though.
  Tim left the hospital.  It's amazing how quickly he has recovered.  About two weeks ago he got his trach out and he was able to speak for the first time in a while.  He didn't say much at first.  We had to prompt him a lot.  I think he was so used to not speaking.  One evening when I worked I heard my name called from behind me.  I was puzzled for a moment because it was a distinct African voice, but I didn't recognize it.  Then I looked around and there was Tim smiling and waving at me.  It was amazing.  Later that evening he was talking non-stop with his mom.  Him speaking is just one representation of how he has become a renewed person.  While we left the feeding tube in until he was discharged he started eating completely on his own.  One question I had asked him the night before his surgery was "Do you miss the taste of food?", and he said he did very much.  To have healed so quickly in 2 weeks that he can enjoy the taste of food again is so great.  He just wanted to eat constantly, he was always asking for another can of Ensure.  We only carry Vanilla flavored Ensure in the hospital, he drank that everyday about 8 times a day, and never seemed to get sick of it.  I'm sure he's getting some more variety in his diet now.  He left the hospital this past Wednesday.  He was discharged to the HOPE center so it's not an official good-bye.  I can still go and visit  him and his mother.  It'll be sad the day he officially goes home.  He's been with Mercy Ships since September.  I'm so excited for him though.  He will be able to enter his village a new man.  He will finally be able to participate in everyday life.  I can't even imagine what he will look like in a year when he has gained weight and his face has healed up.
  We celebrated Thanksgiving on the ship this past Thursday.  Really it was like any other day, except we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie for dinner.  It was delicious.  Since the crew is so international, not everybody celebrates.  I did get to tour a French naval ship on Thursday.  That was fun.  The ship was docked behind us for about 4 days.  It was a frigate that was about one third the size of our ship and carried a crew of about 100 men.  They offered tours through the ship.  They actually showed us around most of the space.  We got to see the engine room, the bridge, the galley, all their guns on deck and more.  I've never toured a working naval ship before.  Because of my father's affinity for ships, particularly naval ships, I think I have toured a decommissioned navy ship almost every summer of my life.  Those were always fun because I loved pressing all the buttons and pulling all the levers.  It was safe to do it on inactive ships, but on a working ship I had to resist the temptation.  Who knows what kind of damage I could have done.
  Here are some picture to leave you with.

 This is one of the funniest patients I've ever taken care of.  Her name is Bintou.  She is so full of life and sass.  Notice in the picture that she has a trachoestomy and feeding tube.  Her feedings were running while she posed for this picture.  Not much can slow her down.  I've never seen a patient so active with a trach before.  She has good reason to be active though.  Before her surgery she has a mass in her neck that was almost completely blocking her airway.  She had difficulty breathing especially when she slept.  Once the mass was removed and the trach was temporarily placed she could breath normal again.  Now the trach and feeding tube are out and she will probably be going home soon.  She has a husband, a 5 month daughter, and a 3 year old son to go home to.  I'm so glad we could save her life.

This is a picture of Tim about a day before he went home.  He's showing the muscles that he's finally gaining back.  We didn't have much to offer in terms of exercise equipment in the ward so I gave him 1 liter saline bottles to lift.  He loved using them to work on his biceps and triceps.

Friday morning brunch with friends.

Delicious food.

This week was a good week.  Tim’s surgery went better than we all expected, absolutely no complications.  While he did require several units of blood and ended up with some sore legs from the position he was laying in for 10 hours, he came out alive and on the road to recovery.  His face only needed minimal reconstruction, so he has a good chance of getting close to what he looked like before his tumor.  Currently he has a lot of excess skin sagging from his face, but over time the skin will pull back into its original shape without any surgery.  I wish I could see what he looks like a year down the road.  As for now I’m just excited to see that he can hold his head so much better.  He can smile now.  And soon he will have his tracheostomy and feeding tube removed because he will be able to eat and breathe on his own.  By his hand signals and frequent hand-shakes I can tell he is very grateful for how we have helped him.  Hopefully before I leave I’ll be able to hear his voice.

  Other than that great news, things are going well on the ship.  I am loving all of the friends I’ve made here.  There are so many amazing people from amazing places.  I often get side-tracked here.  Many times I’ve made plans for my day doing some mediocre activity alone, like reading a book, but then I run into a few people and before I know 3 hours have past while I’ve been talking to them.  Meal times often take 2-3 hours because I spend so much of the time talking with friends.  I’m going to miss that when I go home.

 My name badge.  This thing goes with me everywhere.

 Picture of the ship from the water.  I was returning back to the ship after a weekend away at one of the islands.  It was hard to get a good shot of the ship in one photo.