it's all in the family

So here's a random post: ah, the Africa Mercy, it's a family affair sometimes. I was flipping through the transfer drive - this lovely intranet folder onboard where they take loads of pictures and let you share them anywhere, including private blogs, etc. Free marketing, right?

When I stumble on family pics - well, my godparents, being taken on a tour of the Africa Mercy when it was docked in South Africa.

                         Being shown the Africa Mercy's ORs

Uncle Niels and Auntie Marietjie!

Flight of the 990

The field service of the Africa Mercy is over for Togo 2012 and the hospital work has ceased, but the bustle of activity has only increased in preparation for our sail from Lome to Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Our captain has told us we're anticipating a ten day sail, fair weather most of the way, thank goodness 'cause I feel like the swaying is quite a bit! Thank goodness for friends, handrails, walls, doors, anything to hang onto while traveling up and down our hallways.

Some of the tasks we've been involved with in preparation of shutting down our hospital have included the infamous bleaching down of the wards (walls, ceilings, floors) that some of you are familiar with from previous descriptions from last year. We got to redo it again at the end of Togo but was quite a bit cleaner only having been a 6 month service this time. One of the more onerous tasks was sorting and scanning patient charts so they can be stored electronically. One way to make the time go faster though is to stick all the nurses in an empty ward with boxes of charts and playing Pirates of the Caribbean projected on the ward. Time flies when you've got good friends and Johnny Depp :-)

Did I mention we're sailing? And swaying. Swaying a lot! So there was loads of bolting things down going on, securing our belongings on top shelves that you don't want whacking you on the head in the middle of the night or landing on something breakable. I'm told the lack-of-balance thing will pass as soon as I get my sea legs. Our ship's physician has handed anti-seasickness tablets like they're M&M's and there's heavy black market trading in ginger tablets and ginger teas going on.

There have been several safety drills to prepare us for the sail, and two stowaway searches where every single nook and cranny of the ship are combed over in search of anybody trying to head off to a better life, and a lovely very $$$ fine for Mercy Ships should a stowaway be found entering Europe. Our doc joked that we can pay him for the tablets in M&M's and the captain said that if a crewmate is found stowing away a stray, the discovery will soon be followed by a Man Overboard drill - the offending crewmate having just volunteered his services! :-)

My favorite part of prepping the ship was watching the ship's jeeps being loaded onto the top deck of the Africa Mercy. It's quite exhilirating to watch a fleet of white jeeps swung through the skies and deposited onto the deck, to be parked and bolted down for the sail.

Nautical Nursing: Ghana and the Greater Mission Orphanage, Teschie

Nautical Nursing: Ghana and the Greater Mission Orphanage, Teschie: Trekking to Ghana      Friday at noon Becca Noland, Deb Andrews and I packed up and headed towards Ghana and a spectacularly adventurous wee...

Ghana and the Greater Mission Orphanage, Teschie

Trekking to Ghana

     Friday at noon Becca Noland, Deb Andrews and I packed up and headed towards Ghana and a spectacularly adventurous weekend. We travelled without much of a clue of where to stay or what to do, armed ourselves with Becca's prior knowledge of having been in the country and her ever-handy pepper spray.

     Backpacks, lightweight clothes and flip flops on we headed out of the Port Autonome of Lome, where the Africa Mercy is docked and bargained passage on a taxi to the border of Togo and Ghana, which is less than 10 miles away. What awaits you at the border I must admit frazzled me good. A hoarde - mob - of people pulling at you, offering to get you across the border (because my two feet won't work?), exchange your money to Ghanian Cidis, offer you marriage, wanting to give you a ride on the other side of the border, sell you eggs, bread, dried fish, anything. The mob yells and pulls in French, and the mob on the other side of the border yells in English. (At which point I conveniently forgot how to speak English and could wave people off with a "lo siento pero no te comprendo" :-) heehee.

     Once across the Togolese and Ghanian border controls, we got onto a tro-tro that headed to Accra, the capital city of Ghana and about a 3-4 hour dusty, bumpy ride away from the border. The sun was setting when the tro-tro pulled into Accra and I must admit at this point I was more than a bit nervous about it turning dark and our not having the slightest clue about where, in a city of 2 million people, we were going to spend the night. I had been sending up prayers for awhile pulling into the city. Well, we started off at the Accra Mall for food, and would you know it, up walk a couple of missionaries from YWAM in Noepke, in Togo, who both Deb and Becca had met onboard the Africa Mercy when they came to visit the ship the week before. We mentioned to them that we didn't know where we were going to spend the night and they promptly pointed out 3 hotels around the corner from where we were eating. We marched out in that direction, now late at night, past hordes of people and found a place to stay after only checking 2 different places. Whew. A safe place to spend the night.

     The next morning we headed off in a series of tro tro rides towards the Greater Mission Orphanage where Debra's kid's cousin works. Emily Marshall is her name and has been volunteering at an orphanage funded by Feed The Orphans. What beautiful little ones. There are about 46 of them currently. We spent the day playing with them, cuddling, getting our hair braided, singing songs and just generally loving on them. They claim your heart pretty quickly as they come running up to you, fling their arms around you and it's "mommy mommy mommy" for the rest of the day.

     We found a local hotel that night and a pool that we went to swim off the dust of the ages, that had glued itself onto us, and then Sunday morning returned to the orphanage to join in the Sunday morning church service they hold for the children. It was really encouraging to be there, seeing not only how well the children are doing, how well they are loved, but also at how many of them have been adopted! Maybe 8-10 children were already in the process, awaiting paperwork, judge's signatures, home studies, etc. There is even a brother and sister being adopted to a family in the US. One child's parents were 6 days out from arriving to pick him up, so there was a lot of excitement and hope in these little one's lives.

Debra and Emily

Don't ya just wanna eat 'em up?

Becca cuddlin'

    

     A lot of these little ones come from farther upcountry, some of them even have parents, but they get handed over to the orphanage in sheer desperation of poverty; they can't afford to feed and clothe them, let alone give them an education. Can you even imagine what goes through a parent's heart? What do you do when you have 8 children and can't feed them? Whew. According to Emily even the children who don't have parents who are wards of the State still have to have releases signed by any possible relative around - aunties, grandparents, brothers, for adoption. As African families are quite extensive, this also becomes an interesting part of the adoption process, all of it monitored through the Ghanian government to prevent child trafficking (also a big problem). It was interesting talking to the children and hearing about how they think it will be with their new families, what they've heard about America (or Germany) and hearing about how other children have settled in with their new families. Quite a few children are headed off for Knoxville in the next little bit, God-willing, so Deb is going to be able to visit a few in their new homes as well! Super cool.

New stamp in the passport :-)

I'm headed to Ghana for the weekend! Yeah! Big plans to visit an orphanage there where Debra's niece works and visit Accra, a YWAM base and general roamings and fun. Will let you know how it went when I get back, but please pray for safety :-)

Night shift and access to the transfer drive!

After a mere 3 weeks onboard I've finally found the ship's intranet file folder with the ships pictures of the nurses and patients, so I get to share now! It's night shift onboard the Africa Mercy, my bunkmate Annette from Switzerland is with me on D ward and Debra Andrews is manning B ward - quite masterfully at that :-) There's loads of snoring going on around me and pretty much only the babies are restless. Bless them, a lot of them have had their cleft lips and/or palates repaired and still have packing in their noses and can wake up pretty fussy... can't blame them. 

These two first pics are ones that I just love. Can you blame me? Patients and nurses.
Me and Hannah with two of our patients and our ward translator.

 General Surgery patients, nurses and translators. B Ward all the way!

This small boy has stolen my heart. His name is Assouma Tama and only speaks Tchokossi, which is one of the tribal languages from the northern regions of Togo. So our translators are quite ineffective against this. It cracked me up the other day when I asked his mama, via sign language... and I mean, not anything official, just motions... how it is his arm came to be in a cast - 'cause we didn't put it on on the ship. The lady three beds over cottoned onto what I was trying to get at, translated it from into Ewe for another patient to translate from Ewe to Tchokossi - long story short, he fell off his bike, but it took 3 translators! The translation came back to me in sign too; motions of bike riding with arms pumping, and boom! Giggles all around the ward. The surgeons fixed his lip and he's now fast asleep in one of the beds behind me, steristrips off, sutures out, and looking quite the handsome little fella.

Hougno, Komla and Maurice

Here are two beautiful boys we've been caring for awhile on the AFM. Komla, the little boy on the right, came to us after a mishap with a family bonfire. Children falling into fires is a bigger problem definitely than happens at home. His little leg was burned in the past and had scarred and fused together. I don't have pics, but pretty much his calf was fused to the back of his thigh so his knee was permanently bent... left foot almost level with his tush. Enter plastic surgery! And a loooot of physical therapy, some creative occupational therapy for splints and shoes, lots of time, prayer, dressings and games later and presto! We have a straight leg. After months of being onboard, both boys get to go home today!
Shown here with one of their nurses, Rinnah.

 Hougno is the boy on the left, who had a large tumor on his leg that pretty much made it resemble an elephant's leg. It's been reduced to almost nothing but still has some healing to go, as well as Komla's wound, so please pray for them as they return to their villages. Both boys have had delicate skin grafts that don't respond well to African dust (ha!) and teenage rambunctiousness, so they've had to stay on the ship to keep them clean.

I had to include the picture of this sweet munchkin, just 'cause I love the photo. This is baby Maurice and yes, that is a suture line around his right eye. Have you ever seen anything more precious? His nurse, Becca, says that little hand never leaves his mouth. 

for Elie- the Africa Mercy

These are beautiful pics of the Africa Mercy - In Lome, Togo, Durban and Cape Town, South Africa.