ali's african adventures

I've been in Liberia long enough to really embrace the TIA philosophy. This is Africa, we say, shaking our heads and grinning as things unfold differently than they would in the developed world. This past week, I went on a short holiday that just screamed TIA. It was nothing short of hilarious.

The wards are well staffed right now. Dr. Gary comes back this week, so we're going to have to open up another ward to house his patients and things are going to get busy again. But for the time being, things are good. Since I've been here six months now, my boss suggested I use my vacation days and take a break. I jumped at the chance, and my roommate, Maria, and I booked a little cottage on a beach about half an hour away from the ship. We knew we weren't getting terribly far away (you can see the ship from White Sands Beach, where we were staying) but being off the ship, if only for a day or two, and deciding our own schedule was an opportunity too tempting to resist.

As we packed our things to leave, torrential rain battered the ship. Undaunted, we pulled on rain jackets, popped open umbrellas and piled ourselves into a battered yellow taxi. We took off through the pouring rain, stopped at the bakery for provisions and arrived to White Sands in triumph. To find that Ellen, the owner of the place, was in town. With the only key to the cottage. TIA. So we sat on the porch until the rain got too serious, at which point we retired to the empty bar where we sat some more. About two hours later, Ellen arrived to unlock our little haven.

It's a little round, concrete building. Maria, my lovely Kiwi friend, called it the killing shed, noting that all it lacked was hooks from which to hang the newly slaughtered meat. One corner houses a bucket-flush toilet and a little nook for showering from another bucket. In the main room, a double bed, a couple chairs and a little table makes up the rest of the furniture. A single, dim green bulb was frighteningly wired to the ceiling, promising at least a little light once night fell. We spent the remainder of the afternoon lazing on the bed, reading books and chatting as the daylight faded. Dinner was a quiet affair; chicken and chips in the still-empty bar, after which we pulled chairs out onto the sand and watched the dark ocean, drinks in hand. We retired to our killing shed. exulting in the fact that we were off the ship past eleven at night, and fell asleep to the sound of the rain drumming on the rooftop.

The next day dawned grey. Rain came in gusts, so we lounged in bed for a while until a break in the wetness when Maria dashed out to ask for hot water for our tea. One of the workers returned with a huge tray of toast, eggs, tea and coffee. In short, all the breakfast ever. We feasted. The rest of the day was spent in a languorous haze. Every time the rain stopped, we ran out of our cottage, exploring up and down the beach, hunting for crabs, watching fishing boats and swimming in the choppy ocean.

As evening fell, we retired once again to our now-familiar bed to read short stories to each other, our favourite pastime during those rainy days. We were happily ensconced in our sheets and blankets when we heard the hum of the generator starting. Our light bulb flickered on, casting its sickly green glow over the room. Almost immediately, we heard a popping noise as the light flared to a brilliant, blinding white. And then shattered. Tiny shards of green glass covered every corner, blanketing the bed and embedding themselves in our hair. After the initial exclamations of Lord, help us! we sat in stunned silence for a moment before breaking into uncontrollable laughter. TIA.

We shook out our bedding and crawled around the room collecting pieces of glass for about fifteen minutes before Ellen, our hostess, showed up. She came to help us sweep, and we were happily employed at that task when we heard the same popping sound again. We looked over at the fan as it started to glow orange and then caught fire. We screamed, Ellen shouted something unintelligible and practically commando-rolled over to unplug the red-hot unit. It was only then, after everything electrical in our room had committed fiery suicide, that she informed us that they had hooked up a new generator that night. It was making too much current, and things were blowing up all over the compound. Maybe we shouldn't have turned on the light. TIA, baby. We spent the rest of the evening happily employed in playing cards and reading stories by the cozy (and much safer) light of a kerosene lantern, falling asleep again in the hopes that our final day would be a sunny one.

True to form, it wasn't. When we woke up, the rain was bucketing down, and we resigned ourselves to hours more of cards and books and laziness. Not a bad deal, honestly. It was wonderful just to be away from the constant thrum of the engines and the inevitability of constant human interaction that defines this ship. I do love people, but being away from them at times provides such a welcome refreshment. Plus, I can't think of anything I'd rather do in the pouring rain than lie propped up in bed with a good book and a hot cup of tea.

Just before lunch, the rain stopped. We ventured outside and were met by our first glimmer of hope; a sliver of blue sky just above the horizon. Emboldened by this promise, we applied sunscreen, put on our suits and prepared to enjoy a real day at the beach. We were not disappointed. The sun gained strength, the clouds scudded away across an ever-bluer sky, and soon we were having to reapply that sunscreen. Joined by some friends from the ship, we played in the waves and lounged on the beach until the growing rumble in our tummies reminded us that it was almost time to get back to the ship. We packed up, passed out our extra supplies of milk and water bottles to the security guards at the compound, called our faithful taxi-driving friend Alfred to come get us, and bid a reluctant farewell to our killing shed. We arrived back to the ship, triumphantly sun-kissed and confused all our friends by trying to explain what a wonderful time we'd had. At the beach. In the pouring rain.

There are some vacations that you'll never forget. I'm pretty sure this was one of them.

(The rest of the photos are here.)

Sorry for the rather protracted silence. I just finished a run of four night shifts and I'm now on holiday for the next week and a half. My roomate and I are braving the rainy season weather to stay a couple nights in a little cottage on the beach, and I might go up country for the weekend.

It might be a while before you hear from me again.

It's hard to know what to say when faced with the death of a baby. What can I possibly offer to a mother who has just lost her heart? What words can I say that will blunt the searing pain? And what comfort can I give when that mama is faced with the sight of her son's bed, occupied by another small, brown baby, one who is sitting up and smiling at the world around him?

Marion came to visit me today. She's something of a celebrity around here, and it took me almost fifteen minutes just to get her down the stairs to the hospital as almost everyone we passed stopped to say hello. As we walked down the hall towards B Ward, she was all smiles, laughing and greeting her friends, nurses, translators and disciplers. It was only when we were inside amidst the bustle of a full ward that the flood of memory overwhelmed her. I stood there with my arm around her tiny shoulders as tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She turned twenty-one yesterday. She's a child herself, and yet she stood there, mute and small, mourning the loss of her third baby.

We turned away and went upstairs to eat lunch. We sat at a table by the window as she pushed the rice around her plate and told us about a dream she'd had. In it, she was out walking. Or working. She wasn't quite sure. People came up to her one after another and told her what a fine baby she had. Asked her how he was. She repeated to them over and over that she didn't have a baby. That he had died.

No, they said, he's right there. He's right there on your back. That was a good dream, we agreed.


Bendu, the sassy-pants who was burned after she had a seizure and knocked over her kerosene lamp, was back for a dressing change in our outpatient clinic. She and Marion became close while Baby Greg was still with us, so when Bendu's appointment was finished I signed her back in as my visitor too. We passed the rest of the afternoon like any silly twenty-something year old friends. We wandered around the ship, ate grilled cheese at the cafe, tried to call friends in Canada and hung out in my room for a while, laughing and filming video messages on my camera.

Weeks ago, as we stood by Baby Greg's bedside, watching him fight to breathe, Bendu told me that she was very sad. I asked her why, and she went on to tell me that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. She didn't meet my eyes as she gently touched the warped, pink skin of her cheek and forehead. Quiet tears filled her eyes and as she explained that no man would want to marry her, not given the way she looks. So I will be alone. That is what makes me very sad.

Marion is a woman living under the shadow of curse. The longer I spend here in West Africa, the more aware I become of the reality of spiritual warfare. It's easy to be in my comfortable room and scoff at the idea that words could have such an effect on someone's life. But then I leave this room and go out and sit with Marion in her house and I am utterly convinced that this battle is so much bigger and so much more intangible than I could have imagined.

Given all this, I was struck today at how normal the day was. I think I expect women who have lost babies and been terribly disfigured by burns to be somehow different. More sedate, more aware, in a way, of the cloud surrounding them. But apart from the small moments when they retreat into themselves, lost in worlds of pain I can only guess at, Marion and Bendu are you and I and any woman ever. They're maybe more broken, a little more shattered, but underneath the scars and shining through the tears, I can so clearly see their love.

I want to love like this.

Life has been fairly busy recently. With one thing and another, it's been months since I've gotten out of Monrovia, so I jumped at the chance to join a group of about twenty to headed for Bong Mines today. Once a site for mining iron ore, it was destroyed during the war. Since then, the structure is slowly being taken apart by locals who sell the pieces as scrap. Groups generally head out with a dayworker from the ship here, Odacious, a man who was working at the mine the day the rebels came through and killed almost everyone. We, however, signed up for the Action Adventure Tour. Led by the ever-fearless Carl and Lourens, our Australian and South African guides, we didn't do things in quite the usual style.

The trip did start out with the traditional train ride. We backed the Land Rovers onto a flat bed, hooked up the engine and took off through the Liberian bush. In the absence of rain, people climb on top of the cars and sit there to enjoy the view. In our case, it was pouring. Phil, Todd and I thought about it for a minute or two, realized we were going to be wet for the rest of the day anyway and climbed up to perch on top of the spare tire on the roof. We sat there, pelted by the rain and watched the countryside flash past like something out of a theme park ride.



When we got too cold on top of the Land Rovers, we climbed back down and into the back cars of the train. No more than big metal boxes with an inch or two of gravel and muddy water at the bottom, they did provide a little shelter from the wind. When the rain stopped, other friends joined us, and we played around in there for the rest of the three hour journey, getting thoroughly wet and muddy. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. Once you've gotten filthy, you're ready for whatever the rest of the day might bring.



What the rest of the day brought was a whole lot of wandering. We stopped at the traditional spots and saw the decaying mine structure and a gorgeous view of the lake from on top of a mountain. This, however, was the Action Adventure Tour, and soon Carl decided it was time for it to live up to its name. We started off in search of a view which he promised us was just around the bend and up the mountain a ways. After a while bushwhacking through ferns and thorn trees and serrated vines that apparently grow about six inches high and perfectly parallel to the ground, we came to the top. Which was a little outcropping of land in the middle of a dense forest. With no view whatsoever.


Not to be daunted, we headed back the way we came, pausing only to pick and eat fresh guavas and crawl through a cool, green tunnel of ferns that had grown up taller than our heads. We piled back into the cars and drove off through the mud and rain to another lookout point. It was at this point that Carl got a gleam in his eye, turned to Lourens and said, Want to see how far we can get? "How far" turned out to be up the mountain even more, through more mud and rocks and rain until we stopped at the top of a steep, rocky slope with an incredible view across the valley.

Away down the mountain, barely visible past the tree line and what looked like a deep gully, the boys spotted a waterfall. The nurse in me almost had a heart attack when the fearless leaders and Phil headed down the scree to see if they could reach it. I briefly considered yelling for them to come back and then, remembering that my health insurance does indeed have coverage for 'repatriation of mortal remains,' I took off after them.

I have never been more scared. There was no good way to get down, so I resorted mostly to sliding as rocks tumbled all around me and I prayed that I'd be able to stop at the bottom. Which I did, quite neatly and with only one or two extra bruises. The payoff was well worth the fear. Cool, clear water rushed down over red rocks stacked on top of each other away up into the jungle. Trees met overhead to form something like a cathedral, right there in the Liberian bush. I could have stayed there for hours.


We finally made our way back through the jungle and up the rocky slope to pile, exhausted, into the cars. We drove home over rutted dirt roads through the gathering dark and yet-again-pouring rain. It was a day well spent.

(Lots more photos are here.)

There are some moments as a nurse where you just shake your head and wonder why on earth anyone would want to do anything else. Today was one of them.

Bush is two years old. His mocha features are framed by a puff of curly hair that smells faintly of earth and herbs. He's not terribly afraid of white people, and stickers work well as bribes for swallowing medicines. In short, we're pretty good friends.

Or so I thought.

Our peaceful relationship ended about halfway through my shift today when I realized that I had to change his bandage. Bush had surgery on a very delicate area of his small body, and men, even two-year old men, are fiercely protective of this particular part. My laughing friend turned into a screaming banshee, requiring three grown adults to hold him down as I delicately took scissors to what seemed like a cast of gauze and tape wrapped around his manly bits. Kevin, the nurse I was training, had poor Bush on lockdown and I was starting to make pretty good progress with the bandage removal when Bush's screams suddenly formed themselves into words.

Hey man! Leave it! Mah toto! Don' cut it! Don' cut mah toto! Mah toto!

At which point I had to put down the scissors so Kevin and I could dissolve into laughter. If you've never looked into a two-year old's eyes and soothingly said I won' cut your toto. It alright, man. You alright. I won' cut it, then I submit that you are missing out on the true fullness of life.

This is what a birthday looks like in Liberia.

I turned twenty five yesterday. When I woke up for community meeting, I was met by two bleary-eyed roommates, a pile of balloons, a plate of made-from-scratch raspberry muffins (which tasted amazing despite looking slightly gory) and a six-pack of diet coke. Over the course of the day I got a chance to visit with Marion (which I'll write about later), ate a fresh birthday coconut and delicious African food, played touch rugby, went for a swim in the pool and just hung out with friends who have become family. I will submit that birthdays don't get much better than that.


Or so I thought. Because the mail came today, and in it were two boxes for me. One contained all the music ever and a drawing from my little cousin Cammy. The other was possibly the best package ever, for reasons which follow in an itemized list. (Click the photo to see what I'm talking about. I numbered it all to make sure there's no confusion.)

1. Comfy t-shirts are my uniform around here. Adding one more to the pile is always a good thing.
2. The kids on the ward go absolutely nuts for colouring books and crayons. Come to think of it, half of the sixty-year olds do too.
3. Perfect size candies for bribing small children with.
4. Speaking of going nuts, the patients play Uno like it's their job, but there's only one set of cards at the moment, which means that squabbles sometimes erupt. Not any more!
5. Pajamas. I need not say more. (Especially since I wore jeans the other day and no less than eleven people asked me where I was going so dressed up. Apparently I've stopped trying.)
6. A happy birthday napkin is cheery yet also so practical! I'm sure I'll need to mop something up around here soon, given the rate at which I spill things.
7. This is my favourite kind of gum! They used to have it at the ship shop and ran out a couple months ago. My stash has just been effectively replenished.
8. We also just ran out of post-it notes for phone messages in our cabin. This bad boy even has a magnet on the back, just like everything else on this ship. Perfect.
9. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm absolutely obsessed with coloured markers. I label things. I write signs that get posted all over the ward. I use them in any way possible. Now I have an entirely fresh pack, just when the ones I brought with me from home have started to go dry.
10. And who doesn't love gummies? My roommates and boyfriend, apparently, aren't numbered among the haters, since I'm sitting here looking at suspiciously half-empty bags at the moment.
(Please note, there was also a pair of flip-flops in the box, but they didn't make it into the photo because they were already on my feet.)

Colleen and Pam - a thousand thanks. What an absolutely amazing surprise.

And to everyone else at home and elsewhere who took the time to send a card or write an email or message me on Facebook - being 4,500 miles from home has never felt so good. Thank you.

I feel like I don't know anyone on the wards these days. The last of our long-term plastics patients have been packed up and sent home (just in time for Dr. Tertius to come back in a couple weeks), and Greg is with Jesus. The surgeon we have at the moment has been doing lots of hernias, who only stay overnight after their operations. Hardly time to forge deep, meaningful relationships.

Relationships like the one we have with Joanna and her daughter, Angela. Joanna is better known as The Queen of Mercy Ships. It's a well-earned title; she's been a patient every time the ship has docked in this port. During this outreach, she received a skin graft to cover a chronic ulcer on her leg. The graft failed and she spent long weeks enduring painful dressing changes and more surgeries. At some point in the process, her daughter, Angela, came to live with her. In an endearing role-reversal, Joanna (the caregiver) slept in the bed while Angela (not a patient, but definitely not old enough to be running any kind of show, despite her own best efforts to the contrary) camped out in her little cave underneath. My roommate, Jenny (who I'm eagerly looking forward to working with again next year in Benin, and I'll try to limit my use of parentheses from this point forward), left today, and Joanna and Angela, long since discharged and living at home, showed up to say goodbye. That's Liberia all over. It doesn't matter how far you have to come or how hard it's raining (forgive the parentheses yet again, but one of my favourite moments of the day was when Joanna looked around at us, huddled on the dock like drowned rats, and suggested we move under cover because this rain is getting too serious, a phrase which perhaps loses a little when taken out of Liberian English), relationships are hallowed.

Still, these stranger-patients manage to have an impact. I was at ward church this morning when a man stood up to give testimony. He was well-spoken, a college professor in fact, and he wanted to let us know that he was grateful. He plans to write a report on Mercy Ships and send it to Dr. Gary when he gets back from his vacation. In it, he's going to explain how he came to screening and was told that there was no doctor to do his surgery. How he went back home and laid the problem in God's hands, trusting that he would be taken care of. How a doctor then came and he was called back to the ship to receive his surgery. How the doctors and nurses work with joy in their eyes and love for their patients so evident in what they do. How he's traveled many places but never been treated as well as he's been treated in the one day he's been on the ship.

How Mercy Ships lifts burdens from bodies and from spirits.

This may have been just what I needed to hear. Because it comes hard on the heels of losing my little man, when all I can think is that we've failed. Failed Marion, failed her family, failed to make an impact. Failed.

I have to remember, though, that that man has been with us for just under two days. He's seen us love for less than forty-eight hours. We had Marion and Greg with us for over a month. A month of days filled with countless moments of care and compassion and pure, unfettered love. I can't help hoping that, once the raw edges of this terrible grief have been worn down some by the passage of time, Marion will be able to look back to this month and see Jesus. Not nurses and translators and crazy, hare-brained schemes to keep a little boy alive. Just Jesus. Arms stretched wide, love poured out like rain.

It is raining all around me.
I can feel it; it's a lot of rain.
I ask Jesus to send more rain.
Until we are filled,
Until we are filled
With a lot of rain.

The past twenty-four hours have been so hard. I've lived the last ten minutes of Greg's life over and over in my head, staring at the ceiling all night long as I fought back the panic that threatened to overwhelm me when I turned out my light. But there's something utterly strange about this community I live in. I seem to be among people who have forgotten that our world is broken beyond recognition. Or, at the very least, if they do realize, they've chosen to live as though it were whole.

You see, grace has been poured into my spirit from every source imaginable. In the moments after Greg flew last night, there were a hundred things a nurse needed to do; I've done them all so many times before. But I was given the gift of being able to stay with Marion as long as she needed me while so many loving hands swaddled Greg and wrote out the death certificate and cleaned up his stuff and got Marion's bags packed for her. Hugs and sad looks and pats on the back and genuine, sincere questions about the state of my heart have bombarded me from every side. We have cried and laughed and prayed together, and I can't help getting excited for heaven. If this is 'a foretaste of glory divine,' Christ can't come back fast enough.


In the midst of it all, there's another, wild note in my soul; spilling out past the raw hurt is a kind of pure, fierce joy. I realized at some point as I sat there and sobbed for Marion's broken heart and my own that the pain I'm feeling is a privilege. I grew up in a country where I was safe, secure, loved. I've never known war (not really), and I've never watched my life fall to pieces in front of me. I have no idea what it truly means to hurt. Marion does. Every member of her family does. Grampa said it last night, his words halting and small. We have all lost someone. Every time, there is someone who can die.

I count it a joy that my heart feels like it's been shattered. It means that it's still soft, and it means that my life has been blessed. I must live the rest of my days in the light of that blessing.

I am utterly undone.

Baby Greg, my little Baby Greg, went to be with Jesus this evening. As I sat there on the bed next to him, in the time it took me to put a new monitor on his little toe, he seized the small moment that I was in the dark and slipped away. No fighting. No flailing. No fuss. He just. Stopped.

A thousand moments run on an endless loop in my head. Marion, brought into the empty ward where I waited for her, seeing my tear-stained face and falling to the floor, my arm the cushion for her head as we laid together and sobbed. His little mouth and nose and fingers, still and peaceful. Finally. Walking with him in my arms, a red-blanketed bundle, down the gangway and into the waiting car. Driving through the Liberian night, using my body to shield his from the jarring roads, errant lights from passing cars illuminating the curly wisps of his hair. Sitting by the light of a single candle, the flame still in the airless room, as all around me people cried quietly. Greg in his Grampa's arms, stripe-socked feet sticking out of the bottom of the blanket, as Grampa rocked him back and forth back and forth, crooning soft words in Kpelle.

Some of the children got to go back.

God, why?

Why are we left here with hearts poured out like water on the world?

Dr. Gary, our chief medical officer on board, is in Wales at the moment. He just did an interview with All Things Considered on the BBC. He gives a great overview of Mercy Ships and paints a little picture of what it's like to live and work here. About half an hour long, but totally worth checking out, as he has one of the more amazing hearts I've ever come in contact with.

Enjoy!

(It's only available until the thirtieth of July, so it's not my fault when the link goes defunct after that!)

My Granny just wrote me an e-mail and asked for an update on Baby Greg. It's funny, really- I've lost sight of the fact that there are people in the world who don't eat, sleep and breathe this situation. People who have to wait and read a blog entry before they know what's going on. I've become so entangled in his small life that I don't know that I'm ever off duty anymore. It's draining, and I know I've said this before, but I'm tired. I watch my fellow nurses getting days off and playing with their patients and having fun at work, and I'm wishing myself back to the days when my biggest worry was whether or not my little ortho patient was going to wipe out on her crutches.

Baby Greg has been up and down the past few days. He rarely has two good shifts in a row, but he's starting to gain weight and his breathing is markedly improved when he's able to tolerate being off the CPAP. (A photo of which I have included just so my esteemed PICU colleagues can laugh at my creation; it might not be pretty, but it gives him PEEP!) His g-tube isn't leaking like it used to, and we're working on getting him a different one from the States. He needed a transfusion yesterday; the charge nurse jumped at the chance, left the ward to donate and then came back to finish her work just feet away from where Greg was receiving her blood. The ship has taken Baby Greg under their collective wing, praying for him non-stop, twenty-four hours a day. All these little details and myriad more swirl and mix and have become second nature to me; reciting them comes as easy as breathing.

Phil came to visit the ward last night and hung out with Baby Greg for a little while. I was talking about it all with him over cinnamon toast at some point during the shift (which has stretched on so long I've absolutely lost all concept of time). Ever pragmatic, he just patted me on the back and told me not to worry. I can see why you're attached to him. It makes sense when he looks at you like he does. But just keep serving. You'll find your inspiration again.

Right now, I have to smile. Because it just happened. He's had a good night, honestly. He's slept comfortably most of the time, only thrown up once and never had the panicked look of a baby who can't get enough air. (That look breaks my heart every single time he brings it out.) About an hour ago, he decided to wake up and be angry. I changed him and patted his back and snuggled him on his side and did all the things he usually likes. No dice. So I climbed into his bed and pulled him into my arms. Whereupon he put on little hand on my chest and immediately fell asleep. And I was left there in the dark, my heart a puddle in my chest.

I'm in Africa in the first place because God told me to pour out my soul. To kick over my heart and let everything spill out. I remember talking about this with my youth group girls last year. We all came to the conclusion that we should go to bed every night absolutely empty, completely poured out on the world and relying on God to fill us up again for the next day. I'm wondering whether or not this is the first time I've really managed to do it.

I've never been on this side before.

I just got an e-mail from my mother. My cousin, Katie, has a rare (one in more-than-a-million rare) lung disease. She's been stuck in limbo, waiting for the one thing that has a shot at saving her life. Last night, a pair of lungs 'came available.'

I've never been on this side before.

I've been in the PICU, trying in vain to keep the soul of a teenager from slipping away, only to have to turn to her parents with useless words of comfort. I've held sobbing mothers as they agonize over the decision to give pieces of their child's bodies away to utter strangers. I've helped to get kids ready for transport to the operating room, given fathers a chance to say their last goodbyes as we push their flesh and blood away down the hall to be cut and sorted and distributed.

I've never been on this side before.

Reading those words, they have a pair of lungs for Katie, was an immediate rush. Joy like I've rarely known it. I dropped to my knees, praying that they would be compatible, that her body would withstand the operation, that her life would be spared. Hoping against hope that this is yet another miracle that's been granted in my life.

I've never been on this side before.

The only thing I know is the shock and anger and pain of losing someone dear to me. The strange, almost eerie realization that someone I love has become replacement parts for another. The coming to terms with the fact that someone else is seeing through eyes that used to shine at me from across a hayloft at my Grandpa's farm.

This will take some getting used to.

I sometimes catch myself bitterly regretting the fact that I grew up in North America; the sad reality of American life is that we have completely forgotten what community looks like.

When I first started work here, I was amazed by the little 'families' that seemed to grow on the wards. As the beds filled up, patients started to band together, joined by the bonds of age or dialect or physical deformity. It was a joy to watch former strangers talking and laughing like old friends, but I figured the party atmosphere would taper off as the patient dynamic changed. I was wrong.

Actually, it's becoming fairly standard procedure for me during a shift to stop what I'm doing, look around me, shake my head and smile. I can't help it. The wards are full of gangs. We've had the B Ward Boys' Club, made up of three long-term guys, all in for complicated wounds. By the end of their stays, it was a common sight to find Henry holding the gauze for Andrew while he had his dressing changed. We had The Eight-Year Olds, a little mob I'm tempted to put in all capitals, if only as a lame attempt to show just how explosive that group really was. They rolled together, encouraging each other during wound care and stealing crayons in less philanthropic moods. Recently, it's been The Girls. Young mothers and a token single woman, they plait one another's hair, pass children back and forth and have real, honest-to-goodness sleepovers, mattresses and beds pushed close together, stifling giggles long into the night.

I've never gone through a shift without watching one of the patients look out for another one in some way. They translate for each other. They comfort each other's crying children. They pray for each other. They share food and stories and lives, and I've never once heard a complaint. Because this is what community means. It means living in a hospital bed in a windowless ward along with fifteen-odd strangers and not batting an eyelash when one of them throws up on your foot. It means sitting in a circle and cutting string to make friendship bracelets all afternoon long, laughing and joking with the white girl who thinks she can speak Liberian English. It means taking a child away from a tired mother and feeding him from your own plate.

I forget sometimes that our patients didn't know each other before they came to the ship. They ease so gracefully into this strange community here that I assume they have spent their whole lives living just houses away in the same villages. I sit and marvel at their effortless hospitality and the candor with which they share their burdens, and I'm humbled. I would do well to learn from their love.

Baby Greg smiled at me this morning.

It was at the end of a long night shift, the last three hours of which I had spent with him nestled in my arms, trying to get him to sleep. He, as usual, was fighting. It's what he does best, really, with a strength that belies the twiglike construction of his frame. He'd managed to pop himself off the CPAP mask four or five times in rapid succession, and so I decided that he could have a break. I released his face, stuck some oxygen in his nose and settled in to pat his bony little back. He figured it was a good enough deal, and decided to stop flailing around.

At shift change, when all the new nurses were trickling in, sleepy-eyed, I was sitting on the end of his bed, replacing his soother when he dropped it and suctioning out his throat when he choked. He was propped up on a throne of blankets and pillows, the smallest sultan ever to lord it over B Ward. The charge nurse came over to see how he was, and I displayed him proudly, sucking away on his soother like a champ. Not crying, not squeaking, not flailing. Just being a baby. A quiet, wide-eyed baby.

I keep getting the feeling that he's going to smile at me, I said to her, rolling my eyes to acknowledge just how ludicrous I found my own statement. She smiled wryly back at me, agreeing without words that I was asking too much. I turned back to look at him, just to revel in his peaceful wakefulness and the softness of his hair and the tiny grace of his fingers. Hi, small boy.

He looked up at me as the soother dropped out of his mouth. And his face broke into a real, honest-to-goodness baby grin. The ear to ear, tongue half sticking out with the effort, eyes crinkled almost shut kind of grin. And then it was over, and I sat there, tears in my eyes, my heart shouting a thousand praises to a God who really does give more than I can ask or think.

Baby Greg smiled. This too is what a miracle looks like.

Today marked my five-month-aversary here on the ship. Five months ago, I landed at Roberts Airfield and walked off the plane into the dark, sticky Liberian heat. Five months ago I drove for the first time through the dim streets of downtown Monrovia, arriving to the port to see the ship, lit up like a beacon in the night. Five months ago I walked up the gangway and into the dining room, explored the ship and tried vainly to find my way around. Five months ago, I ventured outside the port gates and walked down the road to the market for the first time, fearing for my life almost the entire way. Everything was new. Everything was strange. Everything felt larger than life. Everything was an adventure, and I was an unsure pioneer, stumbling through my days as I searched for the path under my feet.

I’ve come a long way, baby.

Today, I made that same walk down UN Drive to Duala Market. Jenn and I ran down the gangway into the cool Liberian air. (In reality, it was probably around eighty degrees, but the overcast sky and slight breeze made us briefly consider going back inside for sweatshirts.) We wandered down the road, circling enormous puddles of muddy water and garbage, and figured we’d been given an extremely wide berth when a taxi scraped past us with about a foot to spare. We stopped at a bakery and the supermarket and the UNMIL store, chatting in Liberian English with the workers there and buying cinnamon buns and Jello and screen-printed t-shirts, three for five dollars. We wended our way through the stalls and wheelbarrows in the market, buying slippers and lappas and hairbands for Jenn’s Bible study group. And then we hailed a cab, jumped in and got ourselves dropped off at our gate, handing the driver our fare without ever having to ask what he was charging. It all felt so normal.

Jenn said it best, somewhere between the port and the bakery. If you can do this, you can do anything. If dodging Liberian taxis and speaking English so garbled I sometimes don’t understand myself can be second-nature, what can’t I do? If bartering for prices and buying flip-flops out of a rusty wheelbarrow can seem commonplace, what can’t I get used to?

I was just writing an e-mail to my travel agent, asking about booking a ticket home for Christmas. It’s been five months, and it’ll be almost six more before I fly, back to what we wryly refer to as the Real World. When I look at my life now, this new normal, I have a vaguely unsettled feeling that I don’t belong there anymore. But, like so much else that’s changed over the past five months, that thought doesn’t scare me half as much as it did on the day I left. I’m just not sure I really want to go back.