brain surgery and watercolors

As the outreach winds down and exhaustion sets in, it gets easier and easier to be annoyed. I've recently been increasingly frustrated by a lot of things. Politics in the organization (probably made all the more drastic in my own eyes because I was naively expecting to escape that aspect of life by coming here) and interpersonal relationships (although friction is to be expected when we work with people from thirty-three nations) have formed the bulk of my discontent.

It's so easy to focus on the negative. It could be the most beautiful day in the world and all I'd notice was the fire ant bite on my ankle; people are like that. It's not terribly surprising that my fuse is a little short these days. It just seems like, no matter how good things might be, it's never good enough. This morning on D Ward, I got a bit of a reality check.

Moses and Kwelywoh are the two boys on the ward recovering from encephalocele repairs. (These photos are Holly's.) Moses had a lump the size of a large clementine jutting out from his forehead, flattening his nose and pushing his eyes to the side. Kwelywoh you know; he's the one we had to refuse earlier in the outreach, but he was able to be scheduled about a week and a half ago. They both had the skin of their faces peeled down, their skulls dismantled and then put back together in marathon surgeries. And they're both okay.

I was struck by how insane it is to be able to say that when a vision trip came through the hospital. Vision trips are groups of people who come to the ship, not to work, but generally to see how their donations of money or supplies are being used. A group of people who had been involved somehow in supplying things for the hospital showed up at the door near the spot on the floor where Moses and Kwelywoh were sitting together, playing with toy cars. Kwelywoh gazed at them silently from behind his bandages (he should be released from that prison tomorrow!) while Moses fixed one of his eyes on a lady at the front of the group. As I grabbed his chart to show them a photo of his face before surgery, he broke out into an enormous grin. And I stood there and explained just what Dr. Gary had done to save these little boys' lives, something that should have been impossible in Liberia.

The vision trip eventually moved on, and in a quiet moment, I felt a small body lean up against my leg. I looked down to see Janet, a seven-year old girl who came in for a terrible tooth abcess. She's getting better, but she still screams and moans during her dressing changes, and I didn't think she was really my biggest fan. However, she was bored, and I guess I looked like I could help with that.

She leaned up against the right peds nurse. I ran to my room to grab the sets of watercolors that my blog-reading friends had sent me, and stopped by the office on the way back to print out some coloring pages. I set Janet up on a little table on the floor with her pictures and paints and a little tub of water. I stepped back to watch her paint, and she stared up at me, hands folded on her lap. You know this? I asked her. She shook her head.

I took the brush, dipped it in the water and swirled it in the circle of yellow. Her eyes widened as she saw the bristles take on color. I touched the brush to the paper, leaving a small streak of gold, and I thought her head was going to fall off from grinning. I left her the brush clutched firmly in her hand, painting butterflies in all the colors of the rainbow.

I'm caring for children who have had brain surgery in the midst of a war-torn country in West Africa. And I taught a seven-year old girl how to paint.

It's enough.