ali's african adventures

Dear Captain,

Let me start out by saying that I think you do a wonderful job around here. However, I just have one tiny little thing that I would like to discuss with you; morning abandon ship drills. Please, I mean no disrespect, but I feel this has to be addressed.

I understand that you're just trying to keep us safe. I understand how important it is for us to be startled out of our sleep to stumble, foggy-eyed, to our emergency muster stations. I even understand how vital it is that we all practice getting into our lifejackets. (Actually, that one I can't complain about; how did you know that that boxy orange fashion faux-pas would sit at just the right level for me to rest my chin on while I grabbed a quick nap between announcements?)

All I'm saying is that, given the fact that I didn't sleep more than an hour last night, (and a fitful hour at that because I just couldn't. stop. coughing.) it seemed kind of cruel to wrench me from my bed, make me find my pants in an incredible hurry and send me running up to Deck Eight. (Well, to be honest, I wasn't running. Number one, because I was wearing flip flops, and we all know you never run in flip flops. Number two, because I'm a respiratory cripple. That tends to limit my top speed. I'm just saying.)

Please, if you have any regard for my sanity and/or the state of my lungs, can we have the drill at, say, lunchtime next week? Better yet, let's wait until it's decently the afternoon. Together, we can make drills an enjoyable experience for all involved. I know we can do this.

Yours Truly,
Ali


PS I wasn't kidding; I really do think you do a great job. And your kid is adorable.

Not that I doubted it for a second, but it turns out that my tech support is indeed the best out there.

He's the kind of guy who I can IM and say, So, I'm technologically challenged. Can you help me change the layout of my blog? I need a new template. And I need you to modify that template for me so I can make it show a header that I put together. Also, can you change the color of the links? Blue and purple is way too garish. Turquoise and lighter turquoise would be great. No, hang on, a little lighter. Yeah, you're right; the other one should be a little darker too. What's that? You want to make the links a different color when you hover over them? Go for it. Wow, that's a nice red you picked there. Not too ... what was the word? ... garish.

And then, just when the blog is looking pretty sharp (if I do say so myself) and everything has fallen neatly into place, he sends me a video of my niece, stretching and making all kinds of little gurgly baby noises while she tries to wake up. And my heart explodes into a million pieces in my chest, and it feels like love.

Thanks Matt; I couldn't ask for a better techie/nerd/brother.

Well, while we all sit around and wait for me to learn how to write code (which could potentially take the rest of my life, just to warn you) I think it's only fair to update you on the ever-dwindling patient situation on the wards. Ward, I should say, since we only have B Ward open at the moment. Actually, if we're going to split hairs, I should probably mention that only one side of B Ward is open, and half of that one side is already torn down and packed away.

We only have three patients left.

The most amazing part is to watch our prayers being answered right in front of our eyes. We started praying, and Louise's wounds dried up. She went home yesterday, healed. We started praying, and Sedeke's infection was also healed. He went home yesterday, too, clutching a new Bible that he refused to stop reading. We started praying, and we were able to arrange for Jacob to be transferred to a hospital up country, near where he and his mother live. He too left yesterday. We started praying, and Kwelywoh went back to the operating room one last time, just like he's been doing every few days for the last couple weeks. Only this time, Dr. Gary found the place where the brain fluid was leaking out. He patched it and ran a thin plastic catheter under Kwelywoh's skin from a spot between his eyes to drain into the space around his stomach. We're still waiting to see how Kwelywoh will adjust to the new pressures inside his head, but with all the other answered prayers we've just received, it's hard to think this one won't go our way too.

Eddie and Kwelywoh and Timothy. That's it. They're the last of an endless string of stories that stretches back over these past ten months, woven together like so many threads of this cloth. Hope and heartbreak and healing and pain. I can stand back, now, so close to the end, and see it all as one.

And moving in and out and through every story, I see love.

Hi there.

Please excuse the appearance around here for a little while. I'm trying to ever-so-slightly upgrade the way this site looks. However, I am, and always will be, a luddite. So it might take a while.

Be patient please?

Remember ten years ago, when that song Closing Time came out? If you're close to my age, you probably had it recorded faithfully on at least three different mix tapes. It ran through my head almost constantly today as we power-cleaned the now-empty A Ward.

Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world.
Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.
Closing time, time for you to go out to the places you will be from.
Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Three weeks from today I will walk down the gangway and into a Mercy Ships car. We'll be in Tenerife by then, so we'll drive on pothole-free roads to the airport where I'll get on a plane and I'll fly home. And just like that, Liberia will be nothing but a memory, forty-five hundred miles away from the family I'll be winging my way towards.

I can't wait to see them. I don't want to leave. Bring on the paradox. (Which, I'm realizing, is exactly what I typed the night before I left home in February. Oh, how my paradigm has shifted.)

I'm probably going to beat this feeling to death over the next few weeks, but this leaving is so bittersweet. I know I'll be coming back for Benin, so when I disembark it'll be with the assurance that it's not forever. But when the ship sails from Liberia, I don't know if I'll ever return, and I don't know how to come to terms with that. I love so much about this country.

I can't stay here. I have to go out from this place and back into the world, and I'm scared.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.