ali's african adventures

So apparently, it doesn't matter what continent I'm on; it's just not safe for Mercy Ships people to be in cars when I'm involved. This time, thankfully, no other cars were involved either.

A group of us decided to go out for dinner last night. We sat around and enjoyed our burgers and steaks and then we got into our cars and headed home. Myself and a British friend, Colin, were riding with Heather, who just got back from the ship a couple nights ago. We stopped at Wal-Mart where I made a fatal decision. Hey guys, I'm kind of tired. I'll just stay in the car and wait for you. I snuggled in to wait, and in the space of one pitiful country song, the car battery died a quiet, and apparently final, death. Which is when I started to panic.

I ran around the parking lot, interviewing everyone I came across, begging for jumper cables; the security guard looked at me like I was crazy for even asking. When I finally coerced the gas station attendant to lend me his, he informed me that our car was too far away from his to consider using it for power. This may or may not have been because our car was, by this point, sitting near the bottom of an incline in the parking lot, nowhere close to a parking spot. That may or may not have been the result of a wild attempt at push-starting said car. I'm not committing to anything either way.

A young kid and his girlfriend pulled up in their brand-new car, looking concerned and offering to help. We hooked up the cables and turned the key. Click click nothing. We tried again. Click click nothing. The kid jumped in and gave it a shot. He actually revved it up enough to get the juice to roll down the window so we could communicate without having the door open, but the engine stubbornly refused to start.

Eventually the kid climbed into his car and drove off into the freezing night, apologizing for being unable to help. We borrowed a hammer, Colin hit a few things in the engine, trying to coax what we figured was an angry solenoid into cooperation, we prayed and I hopped into the driver's seat to give it one last shot. I stuck my hand out the open window and asked Colin for the keys. With a slow-dawning wash of horror, we realized that the kid was driving down Route 20 with our keys in his pocket.

So there we were, stuck in a Wal-Mart parking lot with a dead battery, a rolled-down window and no keys. My favourite part? No one got angry. No one got frustrated. We just kept looking at each other and laughing, because, seriously? Was this really happening? Were we really sitting in a car at eleven-thirty at night, freezing air blowing through the open window? Was the AAA lady really laughing at me on the phone because we had no keys? Did the tow truck man really just tell me that you're done for if you break down after ten at night in East Texas?

To make a long story a little shorter, Heather's mom finally found the spare key, drove it over to us, and we were able to jump the car from her much-larger truck. Rolling that window up was one of the best feelings I can remember recently, and the heated seats in Heather's car? Best thing ever, once there was power to supply them.

Moral of that story? If you work with Mercy Ships and I get into your car, be prepared for the worst. You can't say I didn't warn you.

Want to know a bit more about the story of Phil and Ali?

Check it out!

It's hard to know what to say right now, how to explain what I've been doing the past few days. It's not even Friday, but I feel like I've been in Texas at least a month. This course is nothing like I thought it would be; I'm not sure what I was expecting when I headed out here to the Mercy Ships base. I figured I'd hang out, meet some new people, maybe learn a bit about the organization I work for.

Instead, I find myself spending at least seven hours a day in a classroom, having my mind blown in every direction. We've spent the last three days talking about spiritual warfare. It's not something I've ever given much thought to, to be perfectly honest, but now I'm being told (and shown flat out from the Bible) that the battle is constant and everywhere and very, very real. And that I am an integral part of it.

We've talked about salvation and creation and armor and arrows and about a thousand other things. In the middle of the slew of information, I took as much of it as I could grasp and neatly chronicled it in about fifteen pages of notes. I want to be able to go back and read it over again and again when I'm doubting my place in this grand scheme, which is why it's good that I haven't put pen to paper this much since maybe the seventh grade.

I feel like I'm on the edge of something huge right now. I haven't studied my own faith like this in I don't know how long, and I feel almost like a kid on Christmas Eve. Like God has something momentous in store for me if I can just silence my own racing mind enough to let Him talk. I need to learn to be quiet, and I need to do it now.

Hush, child. Quiet now.

So, the Star-Ledger ran an article today about my time in Liberia. My dad kindly scanned it and e-mailed it to me here in Texas, and since the Star-Ledger doesn't seem to exist in any easily-navigable form online, I figured I'd post it for you guys here.

My hope now is that lots and lots of nurses see it (especially OR nurses) and come to ship as a result. If you're not a nurse but you know one (especially one who works in the OR), tell your friends, okay? Hint. Hint. Hint?

The more the merrier. I want lots of new people to share this crazy dream with.

Just when I had finally found the time to empty my suitcases, and all my clothes had a place on my shelves again, I found myself cramming my life back into a large duffel bag and boarding yet another plane.

I'm in Texas now, participating in the grand reunion of Liz and Ali, and it's like no time passed since we last saw each other more than half a year ago. That's the way it is with friends from the ship. I'm starting to realize that I'm more at ease around ship people than I am almost anyone else. I don't need to explain myself when I slide into Liberian English. They understand when I'm bewildered in a store, and they know why a picture with a random moustached man is just about the funniest thing since sliced bread. (Whether or not sliced bread is actually funny is a debate for another day.)

Tomorrow we head out to the IOC (International Operations Center) where we'll take part in a month-long course, Gateway, that will prepare us for long-term service on the ship. Liz will be back on the ship by the end of the first week in March, and I'll join her after the wedding. I'm excited to do Gateway after already having been on the ship for an entire outreach, excited to see how my perspective on misisons and development has been shaped by the year I just lived through. I'm excited to meet people I'll be working with over the next months, and I'm excited to see old friends who I worked with over the past months.

It's getting easier, this picking up and going. My roots are thinning, hurting just a little less when I have to break them and move to the next place, to the next season of my life. I just hope I'll recognize it when the day comes for me to plant myself again.

Fitting into my place back at home has been, for the most part, much less difficult than I thought it would be. I find myself slipping easily into the hole I left, stumbling only occasionally over the things that have changed since I've been gone. Other than the fact that I get hugs from every friend I greet and that everyone clapped for me when they saw me in church on Sunday, it's almost as if I'd never left. I can still navigate around my town with my brain on autopilot, which is a good thing for someone as directionally handicapped as myself. My youth group kids haven't changed, except for the fact that they break out new-to-me moves when we push back the couches for dance parties in my living room. My dad still cracks the same corny jokes, and I still laugh and roll my eyes. Looking in at the scene, it's as though I've simply been grafted back into all this, a loose tile slipped into its former place; any casual observer in my life right now would be hard-pressed to find the seam.

And yet.

I find myself struggling to write about my heart right now, unsure of how to explain how it all feels from this side. It's hard, because on the surface, it seems like nothing has changed. I wake up, go about my day, meet my cousin and sister for coffee and go shopping with them. I come home and check my e-mail and plan my wedding and watch inane reality shows on my family's new, insanely large TV. I interact with my world much as I always have, and my world doesn't seem to have changed much.

It must be me, then. I must have changed in some fundamental way, enough that I feel like I'm just barely faking it well enough that people don't notice that I don't belong here. Sure, that casual observer might not be able to see the cracks it left when I broke away and then tried to fit back in, but to me they're painfully obvious. I find myself almost unable to spend money, having to justify every purchase to myself a hundred times before I'll hand over my cash. (I even asked Phil, in all seriousness, if eight dollars was too much for him to spend on the ring we bought from a lady on a street corner to replace the tie-wrap which was, unfortunately, cutting grooves into my finger.) I walk through grocery stores and I get far too enthusiastic over things like strawberries and fresh bell peppers, drawing strange looks from fellow shoppers as I stand and stare at the colorful displays. I have a hard time not taking strangers' babies in my arms, forgetting sometimes almost too late that it's not acceptable in this world. That people here are insular and wary and don't seem to notice you when you're standing shoulder to shoulder with them in a line.

The outreach in Liberia was the hardest ten months I've ever known, and the simple truth is that I've come back different. My heart cries a million stories, of Abraham and Sadie and Shidou and Bendu and Joanna and Friend and Catherine and Richie and Nicholas. My arms are empty and longing for my little Liberian babies, my Anthony and Prince and Sonnie and Kumassah and Oscar and Greg. No one here has ever seen these people, no one here has lived these stories, and so of course they can't understand. And I can't expect them to. We are at an impasse.

So I suppose I'll just keep on trying to blend in. I'll do my best to make sure they don't notice how uncomfortable I've become, and as soon as the chance is given to me, I'll pack my bags and I'll fly from here. Back to a ship in a port in West Africa. Back home.

This is my niece, and I'm fairly convinced that she's the sweetest thing this side of Africa.

I don't like the cold, I miss living on the ocean, and I'm scared to death of driving on snowy roads, but getting to hang out with Mya is making things easier to bear.

(Lots more here, if you can stand the cuteness.)