Africa greeted me in style with a sunset that turned the entire world pink while we rode across the bay from the airport to the harbour where the Africa Mercy is docked. I could see her, a little white smudge, getting bigger and bigger as night fell; when we sailed right past, I could pick out the place where my window would be, dark for just a little while longer, amidst the blaze of lights that welcomed me back.
I've spent the last few days getting my bearings again, remembering all the little quirks that make this place better than anything and relearning how to be a nurse on the wards. It turns out that fourteen months away from the desk and a year more away from actual patient care can make you forget a few things. But I've had patient teachers, and after two days of re-orientation I think I'll be able to handle myself on my own again.
I think I realized I was really back just before handover yesterday. I was headed across B Ward to pray with the rest of the nurses when I looked down and saw a little baby, the sister of one of the patients. She sat on the floor, looked up at me and lifted her chubby arms to me. There was no hesitation. I scooped her into my arms and held her while we prayed, her little curly head nestled into my chest as she drifted in and out of sleep. Her brother stood beside me, one arm wrapped around my leg, leaning his head against me, and my heart was full enough to burst.
People keep asking me if it's strange to be back after so long. The only thing strange about this, I think, is how I managed to survive fourteen months without this place. Without the pikins (children) running wild through the halls, without the songs between shifts, raised to Papa God in strong voices by our translators, without those little fuzzy heads tucked in under my chin right where they belong. Jenn was telling me a story earlier about a patient who was on the wards for something like five months earlier this year. She told me how the little girl's grandma tried to thank the nurses with a song, how she burst into tears and could barely get out the words as she thanked them for changing her granddaughter's life.
We looked at each other, smiling, realizing all over again what this ship means. We call out to the hopeless and speak words of life to the dying. We have front-row seats to some of the most incredible transformations of body and spirit. Standing in the gap in a battle against death and pain and rejection, we have somehow been given the task of holding the line.
This is no small task, but I'm not alone. I'm just one of a ship full of people here in Sierra Leone and hundreds more in offices scattered around the world who are living and breathing this same fight, all of us giving everything we have to see Light come to West Africa.
I am home, and I have no idea how I stayed away so long.
