snippets

Sorry about the silence, but this past week has been a much-needed break. I worked all of one full day during the course of the last seven, and those twelve hours were spent mostly in serial games of UNO and Rummikub. I don't have anything earth-shattering to share right now, but rather just a few disconected stories from the chain of my time here.

Two days ago, myself and two other nurses were assigned to clean. Instead of caring for patients, we donned scrubs, mixed up buckets of bleach and scrubbed the floors, walls, ceilings (any guesses as to who got that job?) and every single piece of furniture on one of the wards. While we were hard at work, another of the nurses came by to rustle up some balloons for a friend's birthday. He blew them up and left them in a big pile on one of the empty beds while he went to find some string. My back was turned when one of the balloons, filled past what it should have been, fell off the bed and burst. I thought nothing of it. Auntie Ali, called Gaye from the other side of the ward, please come here. Gaye is a sweet teenage boy who was admitted for some skin grafting on his foot. He loves to sit and chat and has most recently been industriously employed making friendship bracelets for pretty much every other patient in the hospital. He's wonderful. I went to see what he needed, and he broke my heart. Please don't let that sound come here again. That sound makes us think of the far past. And Liberia, we are finished with that now. Don't make us scary [scared] anymore please. Oh the privilege of growing up in a country where I can hear balloons pop and not immediately think of gunshots.

Yesterday, I realized all over again what a strange community I live in. I was sitting in the lounge after work, puttering around on my computer and asking everyone who passed what blood type they had. (I somehow found this completely normal.) There was a patient in surgery who needed a lot of blood, and anyone who was B positive was needed to get on the list in the lab. You see, we all live and work within five hundred feet of a hospital, and this hospital doesn't have the capability to do things like irradiate or refrigerate blood. So when a patient is in surgery and bleeds, the first healthy crewmember on the list is called. They walk down a few flights of stairs from their office and a pint or so of their blood is drained into a bag. The bag is flipped over, new tubing is attached, and the blood, still warm, is walked down the hall and given to the patient. We are a living blood bank, always on call. New Jersey blood shortages have got nothing on this.

A few days ago, one of our translators came up to me in the dining room. She handed me her cell phone and told me someone wanted to talk to me. It was Victoria, Kumassah's mom.. She told me she wanted to see me, and we set the date for this afternoon. When I went out to the gate to meet her, Kumassah was all smiles. She reached for me, and we snuggled all the way onto the ship. I took Victoria down to the ward and she greeted all the translators she knew. We showed off Kumassah to everyone we came across; she's a fat, happy five-month old little girl with rolls the size of Texas. And then I walked them back out to the gate. As she was getting into the taxi to go home, I asked her where home was. She named a place an hour and a half away, waved cheerfully and slammed the door. Three hours in a Liberian taxi, just to say hello. This is love I know nothing about.

This morning, I saw a face rebuilt. I'll write more about Blessing another time, when I have the time to properly research her condition and write more than what I know in passing about the disease that destroyed her lips. Right now, I'm still reeling a bit from what I watched. Two surgeons, working together in near-silence, slowly and painstakingly reconstructing a child's future as they crafted lips from neck and cheek. The hope, growing with every suture tied, that this child will be able to show her face in public and lead a life without being ostracized at every turn. When I left the room near the end of the operation to get some supplies for her bandage, I ran into Blessing's mom. The unspoken question loomed in her dark eyes. The child is fine. They are almost finished. She will be coming out soon. I held back and didn't tell her that, instead of the one lip she had been promised, Blessing now had two. I figured it was best for her to see it for herself. I only wish I could have been there.

So life moves slowly along. People are coming and going, patients are having surgeries, and I am content. Liberia is gaining an ever-growing hold on my heart, and I don't know how I'll be able to sail away from all of this at the end of the year.