ali's african adventures

This year is drawing to a close and I am safe and warm inside my cousins' house in Toronto. In a few minutes I'm heading up the street to join my fiance and friends and family and we'll all start the new year together.

I'm struck just now by the difference between the wildly different promises my new year and that of all my friends back in Liberia. I have no needs that ever go unmet. I am safe and loved and sheltered and fed. They will spend this next year just as they have all the others; fighting to survive, to make ends meet, to put food on the table.

It's hard not to feel a little ashamed as I pull on my coat and shoes and go off to celebrate yet another year. It's hard not to compare what I have with what they lack, and I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing that it's on my mind tonight. I've been so caught up with trying to find a way to live in my world here that I've pushed theirs to the back of my thoughts, told it to rest until I could find the time to wrestle with it again.

But I think that time is now. I want to start the new year fully aware of how blessed I am. It's not that I want to live crippled by guilt, but I want to go forward with my eyes wide open to the horrible poverty and desperate lives that so many face every day. I don't want to be seduced by my culture into thinking I need to have or be or do anything other than what God would have me have and be and do. I want to learn what it means to live purely and simply until the time comes when I can pack up my bag and head back to Africa.

My heart is filled with a new kind of song; I'm going to try and learn it by heart next year.

The last few days have been so intense. I find myself exhausted by about nine in the evening, worn out by the constant interactions, by my attempts to navigate myself through this world that's supposed to be mine. By finding my way again.

Some of it has been easy. More and more, I find that this blog is such a useful tool; because people have been reading my words all year, there's almost nothing they need to ask me. I've been able to pick up friendships where they left off, and when questions arise about Liberia, I can say Remember those entries about Baby Greg? Yeah, that was the hardest thing that happened this year. I drove home from my Granny's house the other night, the first time I'd been behind the wheel in eleven months, and it was surprisingly painless; it turns out that remembering how to drive is like riding a bike. You never really forget.

Some of it has been less straightforward. The noise and the cold and the constant stimulation are so foreign to me after a year on a ship in the third world. I'm getting carsick again, and I think it's because I strain to read all the billboards and street signs that whip past me at over a hundred kilometers an hour. I've already started to feel the strain of this culture, reminding me in subtle whispers that I look wrong. No matter how staunchly I remind myself that I am proud of my African shape, I've been feeling pudgy and oversized, and I can't convince myself otherwise.

The thing is, none of this confusion and uncertainty really has any kind of hold on me. Especially not after today.

This morning, I took a drive past icy lakes and up a snowy road. We stopped at the side of a river and made our way onto a bridge overlooking the water as it rushed down the chute that he had helped build to guide the logs downstream. The air smelled faintly of summer, somehow, recalling memories of long hours spent playing in the waterfalls near my grandpa's farm. He pulled four tie wraps out of his pocket, and he asked me the question I've been dying to hear.

So, you want to get married?

I said I thought we might as well, and then I chose green, like he knew I would. He threw the other three over the side of the bridge to be washed away in the freezing spate. He fastened the tie wrap around my finger, clipped the end with a pair of wire cutters he pulled out of his pocket, and then he took my hand in his. We stood there on that bridge with the cold all around us and the water rushing through my heart, and he prayed over our life together.

And then we went back, and I showed off my fancy ring to my beaming parents and he took an Exacto knife to it to smooth out the edges, and I have never known that it was possible to be quite this happy.

(For those of you who have never heard of this guy before, the oversight has been intentional. We both agreed that our relationship wasn't something that we wanted to chronicle on the internet, but I've gotten special permission to post about today, since there's no way I can keep this to myself.)

Phil is my best friend. He's been by my side through the hardest year of my life so far. He rubs my back when I cry and shakes his head when I'm hysterically laughing. When something funny happens, he's the first one I want to share the joke with. We can hang out for hours, not do anything, and love it. He believed me when I told him I didn't want an expensive engagement ring, and I know that means he trusts my word. When I'm sick, he cooks me Ramen noodles, and when we come inside he holds the door for me. He'll eat the mushrooms for me that I always feel the need to pick out of my food. He calls me out when I'm being lazy and challenges me in my walk with God. I never feel like I have to be anything but myself with him and yet, somehow at the same time, being with him makes me want to serve more and love more and be more.

It was Phil's sleeve I was hanging on to that first day in Tenerife, and it's that sleeve I get to hang on to for the rest of my life, no matter what comes our way.

Which, at the end of the day, is just about the best deal I can imagine.

Please excuse the silence. Since landing here, it's been nothing but a whirl of family and Christmas and cold and snow. I'll write soon, once I've had a time to stop and breathe and think my thoughts coherently.

I am home.

The delay in Paris turned out to be such a blessing; we were provided with a hotel and food free of charge, got to wander the streets of one of my favourite cities, and managed a solid nine hours of sleep before the flight today. I even took a bath last night in the deepest bath I've ever been in in my entire life. It felt something like heaven.

And now I'm home. Not fully home, mind you; I'm in Toronto right now, and I won't see the States until sometime in the new year. But this place has all my family, and so I'm home. Our first stop was my brother's new house, where I held my niece and she stretched and snuggled and made little noises and faces which were pretty much the best thing ever (although I'll admit that my bias here is pretty strong). Right now, I'm sitting on a bed in the basement and I can hear my uncle talking to my dad and my mum and sister talking in the kitchen and the whole house smells like my aunt's cooking.

And so I'm home and I'm not home, because parts of my heart are forty-five hundred miles away, somewhere stranded on the coast of West Africa. I want to rip myself into a million pieces so I can be everywhere, but I know I have to choose.

I'm going to go steal Mya from my dad, because I think she'll help hold me here.

Fog in Paris meant that we missed our flight home after a delay in Madrid. I'm in limbo, waiting for another day before I get to see all those people that I love.

It shouldn't matter, one more day after so many, but it does. I had my heart set on being home today.

But, at the end of the day, there are worse places to be stranded than Paris. I'm going to scrounge in my carry-on bag, put together the most unique outfit this city has ever seen (hint: it will involve breaking my set-in-stone no flip-flops with socks rule), and then I'm going to go hit the town.

And I'm going to pretend I don't want to cry about it.

I'm coming home. In less than an hour, I leave for the airport. Twenty-four after that, and I'll land in Toronto where my family will be waiting for me.

There is no way that this is real.

This day has thus far been one of the strangest of my life. Talk to the me that existed a year ago, and this would all have been second nature; getting on a bus, riding to town, browsing around stores. Today it all seemed, for lack of a better adjective, wrong. I found myself feeling shocked when a bus showed up on schedule and mildly surprised when there were enough seats that we each got our own. Sure, people were friendly, but no one was grabbing my arms as I passed, and I didn't receive a single marriage proposal in the hour it took to get into town. Everywhere I looked there were electric things flashing their lights, but I couldn't for the life of me hear the throb of the generators I was sure had to be powering it all.

I think it was the yogurt that really clinched it for me. We wandered from Ikea over to what turned out to be a mall, one half of which was taken up by a store that's probably the Spanish version of Wal-Mart. It sold everything from groceries to power tools, and glaring red signs pointed to LOW PRICES! around every corner. The first aisle we turned down was the yogurt aisle.

I was standing there, flanked on both sides by displays of yogurt reaching from the floor to above my head. We were surrounded by every brand you can imagine, so many that I'd never even heard of. Flavors like kiwi and coconut camped out alongside the more traditional vanilla and strawberry. The yogurt came in plastic cups, in bottles, in little tubes, in jars. It was fat-free and calorie-reduced and anti-aging and pro-biotic. I stood there, frozen, in the middle of all this yogurt, my fingers clenched in Phil's sleeve, afraid that if I moved or breathed I would get lost forever in this world that no longer seems to be my own. It seems like the stupidest thing I've ever said, but right then, I was scared of all that yogurt.

I mean, it wasn't just the yogurt. It was everything. It was the sheer number of choices presented to me in that place. The sight of goods displayed on shelves and behind glass. The fact that everyone was wearing a full set of clothes, right down to the two matching shoes on their feet. The ATM machine that spit out money when I asked it to (as I glanced furtively over my shoulder to make sure no one noticed me with what felt like a fortune in my hands). The cars in the parking lot sporting shiny paint and smooth windshields and nothing painted across their back bumpers.

We circled around that store for what seemed like forever while I fought the urge to scream or cry or sit down in the middle of the floor with my head buried in my knees. I bumped into people over and over, (having lived in a world without personal space for eleven months, I couldn't get the hang of it again) and couldn't find the words to excuse myself. I kept wanting to blurt out Sorry, yeah? and just have someone, anyone tell me It's alright. You alright. No ma, yeah? As we came to the exit, I made a decision. I tugged Phil's sleeve, and we headed back to the yogurt.

I picked out a little tub of vanilla, one that comes with a side-order strawberries that you can mix in. I stood in line by myself at the register, got into a mildly-traumatizing mix-up when I tried to pay with a credit card (because apparently a driver's license doesn't count as ID here), and I bought my yogurt.

It tasted good. Really good, actually. I ate it feeling for all the world like a baby who's just taken her first steps.

The only problem is that this isn't the world I want to be walking in.

I was awake before six this morning, lying in my bed and feeling the barely-perceptible rock of the ship begin to summon the day’s familiar nausea. The tone of the overhead announcement sounded and I tensed, not quite able to shed the past year’s duties as an EMT even though I’m off the team until I come back for Benin. For those on deck, please no flash photography. It came back with a rush, then. The captain’s announcement at last night’s meeting that the pilot would be coming on board promptly at 0600 to guide us to a berth. Going to sleep feeling for all the world like I was five again and it was the night before my family started the five hundred mile drive to Toronto before the sun had risen.

I shrugged into my clothes and stepped out into the cool, damp air to be greeted not by the familiar wind and darkness, but by a fairyland of lights. I blinked, but they stayed lit, shining through the night to guide us into port. The ship began its slow crawl towards the dock, the lights beginning to distinguish themselves as houses and Christmas trees and street lamps. I saw a man standing on the end of the dock, illuminated by the headlights of his car. He stood straight-backed, a trumpet in his hands, and as we threw out the mooring lines the simple, clear notes of Away in a Manger floated back across the water to where we stood at the rail.

I had to swallow hard just then and make some offhand comment about how insane it was to actually be able to see my breath or else the whole ship would have seen me break down right there on deck seven. Because it finally hit me; I just realized that we actually left Liberia.

It seems insane, after a week of sailing away from West Africa, that I can only just now comprehend the fact that we left. I kept staring at those lights, brighter than all of Liberia, and all I wanted was to see the dim outline of the Ducor on top of the hill. And now that day has come and the mountains are draped in shadows and sun and all around me civilization grinds unceasingly on, all I want is our wide-open port, dotted with canoes and sunken ships.

It’s dinner-time, and I have yet to step foot outside the ship. Granted, that’s partly because I’m on duty and carrying the pager limits me to a pretty small radius, but the truth is that I’m scared. I’m scared that stepping onto Spanish soil will finally mean that I’m not in Africa anymore, that I’ve left Liberia forever, and I’m just not ready to do that.

I’m hiding behind the steel hull of my ship, because the longer I stay here, the longer I can pretend that I’ll look out the portholes and see my beloved third world.

Why is this so hard?

To be awakened by this and a friend bringing a fresh croissant to your door? Almost enough to make up for what is starting to feel like a lifetime of seasickness.

Almost.

Because, despite how calm those waters are looking (not just looking; they are), I still can't stand on my own two feet without my world turning upside down.

If the Spanish Navy doesn't get the heck out of our berth immediately, there is going to be a piper to be paid. Someone else is going to have to take care of that for me, though.

I can't get out of bed.

I woke up this morning just after five. No matter how I snuggled back into my duvet or fluffed my pillow, I was completely and utterly awake; it turns out it's hard to sleep when your body is being lifted up and slammed back into your mattress over and over. I gave up the fight close to six, and struggled against the increasing rolling of my cabin into what's become my uniform during this sail: sweatpants, Messiah Ultimate hoodie, knee socks and crocs. Because maybe I forgot to mention it, but HOLY COW IT'S COLD.

I have no idea what the real temperature is, but I think maybe I've been living too long in the blissfully constant thirty-Celsius Liberian sun. When I step outside, I'm blasted immediately by a wind that I can only call Arctic. My nose turns red, and my gimpy toe starts to protest almost right away. (Poor little gimpy toe. It's the product of an unfortunate accident involving some hot coals, a nail and stupidity; it hasn't been the same since.) I'm in for a rude awakening when I arrive back to real winter, which is happening in less than a week. I don't dare think about it, though, in case I fall off my chair with sheer excitement; I'm having a hard enough time staying on this sucker as it is.

At any rate, it was six in the morning, I was bundled against the cold and starting to feel sick inside the ship, so I braved the piercing wind and climbed to deck eight. Which is where I met God.

The sky was still inky black, all strewn with stars and that insanely bright moon. I sat with my back to a ventilation shaft, tucked whatever I could find around my body to shield me from the wind and tied my hood securely around my face.

Sitting there in the middle of the deck, the ship didn't feel like it was threatening to throw me into the ocean anymore. I leaned back to watch the stars dip and turn and swirl above my head. A satellite made its lazy way across the sky and then I was left again with just my stars and the moon and God.

The sky had just started to brighten and everything was turning to pearl when a song by Tenth Ave poured into my ears.

Before the sun has touched the sky
Colors bursting from Your eyes
Before the flood of the morning light
Before the earth has felt Your heat
Before I stand up to my feet
Before I begin to feel this weak

Satisfy me Lord
Satisfy me Lord
I'm begging You to help me see;
You're all I want, You're all I need
Oh, satisfy me Lord

You're beautiful, You're beautiful;
You're more than all this world can give.
You're beautiful, You're beautiful;
Your love is all I need to live.
You're beautiful, You're beautiful;
You're more than all this world can give.
You're beautiful, more beautiful;
Your love is all I need to live.

I watched the stars retreat as the sky grew lighter, the white tips on the waves taking on dim reflections of color until the water finally changed from coal to grey to cobalt, brushed all over with the gold of a morning sun.

And it was all so incredibly satisfying.

I must retract my former statement. I do not, in fact, love sailing. I have come to believe that sailing is nothing more than a poorly disguised ploy to make me hate my life.

You know how it feels when you're in an airplane and the turbulence hits? How your body gets unbearably light and then heavy all at the same time, over and over? Well, imagine that, multiplied by the fact that my bed is almost as far forward as it's possible to be, right where the waves are crashing against the bow with a sound like small thunder. And compound all that with the feeling of utter despair when I realize that, no, this plane isn't going to land anytime soon. That, in fact, there is no land anywhere and won't be for several days.

The only way I'm able to be on the computer right now is because I spent the last four hours sitting outside, wind whipping my hair and face, gathering up un-sick feelings in enough bulk to allow me to read for a few minutes.

Maybe I'm being a little over-dramatic. It's possible. I don't have time to sit and discuss it though; I've got to get back out to deck seven before I lose this fragile truce I've managed to call with my body.

Things I Have Learned in the Past Twenty-Four Hours:

- Being a stowaway is fun. Even more fun is hearing the nurse who discovers you debating quietly with herself whether or not she should pull on the blanket covering you as you hide behind a linen cart.
- Searching for stowaways is also fun, albeit a little nerve-wracking. I would probably have lost my mind (and control of my bladder) if I had actually found someone in one of the thousand or so A/C rooms we had to hunt through.
- Okay, maybe it was more like eight A/C rooms; it just felt like a lot.
- Being assigned to search the mast and funnel had to have been the best deal. I felt like I was finally getting to have an adventure after lying prostrate in my bed for the past month or so.
- It wouldn't be Mercy Ships if the crane had worked to load the gangway the first time. It felt much more like our way of doing things when the assembled well-wishers had to push the sucker down the dock the length of the ship so the aft crane could do the job.
- Pulling away from a dock that has been my home for ten months feels surreal.
- It makes my heart catch in my throat to be handed a cell phone just before we pass the breakwater and hear the voice of a former patient, Andrew. Alice! I am on the beach! I am waving goodbye to you. Goodbye to Mercy Ship. Thank you. Thank you. God bless you. I am waving to you!
- I thought I would smell the salt breeze when the wind picked up. I forgot that I've been living in the harbor for almost a year; I think I might be used to it by now.
- The water off the stern churns and splashes and is a far more vivid aqua than I've ever seen before.
- There seem to be no stars in this part of the ocean. Just a moon so bright that the water looks like polished silver, like it's daytime just over there, close to the horizon.
- When a cloud covers the moon, the impossibly bright moon, the edges look like a dim rainbow in the night.
- Standing outside on the bridge, with the water rushing underneath my feet and my eyes closed to the wind in my face, it feels like I'm the only person in the world.
- This ship rolls a lot more than I thought it would.
- Sitting upright in a chair while sailing takes effort.
- So does walking.
- So, in fact, does staying in bed, which didn't actually hinder me from having the best sleep of my life, rocked quietly all night long.
- Walking up the stairs to see no docks or shipwrecks or Ducor Hotel, only water water water out the portholes is a vaguely unsettling feeling.
- I think God has cured me of my motion sickness.
- I do believe I love sailing.

If all goes according to plan (which nothing on Mercy Ships ever does, just to be totally honest) we should be sailing out of here this afternoon.

I can't wait to see my family and I don't want to leave Liberia and I'm scared I'll be seasick and I'm so ready to get out on the open water and just see the stars that have been hidden by the lights of the port for ten months now. I feel like there's not enough room in me for all this. Like I'm held together just barely and any slight bump is going to be enough to tear my seams and send me spinning like a firework through the sky.

Par for the course, really.

I'm sorry for the long silence. Truth is, I'm in a weird place right now. I've been sicker than I really realized over the past few weeks, and I'm just now coming out of the fog enough to realize how much has passed me by. Maybe it'll be better once I'm well and not so worn out, but I'm overwhelmed by the sense that things are just unfinished here.

I mean, they're not really unfinished. There's nothing left to do; the wards are closed. The last patients went home on Friday, Eddie and Kwelywoh to the MSF hospital for further care. Dr. Gary reported to me today that Kwelywoh's CSF drain is working well and that the swelling between his eyes is gone; he might not need any further surgery. Back on the ship, the hospital is silent and mostly dark, wards piled with mattresses and bed frames and supply carts all lashed together and tied down to bolts in the floor, ready for the sail.

But I missed all that. I wasn't there to kiss Eddie's little face before he headed out the door, and I wasn't there to feel the gentle weight of Kwelywoh's body as he leaned up against my legs, beaming up at me in one last search for stickers. I couldn't even help with the cleaning and packing up, since the thought of dust and chemical fumes was enough to send my lungs into a full-scale revolt against the rest of my body.

There were parties, celebrations for all the translators and disciplers and the myriad other dayworkers who have served alongside us during this outreach. The ship was full of friends, dressed in their finest, and I couldn't find the energy to greet them all, or to say my farewells. They've all left now, gone back to their homes for the last time and I didn't get a chance to tell them I loved them.

I'm sad and I'm frustrated and it kind of feels like I got cheated. I've been here since the beginning. I made it through screening day, I helped open up the wards and welcomed the very first patients. I cared for three of the little boys who went to Jesus over the past months. I have seen so many patients come back for multiple surgeries, greeting me like an old friend as they're re-admitted.

And now, now that it's all over and done with, I feel like I missed the end, and that's not good. I'm not sure how to leave this country when it feels like my chance to say goodbye passed me somewhere last week while I slept through yet another day. I hate feeling like this, but I'm not sure I have the chance to change it; we sail before Sunday.

I just wish it didn't all seem so unfinished.

I seem completely unable to wrap my head around the fact that it's almost Christmas. Yes, we've got tiny white lights and fake green garlands wrapped around the railings in the midships lounge, but the weather outside is a fairly steady thirty-odd degrees. Celsius. Which means that walking down the street feels like your head might get hot enough to fry an egg. A nice, Christmas head-fried egg.

However, I just received my very first holiday e-mail, and suddenly everything seems a little more festive. Let me reprint it for you, with my comments in the (italics).

Hi Ali,
How are you and the job? Hope you are doing fine along with your family. (We're fine. Better than fine, actually. We're all going to be together for the first time ever since Mya came along in less than three weeks. I can't tell you how excited that makes me.) The Moores joinedly say merry Christmas and happy prosperous new year.

(I have no idea how I managed to make such a lasting impression on this family in the one day I took care of Harold. Maybe they're just better at loving than me, because they go on:) We also applaud you for the care and concern for our son, Harold Moore,Jr.

(Then, in what seems to be a glaring non-sequitor, Mama Moore starts throwing out Kissi names. She's actually helping me remember a converstaion we had, the one about yard names, where she told me that, if I had been born Kissi, my name would be Siaah, just like her.) Please consider these names in category,

1.Siaah {First girl borned}
2.Kumbah {second girl borned}
3.Saah {first boy borned}
4.Tambah{second boy borned}

(Now back to the original point of the email. Get ready for possibly the best blessing since May the Road Rise up to Meet You, folks.) As you are concerned for the Moores, we say, may the Lord guirds ya steeps, may ya harvest abounds, and reaps plentiful and let no wind disinherits ya possessions.

Bye for now.

Yours truly,
Mr and Mrs Harold Moore Sr.

There's no way I'm letting any wind disinherits ma possessions, I can tell you that right now. Because there's no wind that can steal my heart.

.....

In other news, today marks the close of the wards. Tomorrow and potentially Sunday are ship-wide blackout days. That means to electricity, no air conditioning, no running water and no flushing toilets. And no, bucket flushing isn't an option; these toilets use some kind of space-age technology with vacuums that threaten to suck you down to deck two every time you hit the button.

That being the case, my cabin is going to become a hot, dark cave. I will be doing everything in my power to stay out of that hot, dark cave. It'll be at least Monday before you hear from me again.

Hope your weekend is cooler than mine promises to be.