ali's african adventures

When I left New Jersey to come to Monrovia, I thought this year was going to feel like forever. I remember the months stretching out in front of me, seemingly endless days and weeks and hours to be lived through before I would see my family again. But now, with less than forty days before I land in Toronto, I'm wondering how it's all slipped through my fingers. I feel like such a cliche, but I can't help wondering where the time went.

It's almost not real. I remember how it felt every single June when I was growing up. The spring rains would taper off as the weather got warmer, and everyone started looking forward to packing up and closing school for the summer. It's been the same way around here. The lake-sized potholes in the roads are starting to dry out as the rains become less frequent, and the sun is getting so strong that it's hard to venture out between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon without roasting to a delicate shade of pink almost immediately. (The latter, however, is not such a bad thing; I'm thinking that coming home in the middle of winter without a tan is not going to be the best way to convince people that I actually just spent a year in Africa.)

The thing that's just bizarre is that we are actually packing up and getting ready to go. Nurses are leaving left and right; three of my four roommates will be flying home next weekend, and the fourth leaves me the weekend after that. And after ten months of pouring our souls into these people, we're just going to untie from the dock and sail out of the harbor; I'll most likely never see most them again. They are people I have spent countless hours nursing back to health, and so many of them are people I consider friends.

I don't know. I'm just not sure what I should be thinking or feeling right now. Part of me is content in a job well done, looking back over so many successful surgeries. Another part is frustrated at the overwhelming need that still remains, the countless time we had to say no. The rest of me just wants to plant my roots right here and wave at the ship as it pulls away from the dock.

How am I going to do this again next year? It's a whole new country full of stories I've never heard, spoken in a language I have yet to learn. I'm afraid that I'll have been drained too dry here in Liberia, that I won't have anything left for Benin.

Pour out your soul, He reminds me. Don't ask where it's coming from or whether it will be enough. Just pour it out. That's all I want from you.

Deep breath. I can do this. I can find the courage to leave. And I have a feeling that it's that same strength that will bring me back.

Today was frustrating. I hate not being able to fix things. When it's babies that are broken, it just hurts my heart that much more.

Abel is one of the roundest-faced two-year olds I have ever met, complete with a bottom lip jutting so permanently out that I briefly considered hanging my stethoscope on it. He is also one of the most stubborn. Getting Abel to drink a nutritious, delicious can of Pediasure is nearly impossible. Getting him to swallow medicine is a kamikaze mission. I attempted both today; I also showered directly after work, and I might actually have run the water for my full two minutes. My hair still smells faintly of augmentin syrup, but I think I got the worst of it out.

Abel was born with a condition in which the skin never closed over his bladder, and his plumbing, as a result, is not terribly functional. Four days ago, he underwent a very painful surgery to jury-rig a solution to the problem, and he's been angry with us ever since.

It's the rare child I'm unable to connect with, but Abel had me totally stumped. The Lion King wasn't interesting. Stuffed animals were scary. And even my failsafe standby, a huge book of stickers, was an object of utter disdain to my pouting little friend. It was at this critical moment, when all my tricks were exhausted, that Abel's mother left his bedside to go bathe in the tiny, shared bathroom. And the lip that I had thought was at maximum levels of jutting not only stuck further out, but also started to quiver as his eyes filled up with tears.

Come, I said, and held out my arms.

He was surprised, I think. I hadn't tried it before, mostly because I was sure that the result would be kicking and screaming. But I had caught him off guard, and before he realized what he was doing, he had lifted his pudgy little hands up to me. I scooped him up and held him close to my chest, his body stiff in my arms. I rubbed his back in small circles, crooning soft words in Liberian English as he relaxed into me and his head found the corner in my neck reserved especially for small, brown boys.

When his mama returned, I placed him gently back in his bed and his dark eyes followed me until I had disappeared around the corner.


I just can't help thinking that it's exactly what God did with me.

For so long, I resisted all His advances. He tempted me with unfettered love and sure promises, and I rejected Him at every turn. Nothing He offered was good enough for me; I was the kid who didn't even want stickers.

And then, when I wasn't expecting it, He just held out His arms. Come.

And I did. And I relaxed into that corner that He had reserved especially for me, and now I can't figure out why on earth I didn't want to be here all along.

Walking up from the gate the other afternoon, I once again met up with Joanna, the Queen of Mercy Ships. We got caught up on her daughter's life and my work on the wards, and then she dropped a bomb into our casual conversation.

Friend die. My face fell and I stopped walking, my feet planted to the concrete. She nodded sagely. Friend really die-o, she confirmed, as my heart sank through my feet.

Friend was another of our long-term patients; he was with us at the same time as Joanna and Baby Greg and Bendu. For years, a tumor had been growing on his back. We took a biopsy, knew that it was cancer, but realized that the quality of his life would be so much better if he could live the rest of his days as a part of society. So we removed it, grafted skin from his leg over the open sores, and battled the infections that followed. Friend hung out in his bed in the corner of the ward, number fifteen, for quite a while. So long, in fact, that he earned himself a new title: King of Mercy Ships. He and Joanna were quite a pair. We got to know him, and he would pray with us at devotions and encourage us with testimonies of how God was making a way for him. And he would complain about pain in his hip.

We figured it was because of the awkward angle at which he carried himself, half hunched over like a boxer nursing a bruised set of ribs. We goaded him constantly to stand up straight and exercise his muscles. Eventually, he went home.

We found out a few weeks later that the cancer had returned, bursting through the skin of his hip. Joanna, who had remained in contact with Friend after they both left us, would come for her own appointments and let us know how he was doing. He trying small. He really not too well. Or, finally, He really die-o. The King's fight was over.

She told me that he was really disheartened during his last days, that he had completely lost hope. And while I hate to think of my Friend living out his final hours in despair, I'm holding on to the fact that healing doesn't always happen in this life.

My best friend here on the ship left today to go home for three weeks. While I can't begrudge anyone their time off, especially knowing how much I'm looking forward to my own in a few short weeks, I found myself feeling rather lost and forlorn this afternoon. I was sitting in bed reading a book when I got a call from the gangway. There's a patient here to see you. Since it's Sunday and I wasn't working and definitely not in a good mood, I thought about telling them to go away. I figured it was some random Liberian who got my name from a former patient and was here to tell me about their cousin's neighbor who has a tumor. Someone else I would have to say no to. The guard upstairs continued. His name is ... Harold. That was all I needed; I grabbed my slippers and headed for the dock.

Harold was one of my patients last week. He wasn't really sick; all the patients from here until the end of the outreach (I can say that now, since it's only three weeks away) are less complicated cases. Harold is a beautiful six-year old boy who recently started getting teased at school. His gums were swelling and sometimes they would bleed a little bit, so he would come home crying to his mama because the other kids laughed at him and wouldn't play with him. They were screened at a dental clinic and came to the ship for a simple surgery to correct the problem.

Harold was quiet the day he and his caregiver, his father, were admitted; I don't think he said a single word to me. Just beamed up at me with a huge, lopsided smile as I found balloons and coloring books and Jenga blocks for him to play with. It doesn't take much to cement a friendship with a six-year old, and by the time he went to the operating room the next day, we were good buddies. That served me well after his surgery, when I found it remarkably easy to convince him to take his medicines, finish his dinner and hold still while I took out his IV. Except for some confusion with a visitor card and a less-than-friendly encounter with his mother, Harold and his father were perfect patients. They went home the next day, and I couldn't imagine what they were doing on the dock.

When I appeared at the top of the gangway, little Harold caught sight of me and his face lit up like Christmas. I ran down the steps (carefully of course, in case the safety officer happens to be reading this) and he threw his arms around my waist. I sat down and gathered him into my lap, grateful for the hug I'd just been thinking I wanted. His mama sat by his side, beaming. We chatted about Harold and about how much she regretted being surly the other day. She shared with me that I have what's known as a Lomo Shape, after the Lomo tribe, renowned for, you guessed it, their wide hips and large bottoms. We even talked about the weather for the customary small while, and then I asked her why she had come. Her smile got even wider.

Ever since he come home, Harold been missing his White Aunty! He just telling us about the ship and he say he missing you and he wan' see you. So we catch car from Painseville and we tol' them your name at the gate and so they say we can come to see you. Harold just sat on my lap, his head nestled into the corner of my neck, not saying a word.

Painesville is a good forty-five minutes away from the ship, and you have to take two different taxis to get here. Factor in the time spent waiting at the side of the road and possible breakdowns, and it's a journey that can take up to three hours. Each way.

They had no agenda. They didn't ask me for money or food or a ticket to America. Harold's mama had been feeling guilty about being snappy with us, and so when Harold said he was missing me, she piled them both into a taxi and headed over to make it right. We talked for a long time about social dynamics in Liberia, how everyone's trying to get on top, and no one on top looks down to help those below them. When it came out that I'm not getting paid to work here, that I'm actually paying crew fees so that I can do this work, she almost fell off her chair. What she said will stay with me for a while.

You people are really different. I come to the ship and everybody smile at me. You abandon your homes. You abandon your families, and you come to us in Liberia. And I see the way you all can love. And that is how I know you are Christians. This is God's work here.

I choked back the tears that were threatening my composure and invited them to come inside for the evening church service that was about to start. Harold shook his head, still without saying a word; apparently the memory of surgery was too fresh. So, less than half an hour after they had arrived, Harold and his mama got up to leave, their mission to visit with me accomplished.

I walked with them to the gate, Harold's small hand firmly clutching mine. When I turned to leave, I knelt down to give him one last hug. His arms went around my neck, and his mouth found my ear to whisper the only words he would say during the entire visit.

I love you, Aunty.

Back when I was in my senior year of nursing school, a group of about twenty of us piled into a couple vans and drove from Pennsylvania to Kentucky for a missions conference at one of the biggest churches in the country. In a huge hall filled with representatives from missions all over the world, one booth stood out to me.

They were an organization that sent hospital ships around the world, providing healthcare to the poorest of the poor. Hope and healing, they said, we're about hope and healing. It sounded perfect, and, starry-eyed student that I was, I told them of my plans to graduate and start working in the neonatal ICU (NICU) with the itty bitty premature babies. The girl behind the table paused. Well, you can do that, but just realize that you might not end up with the best set of skills, since we don't really care for that population on the ship.

I was a little upset to hear that, because I thought Mercy Ships sounded perfect for me. I pushed them to the back of my mind, added their brochure to my stack and headed home. When I came close to graduation, I applied for a bunch of NICU jobs, even flying to Florida to meet with a potential boss. All the interviews went really well, all the managers said they would love to hire me. And none of them offered me a job.

I was, somewhat understandably, confused. I had done well at school, graduated near the top of my class, and had excellent recommendations and several women telling me that they wanted to hire me, for crying out loud. What was the problem? It'll perhaps be a little glimpse into just how perfect I am for ICU nursing (the part where it requires us all to be a little OCD) when I reveal to you that it was only April, a whole month away from even graduating, when I started to panic about my impending joblessness. So what did I do?

Fallback plan. I had been working at a hospital all throughout college summers, making some money as a nurse's aide in the pediatric ICU (PICU). They had already as much as told me they'd give me a job, so I tucked my tail between my legs and called Linda, the manager. My interview consisted mainly of catching up with my old bosses, discussing my recent trip to Zambia and chatting about what my orientation would entail. I was in. And the very first day that I stepped foot on that unit as a brand-new RN, I knew that I was exactly where I should be.

I spent an incredibly intense year getting my feet under me in that place, learning the ropes, gaining confidence and dealing with my first deaths. And then, just as I started to get comfortable, it happened. That quiet feeling that there was something different I should be doing, something more. I pulled out my stack of missions brochures, and the one for Mercy Ships caught my eye. They said NICU wasn't the best, but what about PICU? Maybe God had different plans for me all along.

I called the HR office in Texas, found out that I could apply after a year and a half of experience and come to the ship after two. Two years and a month after starting what I thought was my dream job, I quit it and hopped on a plane to come here, to what I've realized is probably a little closer to my dreams than I ever imagined.

A friend I graduated nursing school with, Sarah, emailed me the other day. Guess where I am? The conference in Louisville! I told her she had to go to the booth for me. I wouldn't know the people, but I wanted her to just go and tell them thank you on my behalf for being there, because who knows who might get to live their dreams as a result. She quickly wrote back.

So I went by the Mercy Ships booth and you were on the display ... I let out a small scream, then quickly composed myself.

I, on the other hand, am having a harder time with the self composure. I just keep smiling like a fool whenever I think about it. Because my life, it seems, has come full circle. And I never knew how right that could feel.

For those of you who have contacted me wanting to help, never fear - your emails have not fallen into a black hole. (My mother's emails, on the other hand, often seem to suffer that fate. Hi mum! I love you!) I'm in the process of talking with a few people on board as to what the needs are in their departments, and I'll get back to you within the next couple of days with shipping addresses and lists of goodies.

Thanks for being patient with me, and thanks so much more for wanting to be a part of this.

My cup is overflowing right now. For some reason, the eight hours I just spent on the ward were some of the best this whole year. Maybe it was the end-of-the-school-year feeling that pervaded the hospital as we packed up D Ward, hopefully for the last time, and moved all those patients up the hall to A and B. Maybe it was the beautiful kiddos, peeking out from behind bandages and tubes in their noses, lifting up skinny arms to be held, snuggling their tired heads into the corner of my neck. Or maybe it was just a good shift, something that last happened so long ago that I seem to have forgotten what it feels like.

In beds nine and ten are two little boys of similar age, both named Mohamed. I was taking care of Mohamed Number One in bed ten, and ended up by proximity chatting a lot with the mama of Mohamed Number Two. In French. My paltry grasp of the language made me the best interpreter until Dennis showed up at eight in the evening, so we spent loads of time laughing together as I searched for words for things like recovery room and endotracheal tube. (Had no idea how to say either, so I settled for when his eyes open, you will go to him, which seemed to get the point across.)

In the meantime, Mohamed Number One followed me around like a shadow, chucking his bright orange balloon at my face and laughing hysterically when I head-butted it back to him. Thanks to Amy's photographic skills, I can show you how both his ears were covered in a thick bandage, which actually made no difference in our communication in the long run; he doesn't speak a word of either English or French. Good thing I speak fluent balloon.

Mohamed Number One's mama is a stout lady who wraps her head in a red scarf that tends to clash with whatever else she's wearing. Early in my shift, while the room was a chaos of patients being moved, babies crawling around and beds being shuffled, she quietly approached me. Sister, I need to pray. She gestured helplessly at the melee around her, silently asking me for a quiet place where she could kneel in peace. I led her to an empty room, unused because of the thunder of the generator below. It's really loud in here, but God will hear you anyway. She beamed her thanks and spread her lappa on the floor.

Later, when the father of Mohamed Number Two came to visit, Number One's mama asked me if she could show him to the room so they could all pray. I assented, and as they headed for the door, her voice floated back to me above the beeps and wails. That girl, she really know how to love us.

I'll hold on to that on the days when nothing seems to be going right.

Since I'm updating, I think it's only fair to let you know what's going on with Kwelywoh. While his friend Moses is headed home in the next few days, happy and healthy (except for his lopsided eyes, which we can't do anything about but which do lend him a certain air of whimsy), Kwelywoh's road has turned out to be rather longer.

He's not doing as well as we'd like. The hole in the front of his skull, where his brain was poking out before the surgery, has stayed open. The gap allows the fluid from around his brain, CSF, to leak out, causing swelling and sometimes dripping from his nose and eyes. There's a huge risk of infection, and it's not good for the pressure around the brain to be changing constantly, which is one side effect of this leak.

He went back to the operating room today to have a small drain placed over his eye. (Not sure when Amy's arms got so long, but she did manage to take this photo and be in it at the same time.) This procedure isn't something we usually do here in Liberia, and it's not something he can go home with when we leave in a few weeks. We're out of options at this point.

And so we're back to our old standby; we'll pray for a miracle until one happens. Given the things I've seen in the last nine months, I'm figuring it's not such a long shot.

Almost two weeks ago, Eddie had the first of many surgeries he will have to endure. The doctors took skin from his leg (wrapped up now in bandages to resemble, almost perfectly, a little chicken drumstick) and used it to cover the sore on the top of his head. They used some more skin to fashion brand-new eyelids for him. He, understandably, wasn't to happy about all this.

The bad news? Eddie is a baby, and babies can't be reasoned with. Don't touch your eyes holds no weight with a five-month old. While we weren't looking, Eddie managed to scratch the delicate graft over one of his eyes, causing it to partially fail.

The good news? This list is a little longer. The other eyelid took splendidly. Now, when he sleeps, his right eye is shut tight against the light and dust. His left left still hangs open just a little, but he can blink it when he's awake. His head is healing well. His belly is getting fatter and fatter.

And yesterday, when his mama dropped him into my lap while she went to chat with a friend, he looked up at me and grinned. His little scarred face was transformed from a grotesque mask into a real, honest-to-goodness baby smile, complete with gurgling cooing noises.

He's already starting to overcome.

The whole blog world is kind of new to me. It's becoming rapidly apparent, however, that I'm not alone in all this. People I have never met and will probably never lay eyes on are reading these stories, praying for my kids and wanting to have a part in this. I never imagined when I typed out my first post that people all around the world would care to read the things I'm writing. I couldn't be happier to be wrong.

I get all kinds of random comments these days, people popping by to let me know they were linked from Radical Womanhood or 6YearMed or some other site that I've either never heard of or have been reading for months. Recently, a lot of comments and e-mails have been people wanting to help. The thing is, I know how it feels, to be sitting in a room in North America, wanting so desperately to find a way to counteract all the meaningless stuff in my life. Wishing I could be somewhere else. Wishing I could do more than just sit and wish.

I haven't done this before, sending out a mass call to action, but I think it's time. So if you want to help out, whether it's with money to support someone like Marion to go to school, or packages of love for the kids on the wards, this is your chance. I'm not sure what to do about the people who have written to me offering me money for Marion's schooling. Truth is, I'm not sure if it's going to work out for me to keep sending her the money. Only time will tell, and I wouldn't feel right taking money if I'm not sure it'll get to her. I'll keep you posted on that one when I figure out what to do. (Suggestions are welcome.)

I did, however, speak with our ward supervisor to get a list of some things we still need on the wards, and I'm going to chat to the Mercy Ministries coordinator, the woman who brings teams to local orphanages and such, to see what she needs for next year. If you're serious about this, e-mail me and let me know what you want to do, and I'll let you know how to go about it. I can send you lists of supplies and an address where you can send boxes to be loaded onto a container and sent to us once the ship reaches Benin early next year.

Its easy for me to sit here and understand why these kids need to be loved on. All it takes is one shy smile, one pair of scrawny arms reaching up to be held, and my heart explodes in my chest. But you? You are oceans away and have never felt the weight of one of these small ones on your lap, and yet you want to love them. I've said it before; it's strangers like you who give me hope.

Marion, Baby Greg's mama, came to visit me today. She looks smaller every time I see her, but her smile is just as wide, just as ready to forgive the world for all the wrong it's done her. Greg Senior, Baby Greg's dad, she explained, had driven her out. He found a new woman, and little Marion was no longer welcome in his life. She's staying with a sister these days, but she doesn't know what she'll do next year. Her sister has her own children to care for.

As we waited to get her signed in on the gangway, her cell phone rang. She answered, giggled, and hung up. That were my school, she explained. They wondering where I am. Any doubt about the purpose of her visit vanished, and we made our way down to my room.

Marion is twenty-one, and she's going to school again. Thanks to help from my cousins, Dave and Amy, and the junior high kids at my church, I have the money to sponsor Marion for the year. School fees aren't much here. Her tuition for each trimester costs 1,200LD. All the other costs (registration, books and such) are less than 2,000LD. Throw in another 1,200LD or so for uniforms, and you've got the total cost to send someone to school. Those numbers seem a little daunting, but add it all together and divide by sixty. Done? That's right. Less than 115 US dollars for a year of education. I counted out the money she still needed, and she tucked it carefully into a small plastic bag she extracted from her pocket.

She's in tenth grade now. If, somehow, she can find the money for two more years, she'll accomplish something that so few Liberians can claim; she'll graduate from high school. My life is too much invested in hers at this point to let her walk that road alone. We sat together on the end of my bed and tried to figure out a plan, a way for her to get the money for the next two years. We figured that it might be possible for me to wire money to her from whichever West African country I find myself in, but couldn't see how I would know what to send and how she would know when to pick it up. The answer glared back at me from the screen on my desk.

Marion! We can make you an e-mail account! Her eyes lit up, and she explained that, yes, there was an internet cafe that she could use and could I help her get started? I logged onto my computer, and within minutes, Marion had her very own e-mail address. I wanted to test her newfound skills, so I gave her a challenge. Come, write your first mail. Who should you write to? She laughed; it was a no-brainer. I will write to my Jennifer.

I set the computer on my lap and explained the basics of typing. I showed her what a spacebar is and what it does. I demonstrated the intricacies of the shift key. I explained about punctuation. And then I sat back and let her type. One. letter. at. a. time.

About twenty minutes later, her three-line e-mail was complete. She sat back with a sigh of relief, and triumphantly pushed send. We were headed back up to the gangway when she said something to me that I absolutely wasn't expecting.

My father wants to talk with you. If you remember, Marion's father is the one who cursed her, claiming for her life that she would never hold a live child in her arms. He was conspicuously absent in the whole of Greg's long hospitalization, and he never showed up after his death. We've all been praying for reconciliation, but it felt like one of those prayers you breathe over and over, never quite expecting it to be answered.

We are talking again. I told him about what you people did for me, and he wants to say thank you. And he asked me to please forgive him for what he did to me.

In the wake of Baby Greg, all I could see was the darkness; I was sure we had failed. But maybe that's okay. Because maybe, just maybe, a little boy had to die for a father to see the light.

If that were the only reason this ship was in Liberia this year, it would be reason enough.

Proof that I can indeed back a baby, compliments of Emily Adams and my ever-improving lappa-tying skills.

She sitting good there. You can back baby well, Liberian White Woman!

(Please let me stay forever.)

A lot of shops here in Liberia are nothing but wheelbarrows on the side of the road, piled high with slippers and bras and little packets of cookies. The next step up is a bamboo shack, usually shaded by an umbrella or a tarp, with goods displayed draped over the cracks in the walls. The UNMIL store, which sells screen-printed t-shirts, is a step up from this.

It's unclear what the builders were thinking when they constructed this particular house, but the shop is entered by a low doorway. Watch your head the sign warns, so you duck and fold your body in half as you stoop across the threshold, expecting to straighten up as you get inside. This hope is soon crushed as, at least for a Yongo like myself, you realize that the floor and ceiling of this particular room are quite a bit too close together. As you move towards the back of the room, the dirt floor slants downwards just enough to allow a tall person to kind of almost stand up mostly straight. Clotheslines are strung along the sides of the room, and two necessarily low tables take up half of the space. The whitewashed walls are covered in stencils, the shop's way of letting you know what they might have in stock.

The main seller is the classic UNMIL shirt. It's got the UN logo, surrounded by the explanation of the acronym: United Nations Mission in Liberia. Classy yet understated, they're three for five dollars. The shop has recently been expanding its range, though, offering custom shirts for groups like the Nigerian Police, the Mercy Ships dental team and even the Toilet Doctor.

When we walked in today, we saw a new stencil for sale. Obama gazed almost majestically from his place on the wall, the words under his portrait distinctly Liberian. TRYING SMALL. It was a campaign shirt, designed by one of the workers at the shop, back when they weren't sure whether or not this black man would be able to win America over. We started searching through the stacks of shirts to find ones already printed; there were none, which isn't a problem in this particular establishment. All you need to do is unearth a blank shirt and hand it to the man standing at a small wooden stand. He grabs a frame and a pot of ink, and forty seconds later you're the proud possessor of a Liberian original. (Thanks to Luke for the photos for this entry!)

As we unfolded ourselves from the shop (although Amy and Luke didn't have to do as much in the way of bending, since they're not quite as tall as I am) we realized that the ink on our new shirts was still wet. We didn't want them to smudge in our bags, so we did what seemed totally natural, given the fact that we're in Africa. We put our shirts on our heads to dry in the hot sun and started the dusty trek home.

Here's where it got interesting. I know I've spoken before to the fact that I'm nothing close to anonymous here. I can't go outside the port gates without being called to almost constantly. White Girl! White Girl! You fine! I love you! Be my friend! White Girl! Today, on the half-hour walk home from the UNMIL store, my color was never once shouted out at me. As my feet got dustier and my shoulders burned in the heat, the calls were of a different nature.

Obama! Obama! Obama! I love that man! He's a great man! That man will do well for America! I want that shirt! Obama! They didn't ask for money or food or my undying love. They just wanted to share their joy with me, their joy that a black man was actually elected president of America. And for the first time in nine months, people didn't notice the color of my skin.

Like I said, I don't know anything about him. My shirt claims that he's trying small, but the the truth is, I don't know how he's going to lead my country, and I don't know what the next four years will hold. All I know is that today, for a few brief moments in Liberia, his color trumped mine.

For that, I can only thank him.

As the outreach winds down and exhaustion sets in, it gets easier and easier to be annoyed. I've recently been increasingly frustrated by a lot of things. Politics in the organization (probably made all the more drastic in my own eyes because I was naively expecting to escape that aspect of life by coming here) and interpersonal relationships (although friction is to be expected when we work with people from thirty-three nations) have formed the bulk of my discontent.

It's so easy to focus on the negative. It could be the most beautiful day in the world and all I'd notice was the fire ant bite on my ankle; people are like that. It's not terribly surprising that my fuse is a little short these days. It just seems like, no matter how good things might be, it's never good enough. This morning on D Ward, I got a bit of a reality check.

Moses and Kwelywoh are the two boys on the ward recovering from encephalocele repairs. (These photos are Holly's.) Moses had a lump the size of a large clementine jutting out from his forehead, flattening his nose and pushing his eyes to the side. Kwelywoh you know; he's the one we had to refuse earlier in the outreach, but he was able to be scheduled about a week and a half ago. They both had the skin of their faces peeled down, their skulls dismantled and then put back together in marathon surgeries. And they're both okay.

I was struck by how insane it is to be able to say that when a vision trip came through the hospital. Vision trips are groups of people who come to the ship, not to work, but generally to see how their donations of money or supplies are being used. A group of people who had been involved somehow in supplying things for the hospital showed up at the door near the spot on the floor where Moses and Kwelywoh were sitting together, playing with toy cars. Kwelywoh gazed at them silently from behind his bandages (he should be released from that prison tomorrow!) while Moses fixed one of his eyes on a lady at the front of the group. As I grabbed his chart to show them a photo of his face before surgery, he broke out into an enormous grin. And I stood there and explained just what Dr. Gary had done to save these little boys' lives, something that should have been impossible in Liberia.

The vision trip eventually moved on, and in a quiet moment, I felt a small body lean up against my leg. I looked down to see Janet, a seven-year old girl who came in for a terrible tooth abcess. She's getting better, but she still screams and moans during her dressing changes, and I didn't think she was really my biggest fan. However, she was bored, and I guess I looked like I could help with that.

She leaned up against the right peds nurse. I ran to my room to grab the sets of watercolors that my blog-reading friends had sent me, and stopped by the office on the way back to print out some coloring pages. I set Janet up on a little table on the floor with her pictures and paints and a little tub of water. I stepped back to watch her paint, and she stared up at me, hands folded on her lap. You know this? I asked her. She shook her head.

I took the brush, dipped it in the water and swirled it in the circle of yellow. Her eyes widened as she saw the bristles take on color. I touched the brush to the paper, leaving a small streak of gold, and I thought her head was going to fall off from grinning. I left her the brush clutched firmly in her hand, painting butterflies in all the colors of the rainbow.

I'm caring for children who have had brain surgery in the midst of a war-torn country in West Africa. And I taught a seven-year old girl how to paint.

It's enough.

Liberia feels so remote today. I know what the past days would have been like at home. My dad would be watching CNN or some other news channel, constantly tapped into a feed of information about Obama or McCain or whatever was going on. We would have been talking about it at dinner, Daddy grinning from the head of the table as he shared his latest tidbits. And yesterday? The computers would never have slept. (Correct me if I'm wrong, here, folks.) Or maybe it's the IPhone now. I'm so far removed I'm not even sure what technology is in my house these days.

Instead. I sat on a ship off the coast of West Africa. I watched burned copies of new-to-me episodes of The Office. I took a walk on the dock, and I went to bed. When I woke up, I stumbled upstairs to breakfast to see a ticker on a TV letting me know who my president is. And then I went to work.

I have no idea who this man is. I have had the same lack of information about McCain. I poke around on people's Flickr accounts and Facebook pages and see references to the inexpressible spectacle that was the election yesterday. People are drawing comparisons to JFK and MLK and moon landings. Where were you when you heard? Just like Princess Di and 9-11, it's something no American is going to forget anytime soon.

Except me. Because I wasn't there. I missed it.

Which isn't such a bad thing, necessarily. It just underscores the distance.