hope

Remember Yeme? I figure it's time for an update.

She's had more surgery, and the tumor above her eye is gone, the scar already fading quietly into her skin, barely noticeable between her plaits. She's blossomed in the almost-three months she's been on the ward. The walls in her corner of B Ward are covered with drawings and crafts and language charts, spelled out phonetically so we can communicate with her in her own language. (She just laughs when we try, but we're all getting a kick out of it, so no one really minds.) She's learning English, too, picking up one word at a time by mimicking our voices with uncanny accuracy.

It's almost time for her to go home. In the eighty or so days she's been with us, we have had no communication with her family. They haven't tried to call or write or use any other means to find out how she's doing. It's like they don't care, which could be closer to the truth than I want to think.

But she doesn't need us anymore. We've loved on her as much as we can, and her wounds have all healed. As hard as it is for us, the truth is that as soon as we can get her a flight, she'll be winging her way back to Guinea. Back to her village. Back to the people who abandoned her at our gates.

Hopefully, back to love.

It's one o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and I should be asleep. But I close my eyes, and all I can see is Esther. I want to tell you her story.

Esther was married when she was fourteen. Her first baby was a boy who died in childhood. Her second was a girl, a fine girl. And then the war came. In 1995, when Esther was pregnant with her third child, the country was being torn apart by rebel forces. So when the pains came, there was no hospital Esther could go to. She stayed home, waiting for the baby to come. It was up so high. It just stuck here, she said, gesturing to her heart. It don't come out. The baby die. And still the baby would not come out.

Help arrived in the form of a man Esther refers to as a 'first-aid worker'. He took a pair of rusty scissors and cut the baby out of her from below, damaging her bladder in the process. Esther was left wounded, broken and massively infected. Urine leaked constantly from her body. She sat quietly today, every eye fixed on her downcast face, as she described being carried out and laid on banana leaves, being washed as the maggots fell from her skin. She let her arms hang heavy as she explained how she had not had the strength to brush away the flies. Her eyes were filled with pain as she told us that she was sure she would die.

Her head snapped up. But Daddy God, He save me. Slowly, Esther regained strength. She was able to start taking food again. Her husband went into the bush one day to find some cassava for her and met a band of rebels there. He never came back, and Esther started her new life as a widow. She went to her family's town to tell them of her problems, and they wept together, knowing all to well what it meant for her life. She journeyed to Ivory Coast to seek treatment and was met only with disappointment. For ten years, Esther lived the life of an outcast. When men found out about her problem, she was left alone, clutching a broken heart and empty promises.

When hope seemed lost, Esther heard about a ship that was going to come to Liberia, a ship where they could help problems like hers. She made her way to Monrovia and inquired at hospitals about how she could come to the ship, but greed had reared its ugly head. Extortionists set up shop, demanding outrageous sums of money (fifty, a hundred, even a thousand US dollars) for the chance to register for an appointment. Esther didn't know any better. Didn't know that the ship would come full of people who wanted to love her and have a hand in her healing and who would ask nothing from her in return. She went back to the bush and began burning charcoal to sell so she could scrape together the phony registration fee.

Enter the Ghanaian. A man of God, when she told him about her problem, his response was love. You are my true love. Your problem is my problem. I will wait for you. Together they discovered the truth about Mercy Ships, and Esther got an appointment card, a ticket to freedom from the bondage of her body's betrayal.

So, in 2005, Esther came to the ship. And she had surgery. And she was dry. At which point in the story, the twenty or so ladies packed into our half of A Ward erupted into shouts and laughter and clapping. And Robert, Esther's ten month old son, looked up from his place in her lap, grinned a mostly-toothless grin, and clapped his own pudgy little hands.

Because there is life after VVF. There is hope and there is healing. No, not for everyone; there were a few ladies who silently listened to Esther's story, stoic faces masking their own disappointment as they felt their beds grow wet again beneath them. But Esther and Robert reminded us today that new life can come from brokenness. Healing can come to even the most shattered places.

I was looking forward to posting the rest of Shidou's story for you. I couldn't wait to tell you all about how I went with him and they took off his bandages and we saw each other for the first time.

Instead, like so much else here, the story of Shidou is touched with sadness. I overslept yesterday and when I made it down to the ward, it was to find out that he had already been discharged. I ran out to the eye tent, hoping against hope that he would still be on the dock. Of course, this is Liberia, and nothing moves quickly; he was still very much there. Instead of the blue and white bug-like eye shields he had been sporting the night before, he now wore the coolest pair of silver sunglasses I've seen for a while. His mom recognized me right away as I slipped into the seat next to him. The exchange went something like this:

Shidou! How you feeling?
Fine. (As behind the glasses his eyes rolled, unfocused.)
You see me?
(His mom) Shidou, you see your best friend?

Nothing. Just a little body curled up against my side, fingers laced tight through mine.


Because sometimes the optic nerve doesn't form when the cataracts start so early. Sometimes it takes a while for the child to get accustomed to seeing when he's spent so long in darkness. And sometimes the surgery simply doesn't work.

So I don't know what the outcome will be for Shidou. Just like I don't know what the outcome will be for Liberia.

But I do know that this country has a heart deeper than I anticipated. Like the woman who paid for an almost hour-long taxi ride for a friend and I yesterday, refusing our offer of money as she thanked us for helping her rebuild her country.

Or Victoria, the mother of one of our smallest patients. 'Kumassah's Mom' (as she is more commonly known) rarely stops smiling, and she never hesitates to lend a hand around the ward. She translates for me, laughing with her head thrown back at my floundering attempts at Kpelle, as I try to explain things to my 84-year old friend. (No such thing as HIPAA in Liberia.) We call on her all the time, and she has not once uttered a grudging word.



Liberia stands on shoulders like these.

And she smiles through the faces of little boys like Abraham.

I'll write about screening properly when I get photos from the communications department to share with you. But for now, suffice it to say that I have revised my image of heaven. I don't think there are going to be staid angels floating around with white robes and sweet-sounding harps.

In heaven, our feet will pound, our hands will be raised high and we will dance to the beat of African drums.

This entry promises to be something of a mixed bag, much like my own thoughts these past few days.

Coming into this experience, I knew there was something I'd struggle with enormously. I was talking with Nicole earlier (not only taller than me, she is also a wicked ultimate player ... I sense a bond here) and she phrased it so perfectly. "We don't live in Africa. We live beside it." My brother wrote me an e-mail recently where he wondered what he was doing with his "ipods and fancy car" when there are people living in poverty. I'm wondering the same thing about myself. Here I am, living in complete luxury (because you can't convince me otherwise when I can take a hot shower, check my e-mail and then wander down to the Town Square and buy an authentic Starbucks chai tea latte for 75 cents), when just outside the gate there are kids dying from hunger. How can I come to terms with that?

Maybe it makes more sense when I think about the hospital here. We have electricity 24 hours a day. We have IV pumps and oxygen and a ventilator. We have supplies. We have staff. We're not going to see babies die because there was no fuel for the generator that day. We're not going to watch women suffer in pain because there aren't sufficient resources to manage it. So maybe it's okay that we have so much. I don't know. I'm still working through this one, and I'm not sure when I'll have it all sorted out.



At any rate, screening is in two days. We are waiting eagerly for the wards to be full (except for Megan, who I'm pretty sure is deliberately picking her nose in this photo). We had a briefing yesterday where we got to meet the teams we'll be working with on Monday. I was part of the "handing out water/children's ministry" team. Somehow my enthusiasm for small humans must have been evident, (perhaps my mention of finger puppets and an over-abundance of sharpies?) because I'm now one of the leaders of said children's team. Which means that I'll leave the ship at six in the morning on Monday and spend the entire day colouring, playing, painting faces and putting stickers all over Liberian kids. I don't think anyone could have dreamed up a better job for me.

I was talking with yet another new friend last night (one of those talks where you end up just blown away by how faithful God is) and we were wondering together about screening. I've honestly not given it a huge amount of thought because I'm afraid I won't get into my Land Rover on Monday morning if I do. We don't know how many people are going to show up. What we do know is that the Samuel K Doe Stadium is going to be filled to overflowing with that strange mix of hope and despair. Some will be scheduled for surgery and will get with that little card the chance to reclaim a place in society that may have been lost to them since birth. So many more will be turned away empty-hearted.

Pray for us that we will be able to see them all through God's own eyes. Loved and lovely, precious beyond belief.

This is the Africa I am learning all over again. She is tired and broken, riddled with bullet holes and shot through with despair. Her men sit by the side of the road because they have nowhere else to go. Her women pick through piles of garbage as they seek to find their way again. It is too much.




Even so, amidst the darkness, a light is shining. We screen on Monday. The wards open on Wednesday. Hope and healing are coming back to Liberia. And we will remind her children of God's unwavering love.