Ministry Tour

Along with the hospital on board the Africa Mercy, Mercy Ships also has several off-ship programs. Every 2 weeks crew members can sign up for a tour of these sites and see more of what Mercy Ships does, which is a great opportunity for those of us stuck on the ship all day! We got to see the Agriculture Site and the Dental Clinic. The Agriculture site is in a town called Hevie, about 1.5 hour drive from the ship. They are starting up a program teaching 10 men about farming God's way, using organic techniques. These 10 men will then become the trainers, who will continue the work after Mercy Ships has gone. The Agriculture program is partnered with a local NGO called Bethesda, who will continue funding the program.

Below are photos of the construction site that will become a dorm for the people to stay in while they learn about organic farming. Most of the workers are from Hevie and are overseen by the Construction supervisor from the Africa Mercy.



They use natural fertilizer and a natural insecticide they make from a local tree. It was fascinating to see how much fast the crops (corn and beans) grow with these practices. These corn stalks were only planted 3 weeks ago!


This is from the off-ship Dental Clinic. Everyday, a team of about 12 people head out to the Dental Clinic and see local patients. This is one of 2 exam rooms at the clinic. The Dentist do extractions and occasionally dental surgery. The hygienists also do teeth cleaning and hygiene education.


On Saturday, my friend Judi and I went out to the Hospitality Center. This is where patient often stay before and after their surgery. I handed my camera over to a little guy named Christian and he had a blast taking photos!

Last month recap...

Since I haven't blogged in over a month, I figured it was time for a recap of June. 4 people in the HR department have gone on vacation, so there are 2 of us trying to stay on top of all the work. To give you a little perspecitve, there are over 400 crew currently on the Africa Mercy, and there is a turnover of around 1,200 a year. We are staying busy busy!

I have managed to find some time to hang out with my beautiful and wonderful friends, and attend a couple of Africa Mercy events, including the annual film festival and the 2009 Sock Golf Open. Sock Golf is very much like Frisbee golf, but played with socks, on a ship. There are 18 holes carefully laid out around the ship, tee boxes, score cards, the works. This is a photo of my team with our socks, we didn't place, but we had a blast.

The film festival has become an annual AFM event where crew members can submit short films to be judged. The crew takes the opportunity to change out of scrubs and the usual garb to dress a little smarter. Everyone looked so amazing, it's like a whole new crew.

These are my lovely friends, Davey, Angela and Melanie.

Me and Ang. There was a big hole in my heart when she left.

One of the most amazing ladies I know.

Ouidah

Angela, Melanie and I took a day trip out to Ouidah. Ouidah is famous for it's roots in Voodoo, but we when to the area called the gate of no return, where slaves were loaded onto ships and sent to America and the Caribbean. This is why voodoo is common in places like Haiti.

We started out the adventure as everyone should, with FanMilk! FanMilk is a local treat, a cross between ice cream and a slushie. The chocolate is like frozen chocolate milk, so delicious. It comes in plastic bags, you must bite off a corner and enjoy!

The Gate of No Return

Another monument to Benin.

Hospitality Center

About 1 mile away from the ship is the Hospitality Center. This is where patients from out of town stay before their surgery and afterwards, if they will need on going care. I love going out there to hang out with the kids, they love cameras and run around yelling 'photo, photo!'. These are two of our patients, Julian and Christian, and the son of the cook who works at the center. Julian is a Maxillo-facial patient and Christian is an ortho patient. They light up as soon as any crew member arrives, just like any little boys, they love to play!

Bingo

Someone put these photos up on the shared Transfer drive onboard, so I thought I would share them with you. Here is a taste of what roads are like here in Cotonou....YIKES.

Carole

Janviera can recount the afternoon with precision – it was a Thursday, the 23rd of October, 2008. She recalls how her children came home from school a little late, how they sat by lamplight with their tutor, and how the kerosene ran out.

Carole, the only girl in a family of five children, was always by her mother’s side. She helped take care of the other four children and helped clean the house. When Janviera needed things from the market, Carole would go and buy them. She helped cook – even the very difficult local cuisine, fufu. She helped with everything.

So that evening, as usual, Carole helped by refilling the lamp. She began to pour the kerosene, which they later guessed had been mixed with gasoline. Because Carole could not see very well, she called to her mother, and Janviera took over. Suddenly, the lamp exploded, and everything went black.

“I woke up on the other side of the room,” Janviera says. “I looked down and saw my arm was burned. Then I looked across the room and saw Carole. She was unconscious, and her school dress was still burning.”
She grabbed a blanket, threw it across Carole’s body, and immediately rushed her daughter to the hospital. Pictures taken there show Janviera disheveled and tired, holding her arm out stiffly. And they show Carole – lying on her back, her face swollen and blackened, her body covered in bandages and talcum powder.

“As a mother, I had to put my own pain aside,” Janviera recalls, glancing at the mottled scars on her left arm and hand. “I could only think about Carole. I was always crying, constantly asking God to save my daughter.”

It was three weeks before Carole was able to eat any food. Her mouth and eyes had been burned shut. Each day she received dressing changes, removing dead skin and applying ointment to the wounds. She was in extreme pain. Sometimes Carole’s wounds would stick to the sheets of her bed, and they would have to soak her in water and separate her from the fabric – agonizing bit by bit.

“We spent so much money for the treatment,” Janviera said. After three months of treatment, Carole’s arm was frozen, unable to extend past a right angle, with her palm turned out like a question mark. Her right cheek and arm, as well as her side, stomach, and chest were covered with raised scars of shiny, inflexible skin.

At school, her burns became an opportunity for cruelty. “If Carole did something that one of the kids didn’t like, they would say, ‘You have a burned face. You have a burned body.’” At home, she could no longer help her mother around the house because of her contracted arm.

Janviera heard about Mercy Ships through a radio advertisement, and she brought Carole to Cotonou for an operation onboard the Africa Mercy. The surgical team released contracted scar tissue and placed skin grafts at her elbow and wrist.

Kim Shankland, an occupational therapist from South Africa, worked with Carole after the surgery to help improve the range of motion in her arm and wrist. Kim says that without surgery, Carole would have struggled her whole life with basic self-care – “just eating, braiding her hair, brushing her teeth, and dressing would have been a huge problem.”

Later in life, she would have faced obstacles in supporting herself. Common jobs, like selling yams and tomatoes at the market or pursuing a trade like sewing, would have been impossible. She would have been forever dependent on family or a husband.

“As a mother, knowing what sort of difficulties your child would have – not being able to do the things you do – must be quite frustrating,” Kim says. She believes this has spurred Janviera in making sure Carole uses her injured arm and performs the rehab exercises. Janviera’s encouragement and insistence has been a major part of Carole’s successful recovery.
“I hope that she can be my helper again,” Janviera says. “But what I want most is for her to be able to use her hand, to write, to be someone tomorrow.”

Written by Carmen Radley
Photos by Debra Bell and Esther Biney

A bloody mess...

Living on a hospital ship has given me the opportunity to do something that I would otherwise never get to do...observe surgeries. And not observe like Grey's Anatomy observe, like 1 foot away can see everything observe. I started my afternoon off by watching eye surgeries. A doctor on the ship has an really innovative way of removing cataracts by creating a tunnel and then using a specialized instrument to pull out the cataract. They then put in a tiny little lense in place of the cataract. The entire procedure takes less than 10 minutes.

I then moved on the watch Dr. Gary Parker operated on a 19 year old's face. The patient has a disorder that causes abnormal bone growths. Dr. Gary was removing the abnormal growths from his upper and lower jaw.

After watching Dr. Gary for a while, I moved on to an ortho case, a little boy with an infection in his leg. This little guy had surgery on the ship already to straighten his bowed leg and he had developed an infection where a pin had been inserted to help his bones heal. The surgeons opened his leg and cleaned out the infection, it was very cool.

Then I watched Dr. Jose remove a goiter from a patient. That was the most intense surgery to watch. He literally had to wrestle that thing out. For those of you who don't know, a goiter is an enlarged thyroid gland...its in the neck.

Lastly, I watched a bilateral hernia operation. A man had hernias on both sides of his abdomen, so they opened him up and sewed in mesh to repair the hernias prevent him from developing them again.

The doctors and nurses were so fantastic, they were so willing to explain what they were doing and were very welcoming to visitors. I loved every minute of watching the surgeries!

Here are a couple pics...the top is Dr. Jose operating, and the bottom is the cataract surgery.

I usually blog after an exciting weekend or a new adventure or something exciting on the ship. What is most exciting in my life these days is the new adventure I am experiencing with the Lord. Living in a diverse, international Christian community certainly has its challenges, but it has made me stretch and grow in ways that I wouldn't be able to on my own. My departmental devotions have been especially meaningful to me. I am surrounded daily by some of the most mature leaders and prayer warriors I have ever been blessed to learn from. We have prayer meetings on Wednesdays and we watch DVDs from Francis Chan's Crazy Love series on Thursdays. I love our Wednesday prayer meetings, these men and women have trusted their finances entirely to God and some have spent decades volunteering for Mercy Ships. They have the ear of the Lord, and I am continually blessed just to be sitting beside them as they pour themselves out in prayer.

I highly encourage everyone to go out and get a copy of Francis Chan's book, Crazy Love. It is incredibly challenging and some might consider it very controversial. He challenges not only the modern church, but the modern Christian, to know what it really means to love God. I am constantly being reminded of the Crazy Love that God feels for each and every one of us, and the pathetic, half hearted love that I give back to Him. I want this Psalm of David to be my prayer

"O God you are my God; I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you and my whole body longs for you

in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upong your power and glory.

Your unfailing love is better than life itself;

How I praise you!

I will praise you as long as I live,

lifting my hands to you in prayer.

You satisfy me more than the richest feast,

I will praise you with songs of joy."

Psalm 63:1-5

Easter Holiday!

So, for the Easter weekend we got 4 days off, Friday-Monday. I opted to instead take Thursday and Friday off and accompany two of my favorite girls on a weekend adventure! We went to a little town called Possotome, which is on a lake called Aheme, very near the border of Benin and Togo. We hoped and prayed for adventure, and adventure was what we got!

We started off on Thursday morning waiting for our taxi, which the other two girls, Suzanne and Steph, had arranged earlier in the week. None of us speak French, so this was a gamble to begin with. Sure enough, Gon Gon (the taxi driver) did not come for us, so we made our way to the bus station where it is easy to get taxis. As soon as we arrived we were surrounded by Taxi drivers, among them was Gon Gon, with a big grin saying 'You never call!' (We did...3 times). So off we went!

Although Gon Gon didn't seem to understand where exactly we wanted to go, he found it easily enough (there are really only 2 main roads in Possotome). We stayed at a beautiful hotel called Resort Hotel Aheme...or something like that. We relaxed on the little beach and eventually migrated to where we heard drumming down the beach. We stumbled on a little village within the village and after many hand gestures of 'Is this OK?' we played with the dozens of kidos running around, Steph even had a Conga line going for a while. At 6 on the dot, the village gathered around for the evening's dance party. Sure enough the Yovos (white people!) were dragged in and made to dance. We did our best but cannot compare to the african rhythm.

The next day we walked through the village and approached by a man offering us the services of a company called Eco-Benin. They are a fantastic Beninoise company that focuses on sustainable tourism. They are supported by an NGO in France who had sent a couple of men to help them build up their business (more on them later). The gents from Eco Benin took us out on the lake and taught us how to cast nets to catch fish. I wasn't very good at it, and we didn't catch any fish, but they were so enthusiastic that we felt like the best Yovo fisherwomen there ever were.

We returned to their lakefront 'restaurant' and enjoyed a lunch of fresh fish and casava (Yum?). Afterwards we relaxed and had another mellow evening on the lake shore with palm trees and the man on the moon.

The next morning we awoke for sunrise and cafe on the beach. To our surprise, Gon Gon had resturned for us! We went to settle our bill, only to discover that somewhere in the last 2 days, lots of money had been taken from us! We don't know how or when, but we did not have enough to cover our bill. Thank the good Lord for the French men from Eco Benin who lent us the money and will come tour the ship on their way to the airport this weekend.

We made it safely back to the ship, managed to dig up enough money to pay Gon Gon and counted our blessing for getting back at all!

Adventure with Gon Gon!

Suz and I at the entrance to the Resort Lake Aheme...or something. We love the Bouganvilla.

More of the entrance.

Preparing to throw the net! I really wasn't very good at it, which I am blaming on the miniature hands.

Lakeside Terrace...on stilts.

Lunch.

Steph and I. She and Suz are absolutely great.

This was just too funny to not include it. He is tied to a bunch of rocks. When we asked why, they explained that it is his job to eat the leaves that fall of that particular tree. He can pull the rocks behind him, but it takes a lot of effort. Poor little guy, Suz wanted to adopt him.

Ganvie, the Stilt Village

A couple of weeks ago I went with a group of other crew members to see Ganvie, Benin's famous Stilt Village. By famous, I mean that in made it into the guidebook. Don't worry, I was surprised there is a guidebook for Benin too. The story is that the King of Dahomey was conquering neighboring tribes and selling the people as slaves, so the king of another tribe went looking for a place where his people could be safe. He came upon a lake, and turned himself in to a crocodile. In the lake he found a shallow area, roughly 2 meters deep. It was there that his tribe built their new village, a village on stilts. The tour to Ganvie began at a hotel in Cotonou where we boarded boats for an hour ride. Unfortunately, the little outboard motor in my boat failed multiple times. Luckily we had one of our fine deck Officers with us who quickly repaired the engine and left me questioning the competance of our guide. Once to Ganvie we stopped at 3 little 'Gift Shops', one which sold approximately 5 things. The kids all poled their little canoes over to wherever we were and stood with their hand out yelling 'Monsieur, Madam!'. They asked for bics (pens) and chewing gum of all things. The people of Ganvie do not welcome the tourist. They hide their faces if they see a camera, and I doubt that they receive any of the money from people touring around their homes. As with most of Benin, Ganvie is very poor. The houses are shacks on stilts and the water is extremely polluted, with trash floating all around. While I enjoyed getting out of Cotonou and seeing some Beninoise culture, I wished I had taken the money I paid the hotel for the boat ride and bought some pens and gum for the kidos.

Dress Ceremony

One of the surgeries that is done on the ship is the repairing of Vesicovaginal Fistulas (VVF). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesicovaginal_fistula) VVFs are oftened caused by prolonged labor, which is common in Benin since women don't have much access to professional medical care. A VVF means that urine constantly leaks into the vaginal vault and out of the body. It usually has a profound effect on a woman's emotional well being, they are sometimes abandoned by their husbands and shunned by their communities.
After a woman has a VVF surgery on the ship, there is a dress ceremony. The women receive new dresses and doctors, nurses, and non-medical crew gather in the hospital for a time of sharing, prayer and worship. I was priveledged to attend a Dress Ceremony a couple weeks ago. The singing was beautiful, and even though I couldn't since along, I could dance and celebrate with them. The women pictured below talked about their experiences and the shame that came with having a fistula. One of the women share that her husband had stood by her, even washing the rags she used to stay dry. The other was abandoned by her husband, but was cared for and supported by her brother.

Attending the Dress Ceremony was a wonderful experience! It was my first time in the Hospital since it has been open and filled with patients. The nurses do an amazing job of keeping the wards colorful and filled with knitting and other arts and crafts for the patients to do. Patients are allowed to have one caregiver on board with them, so there are families and kidos everywhere. Since I work upstairs, in the 'Operations' area of the ship, I haven't had many opportunities to visit the hospital and meet the people we are serving. It is such a blessing to be here and meet these people, and see how the Lord is answering their prayers through Mercy Ships.