Its hard to put in words everything that has gone on these last few weeks on the wards.  The longer I've been here the more I've been able to connect with the patients and the easier it is to understand them and know how to act around them.  The language barrier and cultural differences made it difficult to connect in the beginning, but now I find myself becoming attached to many of the patients and really miss many of them when they leave.  More than anything though I'm more than ever starting to understand that many of these people really are going through live changing transformations spiritually, physically, emotionally right before our eyes.. 

There are several people who come to mind right off the bat.  The first one being a young girl at the age of 13.  I remember when she first came to our hospital a couple weeks ago with half her face covered by a cloth.  She looked around realizing that it was now safe to remove her veil.  It was rather shocking at first, but after looking at her straight in the eyes you could see behind the massive tumor on the right side of her face she was just the same as any other 13 year old girl just maybe a little stronger.  I showed her where the shower was and then went over what to expect from the surgery.  She listened to everything the translator said and didn't seem to have any fear at all.  There wasn't anyone with her as her uncle would be coming the next day.  Even on screening day when over 3,500 people came through the lines I don't remember seeing anyone with a facial tumor this large.  Dr. Gary would be performing her surgery the next day who has 25 + years of experience with maxillo facial tumors on Mercy Ships.  He seems to be the most passionate about facial tumors.

The next day we would show her the mirror so she could see herself and that it was real.  The tumor really was gone and a tear streamed down her face.  She told Dr. Gary that she had started to get really really scared from the tumor.  She had every right to be since this tumor likely would have slowly suffocated her.  Dr. Gary then told her that Jesus was taking her on a journey and she smiled.

Another patient that comes to mind goes by Alex.  He was referred to us by another mission hospital in Chico.  Surprisingly we have had several cases just like his affecting the eye.  Basically a tumor starts growing in their eye and completely takes over.  If there is no access to medical care it can be quite horrifying for the person and their family.  They likely just won't attend school and people will think they have been cursed.  In the beginning of him arriving to the ship before his surgery he had quite a blank expression on his face.  He was pretty withdrawn and didn't interact with any of the other kids.  However by the time he left he was playing with all the kids and actually became quite the trouble maker:) We even had make a list of rules for him including putting him in time outs occasionally only because we loved him.

Payakey is another one of those patients who I really really don't want to leave.  He has practically become part of our nursing staff.  He knows Kabaye and French and therefore helps translate from Kabeye to French since its such a rare language.  The other day he was helping me with one of my fresh post ops doing everything he could think of to help me from covering her up with a blanket to helping me move an IV bag onto the hook.  He is a patient who has been here for so long because we made him a nose, which is a very involved process with multiple sterile dressing changes and several surgeries.  His nose had been cut off in a robbery many years ago so its quite a good feeling knowing this wonderful man finally got a new nose.

It is not unusual for miracles to happen on this ship.  Like one of our surgeons said, we don't exactly go looking for them either.  None of us like feeling out of control ESPECIALLY in the medical profession.  However, there are those times that we really really need them and we are reminded that God is the real healer in all of this.

This is Bernice.  She is one of those toddlers who is constantly being held by all the nurses because she is just so adorable.  She's very very quiet and stares intently in peoples eyes.  She came in to get her cleft palate and cleft lip repaired.  She is an orphan who was brought in by a lady who works at her orphanage in Ghana.  When Bernice came in it was found that her leg was hot and swollen.  It was then determined that her femur had been broken as was seen on an x-ray, likely a few weeks prior.  This outreach we weren't treating any orthopedic patients.  Therefore, there was no reason we were to have an orthopedic surgeon on board at all at any point during our time in Togo.  However, God just so happened to have provided us with one at the right time.  The surgeon who had come for a very short time to treat the hernia patients in A Ward just so happened to also be a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.  What are the chances?  It truly seems as though God has been looking over this orphan.  Instead of being crippled for life, God provided her with the exact type of surgeon she needed at just the right time.

Bernice attacking me with a phone:)

Our hostel

The canopy walk

The bridge approximately forty feet high

Cape Coast, Ghana view from the castle

Hanging out on the beach

Cape Coast Beach

The castle from the 1600s

From inside a cell.  100's of people who would be sold as slaves would be forced to live inside a cell which would end up getting extremely dirty

Inside a female dungeon

Bats make a home in a cell in the castle

Crocodile outside our hostel.  The manager of the hotel let us feed them bred crumbs.  There are about 40 crocodiles in their pond.  We almost went paddle boating with them, however the paddle boat wasn't working at that time.

Crossing the Border!

C 

Sticker I saw in the window driving through Ghana

 Arriving in our hostel

Protected from malaria by a mosquito net

Adventure to Ghana

            This past weekend was spent with my friends Jill from Indianapolis, Susanne from Canada, and Victoria who is one of our translators.  She is a native from Ghana so going to Ghana with her definitely made our trip go much smoother.  We all had the weekend off so we left Friday and spent 11 hours in a taxi van getting to our destination.  On our way there we had to cross through the border and show them our visas that we had purchased the previous week for 20,000 ceefas each or $40 USD. However, it was cheaper for my friend Susanne because she's Canadian.
          Crossing the border was an experience in itself.  I used some of the tips my Dad's coworker who's a native from Ghana gave me on traveling through customs.  Some of the guards weren't very friendly especially to this poor women who had cans of coke and a bag of beans that they conveniently ripped open.  They then threw her cans across the table probably because she wouldn't give them any money is what Victoria said.  We then found a taxi van that Victoria bartered and found for us.  On our way there our taxi van was stopped randomly by guards and only us the "jovos" were made to get out.  Victoria was also made to get out because she was with us.  They then brought us to a room with a curtain to show them our passports again and a guard started questioning us.  We then acted very firm with them and they finally let us go and Jill had apparently been praying the whole time.  We thought our taxi van had left us because they were no where in sight and we had already paid them, but then found that they were waiting for us the whole time.  The police had only made them move ahead on the road.  After getting back into the taxi I looked over and saw a cross sticker that happened to be in the window.  I then got this feeling that God would be with us this trip.
            We then arrived in Akra and had to switch to a new taxi.  Taxi vans are quite hard to come by at night so as soon as we pulled in we were closed in by a crowd of people who started opening our doors.  My friend Susanne was pulled out of the taxi and landed on the pavement in a puddle of who knows what, while Jill pushed her way through with her luggage.  Meanwhile, I'm still in the very backseat trying to figure out how I'm going to get out due to that fact theres no way out and tons of people are coming in pushing their way through.  All of a sudden I see the trunk open and a lady swings her luggage over the seat and starts coming in through the back.  I then take this opportunity to fly over the back seat through the trunk with my backpack and make it out into the street before the crowd sees the trunk open.  I then give my friend Susanne some hand sanitizer and we make our way to find a new taxi.
           We finally arrive at our hotel, which is called Hans Cottage Botel and chose a room with four beds and a couch.  It is considered a hostel and we only had to pay $5 USD per night per person.  Victoria immediately started killing huge spiders and all kinds of bugs I had never seen before.  She even killed a little lizzard only because she said it was poisonous.    While Jill was showering a frog jumped on her back and crawled all over her until Victoria wacked it with her shoe.  After much screaming that went on several Africans and the manager came out to see what all the screaming was about and we told them there were just a lot of bugs.
           The next day we paid a taxi driver quite a bit of money to drive us around Cape Coast to visit a castle which explained the horrific history on slavery.  The castle had quite a few dungeons and cells where the slaves had been kept in the 1600s.  The Dutch and the Portuguese had owned the castles and bought and sold people who were shipped to other areas of the world.  It was a very weird and creepy feeling being inside a cell that I knew many women and men had been treated so horrifically in.  Jill said that it gave her the same feeling as when she had visited the holocaust museum.
After that we went on a canopy walk, which is basically a bridge 40 feet in the air through a forest.  There was a college class visiting from London who were in Ghana to do a mission trip on micro-management.  This one guy from their group kept screaming at every bug he came across.  You would have thought he was being attacked.
           That night Jill realized she lost her ipod touch.  This had everything on it including all her pictures, her music, everything. She was more sad that she had lost all her pictures from the Hope Center of all her patients than anything.  She thought she had left it in our hostel and didn't think she brought it that day.  It made her feel sick thinking she had lost it.  We then started praying for her that it would somehow turn up or that someone would turn it in.  We then suggested that she call our taxi driver b/c maybe just maybe she had indeed brought it.  We just so happened to have his number.  The next morning Jill called him and he did indeed have it and said he was going to try to get a hold of us at the hotel to give it back.  He had found it and some bananas that we forgot in the taxi.  Him giving it back to Jill went above and beyond. He could have made a lot of money off it, but instead he was an honest man.  It was quite refreshing b/c quite often you have to be on guard.  Palm Sunday we spent the morning thanking God for protecting us and keeping the stuff thats important to us safe.
            On our way back to Togo was also an adventure, but with Gods protection we all made it back safely.  It was very nice though to come back to the safety of the ship with our Girkas from Nepal, the security guards.