Monday, October 26, 2009

A Month of Games in Pictures

"If winning isn't everything than why do they keep score?"  As Vince Lombardi first said, I've learned here that most Africans would say the same.  Africans take winning very seriously.  On the contrary, they are pretty sore losers too! Some examples…



First, the soccer game here: Benin vs. Ghana. Ghana was already in for the world cup qualifier, but nonetheless the stands were full and the enthusiasm was high. I think the pictures speak for themselves


On the way to the game: mass transit – Benin style


A friend took this across the stadium. Can you find us? We stick out like sore thumbs!


After Benin scored the winning goal in overtime the crowd went a little crazy.  Here me, Haley and James celebrating with one of the crazies all dressed up.



The following weekend we had something on the ship called the Benin Games. This was an organized ship event similar to a mini-olympics – with rather unique games.


Here are the Super Squirrels – Doug, Jamie, me, Christina, Danae and Murray. Yes that's right folks, the Benin futbol team mascot is the squirrel, and since we are wearing our Benin jersey’s we felt it appropriate to name ourselves accordingly. While our athletic abilities didn't bring in any awards, we did manage to go home with the best costume award at the end of the day.



We played numerous games including relays, ping pong and pictured here, the ski in Africa event.

After the Benin games, I was talking with Ellen, one of the ladies who works the Mercy Ships clinic off ship. She thought it would be fun to do something similar to the Benin games with all the patients at the clinic. So Jamie and myself offered to help out and run some of the games.


The African bowling event



Playing a "capture the balls blindfolded" game



And my personal favorite, pure bliss and celebration after this team won a “fill the water bottle the quickest" type event. Let me tell you they were excited!  Singing songs of joy and dancing like they’d all just won the lottery!  Although the other team was rather put out when they lost.  I've also learned that Africans sure know how to pout!


But at the end of the day, even if the Africans are sore losers, they definitely get the concept that team victory is far more fun than individual glory.  This made for some rather momentous shared joys here in Africa this weekend, and who wouldn't want in on that!        

Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Nine to Five Routine

Some of you may be wondering what fills my working hours.  Well here on the ship I work in Human Resources. I am in charge of processing the applications for all those that work in surgical positions like OR nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists, and all those that are considered part of the “general” crew – people who work in finance, PR, the Mercy Ships Academy (our pre K-12 school onboard), housekeeping, etc. We really are a whole little community here on the Africa Mercy!  When someone is accepted to Mercy Ships their application gets scanned into the system in TX (at the world headquarters) and then we print everything off here in Africa and make a hard file for them. I facilitate part of the weekly orientation that occurs for all the newbies, which is a general overview of what life is like on the Africa Mercy, and lots of signing of forms for purposes of maritime law. It’s nice because I get to meet all the new people that come through Mercy Ships. I also prepare licensure documents for the Ministry of Health and communicate with everyone coming to welcome them and explain what happens with their initial orientation. Amidst all these desk-type tasks, someone probably comes into the office at least once every five minutes with a question about taking a vacation or to drop off evaluations or something else along those lines. So the constant flow of people helps to keep things varied. Here are the fabulous people with whom I work:
From left to right: Brenda and Anne, both from the UK, Beth and Christine, both from South Africa, Jo from the UK, and me - the only American!  Agnes is missing.  She is from Ghana and provides a little African perspective for our group. 

I also get consults to see kiddos in the ward and help out from the nutrition end. So far I’ve been helping out primarily with the Baby Feeding Program. This involves all the underweight babies that are scheduled for cleft lip and palate repairs and ensuring that they take in enough calories to gain weight to get them ready for surgery. They often come in malnourished because they have problems with their suck due to their cleft lips, or most recently we have one little guy who is a premie and has a cleft palate.  He came to us at 3 1/2 pounds. This is a photo of one of the little kiddos named Anicette with whom I’ve been working. When I came in August, she was severely malnourished and not gaining any weight despite taking in massive amounts of formula well over what a normal baby her size would need. This is a before shot - look at those tiny arms!

From the supply end, Mercy Ships relies heavily on donations. When I first started it was a process to figure out what kind of formula was available. I’d write up this whole note with a detailed recipe and specific directions on how to mix the concentrated formula, only to find out they’d switched the kid to a new formula as they’d run out of the previous one making all my work irrelevant. I’d then have to re-work my plan with the new formula which was a lot of calculating.  This happened three times before I learned my lesson!

They do have a really great donation program set up with a major US formula company well known to me which has been helpful for some of the more complex kiddos. Within a week we were able to get Anicette a different formula shipped right from the states that is more easily digested, and since then she has been gaining weight like a champ. Here she is with a little more weight gain on her.  She will get her cleft lip repair next month.

I’ve also helped out with writing nutrition education materials and consulting on other general nutrition issues as they come up. Most recently yesterday they asked me to come downstairs and see a little girl named Gisele. Gisele, her mother and sister had come the day before from Nigeria. Gisele has cataracts in both her eyes so she sees minimally. When the doctor saw them in the morning, she told Gisele’s mother that because she was so emaciated and had some unspecified liver and heart problems they didn’t think her body would be able to handle the stress of the surgery.  They were sending her home. They called me down to talk about high calorie African foods in hopes that if she put on more weight, perhaps she could come back next year, should she be in an overall healthier state.  Although in all honesty the doctor didn’t know if she would make it. She weighs about 20 pounds and is 5 years old. In comparison, a healthy five year old girl should weigh about 40 pounds. Her diet consists of just beans, rice and water.

Gisele’s mother wouldn’t even look at me when we were talking.  She was so devastated. Here was this mother who had traveled across the country with the hope that her daughter would now be able to see again, only to have her joy crushed due to the resulting complications of her socioeconomic status. I felt helpless as I sat there talking to the family. Often it’s not so much a matter of educating these families on high calorie/protein foods and variety, but rather finding the financial means available to feed them. You can only send someone home with so much Pediasure.  Someone here recently said it's a sad reality when you realize that where you are born so often determines how you will die.  Please pray for God’s provision in the coming months as Gisele and her family return to Nigeria. Please pray that they would have the financial means available to them and that Gisele would gain weight.  Pray that her body would return to its previously healthy state and that she would be able to return to us next year.  Please pray that God would bring them peace.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Cheap Ways to Amuse Yourself in Africa

Sometimes work is really busy and at the end of the day, I am glad to be done!  In my off hours over the last few weeks I’ve had some pretty fun times, mainly due to the creative minds of those that have been here longer than I.  Without mountains to hike or the convenience of entertainment by American standards (not to mention an income), all us Mercy Shippers have had to come up with our own means of cheap fun.

A few weekends ago we had an 80’s party. Everyone got completely decked out, thanks to some fabulous finds in town and something here on board called "the boutique." The boutique is like a Good Will, where those leaving the ship can drop off unwanted items and those staying can scrounge through the goods and take anything for free. As the saying goes, one person’s trash is another’s treasure! I snagged a sweet Michael Jackson shirt, some plastic heart bracelets and a nice t-shirt tie for our 80's extravaganza. Everyone had fun as we danced the night away up on deck 8, the top level of the ship. 


This past week I had to go to the US Embassy here in Cotonou to get something notarized. My friends Christina and Sarah and I decided to bike to the Embassy across town just to see more of Cotonou and to get off the ship. We checked out some mountain bikes from deck 8, and managed to carry them down four flights of very narrow stairs to get to the dock. Unfortunately it was raining which made things interesting as we waded through shin deep puddles of rainwater mixed with who knows what else in our flip-flops.  We did make it to the Embassy in one piece, but encountered some open manholes in the middle of the sidewalk which made for an unusual experience! Everyone kept laughing and pointing at us yovo’s (the term for white people here) as they thought we were ridiculous riding around in the rain. Well worth it though as we saw more of Cotonou and had a great time.


I also went to Grand Popo this weekend. It’s a beach town about two hours out of the city. For a mere $3/ night we got to camp here and use the facilities of a nice pool and a beautiful beach (complete with an African, his machete and coconuts at our disposal!) Such a good deal.  Some of my favorites of the weekend in Grand Popo:

The speedometer in our minibus that read 0 km per hour the entire way. I’m quite certain we were driving over the speed limit even by African standards for most of the trip. Very safe. Especially when we got pulled over.


An African gas station. Imported Nigerian gas. Probably watered down quite a bit.

Just filling up.  Check out those sweet African pants!

The beautiful African scenery on the two hour ride there! This is what Africa is all about.


The fisherman along the beach.


The whole village participates in carrying the nets and bringing the fish in.

We also went out one morning with Roger, a local guide.  He showed us around Grand Popo via this canoe.  It was literally a huge hollowed out tree.  Absolutely amazing.  
 
We visited the mangroves (a malaria breeding ground) and also learned about local fishing practices (different in this small village as compared to the huge nets that were cast into the ocean in my previous pictures.) Here we met some fun friends that were hanging out in this basket in the lake ready to escape at any moment...yikes.  Glad I wasn't swimming in these waters!


Our last stop with Roger was a small voo doo village in Grand Popo called Heve.  We got off the canoe and were met by a swarm of people.  Apparently the village had been flooded and they were handing out new mats for people to sleep on. Pure chaos ensued. The people of Heve were elated to get these new thin, straw mats upon which to sleep on the hard ground.  Some good perspective of a life so different than my own.  Roger introduced us to the voo doo chief of Heve as well.   Below is Legba, a fetish. A fetish is an object meant to contain the power of a spirit - here the spirit of protection over the village. 


Most Africans here practice Catholicism in the morning and voo doo at night. In talking with Roger and our varying differences in religious beliefs, he assured me he only practices "good" voo doo. He explained to me that while many see voo doo as evil, there are also good practices associated with the religion.  Bad voo doo involves curses and witchcraft, where as good voo doo involves healing sickness similar to folk medicine. To conjure up these spirits of healing the voo doo practitioners must sacrifice things.  Roger  uses oil and coke and sometimes animals. Oil and coke are not the first things that come to mind when I think of healing sickness, but then again, this is Africa.  Never a dull moment here!

Animistic traditions shape the way people function here.  They so often live in fear and feel the need to sacrifice regularly. They live fatalistically.  We see this at Mercy Ships with so many of the babies that are born with cleft palates.  The mothers believe babies born with deformities are evil.  Some would rather let their children starve to death than get them help. Sadly, this happened with one of the cleft palate babies right before I came.

In the states the presence of spiritual warfare is often seen as taboo by so many, but being here and seeing voo doo life makes me realize how prevalent animism really is.  My hope is that the presence of Mercy Ships here in Africa does change Africa for the better.  But experiencing this makes me realize there's a long way to go.  "For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline" ~ 2 Timothy 1:7

It was quite the eye opening weekend from the serenity of Grand Popo to the voo doo history of Heve...

...but at $3/night in the presence of good company and beautiful scenery, I'm sure I'll be back soon!