Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers over the last week, almost week and a half now. It just hit me last night as I was journaling that I will be in Africa for 3months... Just a little bit of home sickness setting in I guess. Thankfully they are keeping me busy, so I don't have much time to dwell on it.
Classroom training took up two days of my first week here. The mercy ships team performs a number of different surgeries and as you can imagine "nursing" is completely different in a third world country. So far I've had 3 full days of this new form a nursing. Much of my time consists of building relationships with the patients as I prep them for surgery and receive them back from the OR. This can be challenging since I don't speak their dialect, Ewe (pronounced "a-way") or French, the official language in Togo. Most of the time there are translators to help out, but there are some patients who speak other dialects (mostly from the north of Togo) and at times there is no translator to interpret. Charades is going to be my specialty at the end of these three months. :) I've started working on my French though - the translators are very helpful and eager to teach. They love to laugh at and with me as I attempt to learn.
We have had a couple of vented, ICU patients during the time I've been here - but they try to keep them few and far between. I care for 5 - 10 patients depending on the shift that I'm working. Days are from 7a-3p, evening’s 2p-10p, nights 9:30p-7:30a, and weekends are 12 shift. All of us rotate shifts, and we have off about 2 days per week depending on the number of surgeries being done and the amount of staff that is currently serving on the ship.
So about the ship... My bunk is forward, on the port side, which is front on the left hand side. There are a total of 6 girls living in the cabin - with one bathroom. The room is about 10 feet wide with three "pods." Each pod has a set of bunk beds, two vertical cabinets for clothes, a desk, and a chair. Katie Jones, from England, is on the bunk above me. I looove her accent, and try to mimic it. Last night she asked what my family would think when I came home attempting to sound like a Brit. :) Brittany and Liz are next, from Canada and New Zealand. Brittany is fluent in French and Spanish and is such a sweet heart. We've enjoyed walking together along the dock. I'm so thankful for her encouragement - what a blessing! Sarah and Melanie are at the end (furthest away from the bathroom.) They're from Switzerland and Hawaii. Anyway... It's the dorm room life I never had - plus some! We all work different shift which is challenging for sleeping, but we're making due.
Here's a picture of all of us. Katie, Sarah, Me, Liz, Brittany, and Melanie.
Meals have been plentiful! People here joke about "mercy hips" not mercy ships. :) Tuesday is African night, but other than that you can count on a wide variety of food. The water I mentioned before... well, it's getting better. I've been adding small amounts of powered flavoring that my co-workers sent to keep it palatable. Thanks guys!!! International Film Festival was Saturday night. Apparently this is an annual event done on the ship. There are about 400 people here and those creative juices were put to good use. This was ten times better then America's funniest home videos. There were "documentaries" about the ship, a detective film, and even a black mail video about the captain. Almost everyone was dressed up - almost like they were going to the Oscars! Afterward the coffee shop was open, everyone mingled, and then the winners were announced.
This is a community - and with nationalities from around the world the culture is amazingly diverse. It's been challenging with language barriers of those for whom English is a second or third language, personalities, and different cultural norms. I know through all of this though, God is going to grow me into the person He wants me to be. I'm so very grateful for His faithfulness and the fact that I can have complete confidence in His loving care!
Quick bit about Sunday... I worked day shift in the hospital. From 10am-12pm there is church for the patients. This is lead by the locals and translators (some of which travel from Ghana and Benin to work with Mercy Ships.) The it was packed out in ward A, which has 20 beds in one room. 20 beds equals about 40 people. This is because there is typically a caregiver for each patient. So.... multiply that by 3 wards.... :) You could tell that the singing and dancing (with drums) and the preaching (with two translators) really encouraged the patients, and me too!
As far as pictures go, we aren't allowed to take ones of the children with our own cameras, but Mercy Ships does and I'll have access to those... I'm going to try and post more after this post, which I'm realizing is quite wordy.
Love and miss you all! Let me know what questions you have.... I'll do my best to answer!
Brittany shared this verse with me last night:
Romans 9:17 "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the earth."
