monkeys & hippos & elephants O mY!

Jan. 16th Hettie~ my roommate & I headed out for an 8 day adventure throughout Western & Northern Ghana. Our path didn't go exactly they way we planned, but we managed to bump into all sorts of funny surprises along the way and had an AMAZING time :) Here are some of the highlights...
(<--elephant track)

Day 1 Accra to Kumasi: Bus showed up 6 hrs late! In the evening made it to Kumasi and spent the night at an old Mercy Shipper's apartment in the city. Her roommate is a Dr. who is doing drug trials on the "Mysterious Disease" the Brueli ulcer in the nearby villages. It was interesting to learn about her work as there are only a few people in the World currently even trying to research this unknown disease that is found mostly in Africa. Got up in the morning and walked along the edge of West Africa's largest market & toured the Old Ashanti Chief's Palace~ more like a simple home with some cool tribal relics... interesting to see 3rd world royalty! Antiques sit in open outside air, instead of behind glass cages. The reigning chief has as much power if not more than the President of the Ghana! LUCKILY, they have agreed on issues so far?!

Day 2: Kumasi to Techiman: ventured to the "Monkey Sanctuary" where we were simply taken to the backyard forest of a local village and the guide pointed up to some trees, and eloquently explained and I quote, "look... monkeys!" We got to get very close to them! This tribe believes that the monkeys are their ancestors, so basically when the monkey comes in the evening to steal their food from their hut, you don't sweat it b/c you could be feeding your grandma!! ;) They even give them a human~ like burial, got to see the monkey cemetery & where the fetish priest is buried. Their was also an amazing free standing vine structure that outlines where a tree once was. The vine is a parasite that chokes the tree and takes it shape, leaving the tree to decay and disappear. That night stayed at a nice hotel where I actually had a HOT bubble bath!!! miracles of all miracles. Stayed up late that night as I had a very significant conversation with one of the young hotel guards. Its one of those conversations that you Know you were supposed to have. Hassai is a very bright man, my age who genuinley shared with me his perpetual struggle/hopelessness of his fight to get out of poverty. I just sat and listened. I have been praying for God to show me the harder side of Africa, and I am very grateful to have learned what I did from him. I pray his dreams for a higher education come true and he is able to find joy. It broke me... but in a good & necessary way if that makes sense.



Day 3: Techiman to Wenchi to Bui: After a looong tro tro ride with a psycho older man who persisted to turn around and jabber incoherent nonsense to us for 3hrs, I think I had my day's exercise just laughing at him; when your tired & trapped with 31 other people in a old Volkswagen with a big muslim woman sitting partly on you and a chicken in the back, all you can really do is just laugh, hard :) Luckily laughter is contagious and he eerily laughed with us! Got dropped off at Bui National Park a.k.a a bunch of old woodplank houses with no electricty or running water in the middle of NOWHERE. Spent the dark evenings hovering over a small kerosene lamp and learning from 12y old Joyce all the ways to cook plantain. We had to bring our own groceries.. for $4 we lived off hardboiled eggs, bread, plantians, and apples for 2 days. The 1st morning we were there we set out at 7am to see the Hippos. Before that could happen we had to walk an hour on foot passing all the cute kiddos in uniform on their way to school running to greet us cheerfully and say "you are MOST welcome!" When we got to the tourist center in the remote village (an open hut with goat poop in it) we were told to sit down while they hired local fisherman to canoe out to the hippos with us. Felt like caged animals as we were just stared at, like they were waiting for Hettie & I to do some type of trick! Got 4 adorable fisherman to take us out. As we got further & further up the river, the more hippos we came across...each time my lil' fisherman turned around with a big grin on his face and excitedly proclaimed "A HIPPPPPO". They were as giddy as we were to see them! Saw 24 hippos in total, 13 at one time! This safari was the biggest highlight of my trip, I LovEd it!

Day 4: Woke up at 4:30 am on my birthday to walk to the bus station (the bridge) and wait as we were commanded to "SIT down" and then left in pitch darkness! ha. Out of the dark, some without shoes...amazing local women arrived with bundles of heavy sticks or produce on their heads and babies on their back to go to the bigger villages to sell. The grandmas found it important to get up BEFORE the crack of dawn as well to "organize" and sweep their dirt outside their homes?? We just sat their and took it all in :) When the tro tro arrived we all hopped in and went down the horribly, bumpy dirt road BEEEPING loudly as we got to each village to help wake everyone up who needed to go to town. Spent 13 hrs of my 24th birthday cramped next to a bunch of people and a few goats in the trunk... needless to say I wasn't lonely!!!!

Day 5: Mole National Park!!! Morning and evening $1.50 safaris on foot with P.K. our armed tour guide, and lots of other Bruneii's (white people). Saw elephants, antelope, crocodiles, and birds ohh my! A few hours before we arrived, an elephant had come up to the swimming pool to get a drink of water!!! Families of warthogs snorted their way through breakfast eating the hotel grass. Nature up close & personal, ahh :) Just as fun as seeing the animals was sitting down after the safaris's to eat with the other guests and find out what everyone was doing in Africa; a German couple motorcycling for 2 months across West Africa, a Dutch couple here to contine a child sponsor program that helps kids work during the day to support their family and schooling in the afternoon so they can still get an education, a 32y hippy Israeli here to learn drums and dance who told me all about what it was like to live in Israel with the random suicide bombings, German man working with a Reforestration program as Ghanians like to just burn land like crazy...and many more interesting people :)

Day 6: Monday decided, hey!, lets head 5km out of Mole Park to a nearby village called Larabanga for a bike ride to see the oldest Mosque in West Africa... why not?! sounds fun... until... the guard and the cattle boy BOTH told us to go LEFT instead of right at the fork in the road so 1hr after riding down the dirt road in the middle of a HOT, savannah afternoon we came upon 2 old men on their bikes (our only piece of civilization since we left) who pointed the other way to Larabanga... i think we would have ended up in CHINA had we kept going? Needless to say, we made it, saw the amazing mosque and the volunteer teacher that was taking us around wanted to show us his school. It was another one of those moments that really made a harder reality sink in. He casually explained that he was in charge of 2 classes, each with 80 kids as they are understaffed. They don't have enough school housing or teachers for all the kids in the community so some can't go to school and 40 of the kindergardners have class under a tree, if they have enough money to buy a stool they may bring it! There are so many kids b/c having many kids (up to 10 is normal!) is their parents Life Insurance.
... on the way home... the ONE big hill between this village and the Park had a huge herd of cattle crossing it.... Welllll my ancient bike didn't have any brakes. so as I tried to swerve in and out of them I came about 2 feet from crashing into one Big OnE! It was a close call, ha ;)

Day 7: Got up at 3:20am to not miss our one way bus ticket outta here! Took it to Tamale and spend our last day reading and relaxing. The northern region of Ghana is about 90% Muslim so not only does the landscape change to savannah with circular muds huts, compared to jungle with rectangle huts, but the structures have a Arab flare and mosques around every corner. The people are beautifully mysterious with their turbans and head wraps on, distinquished men with long white beards. The people in Tamale use motos to get around as well, so saw some many motor mamas with their babies simply wrapped onto their backs kickin it down the highway at highspeed, some even with another small child in the front. It makes a nurse cringe! From the tro tro windows also saw a lot of signs of people with Polio, Rickets, bloated bellies...hard to see.

Day 8: The airport didn't look too sketchy so we fly back from Tamale to Accra, no more tro tros for us! Of course even in Accra on the way home, the adventure continued... was cruising down the highway in a taxi to Tema Port when I decided to try the window button to make it go up as my hair was blowing in my face... Being a normal run down taxi, the button didn't work. The taxi driver saw my attempt and decided to help me... so he immediately pulled the car over on the side of the highway, pulled out a big 8 inch knife, flung himself over me & jabbed it 4 inches away from my right arm into the window button. fixed! he said as the window went up. Oh my. Went out with a bang! never a dull moment in this wonderful country :)

So if you made it all the way through reading this.... You can tell, I had a BLAST!! It was the trip of a lifetime that I will never forget. Each day full of so many fun memories :) Trips like this are not possible in Liberia as it still has a lot of civil unrest from a recent war, so I wanted to take advantage of it all while I could. We sail in exactly one month from today. Have had a wonderful warm welcome back to the ship, it feels like i'm exactly where I should be :)

*if you want to see more pictures~ go to photo link on left, click on NW Ghana roadtrip, then view as slideshow :)

Life

Its been a strange week.. one of those times that reminds you how fragile life really is. Felt pretty much the whole rainbow of emotions in one week. At work this week had a patient who came in for a cyst removal and the next day her surgery was canceled as we discovered she had HIV and was too immunocompremised to take chances on a good recovery. She spoke another language far from mine, found it difficult to know how to console her, sad to bear the defeated look on her face, scary to know i had taken some blood work off her the other day and it was a simple glove and my skin that protected me from such a deadly virus. Caring for VVF ladies whose smell is much more than i anticipated, shocking me into the reality of what they've been through, but delighted to see the brillant smiles on their face and eyes light up as i walk by their beds seeing them recovering beautifully from surgery. In a state of awe as i had an OR day yesterday and watched the surgeon recreate what once was, with the graceful sutures gliding in and out.. Then 2 days ago, was working on the ward again when an emergency page went off to a shipmates cabin where CPR, meds, shocks were started and stopped after 35 minutes. We lost a beautiful, old security guardman who was scheduled to fly home to Nepal the next morning. We never talked much, he had very broken English, instead we exchanged smiles, his was very warm. Our ship has a spirit of heaviness over it, but the wierd thing to think about is that life waits for NO one, then next day we return to work.. as life fades.. life continues to go on. A good reminder to make the most of it. I am thankful for what i have, for every experience~ the bad makes the good sweeter.

Cape Coast

Another CRAZY African adventure... almost needed a vacation from my vacation! Saturday 5am scrambled in our hired tro tro with 14 mercy ship friends for a weekend around Cape Coast. 1st stop 3hrs down the road rolled up to one of the old British/Dutch Slave Castles built around the 1500's. Took a tour with this amazing Ghanian man, who had literally got choked up himself, telling us about the horrific events that took place here... lead us through dark, smelly, male & female slave dungeons built RIGHT BELOW the CHURCH the soldiers attended reguarly!!!! Winded through pitch black passageways they would take after up to 6 weeks of dungeon life to the DOOR OF NO RETURN, filing the chained, malnourished slaves into ships to be taken to Europe, or North, South America for free labor, mostly to start plantation farms. Saw the auction rooms where they were sold for $4-6! Even heard stories of local chiefs selling their own people (never knew that!) and of soldiers raping the woman and forcing the woman to name them after themselves, adding SON at the end. To this day, many of the popular last names include "Williamson", "Peterson" ie! Makes you think... how can we sometimes get it SO wrong?...

Settled in for the night at a charming brick hotel, called THE BRIDGE. It sits in the very middle of a big fishing village, bustling with carved canoes going in and out from the Atlantic carrying piles & piles of fish, and another slave castle about 200 yards from our hotel window, Elmina Castle. People watching was amazing. Scary carnivel costume parades down the street to beg for money.

Started the next day off casual, moosing around the town, then cramming in the tro tro again to head for KAKUM NATIONAL PARK, where we took a canopy walk into the rainforest. So MUCH fun :) Even got to take a 2 hr hike THROUGH it to learn about different medicinal uses of the trees & plants. As you can probably guess... i was pretty pumped about this. So interesting.... trees where Tylenol comes from, medicine that "cures" Measles & makes the placenta come out after birth (the tree i'm standing by above), some pretty funny explanations! Saw bark they use to make casts, sap for calcium, root systems as tall as me.

A bit exhausted...stopped at the crocodile farm for some lunch...(at 5pm!) This farm was UNREAL... no real fences or gates to contain the crocs... they could go anywhere they wanted..even up to some patio furniture if you were brave enough to sit there!!! ahhh. Got up the nerve to touch one...after i convinced our tro tro driver to be my bodyguard!... (it's smiling... i think it likes me ;) ) Fun was had by all. Just a bit crazy. I was nominated leader of the group, being the youngest..but in this crazy country for the longest amount of time. Some of the group on Africa time, some on U.S. time made some things difficult.. but we all laughed and had good conversation all weekend. Even braved a flat tire on the way home together.. taking stations around the tro tro at night as some of the local teenage boys where eyeing our bags. Never been so happy to see my cabin!

VVF surgery kickoff

VVF = Vesico-Vaginal Fistula

Starting Jan. 3rd the surgeon's onboard will be starting with our 2nd round of VVF surgeries. Vesico-Vaginal Fistulas are caused simply by unrelieved obstructed labor. Prolonged pressure of the baby's head against the back of the pubic bones produces ischaemic necrosis (dead tissue) of the intervening soft tissues (ie. genital tract & bladder) In a labor taking long enough to produce this, the baby almost always dies. The head softens and the mother eventually delivers a stillborn infant if she (the Mother) survives that long!

It is estimated over 2 million woman world~wide, mainly in Northern Africa, suffer with this condition. Some reasons include being given in marriage & becoming pregnant at an early age 15, 16, when their bodies have not had a chance to fully mature, as well as little to NO access to proper health care or hospitals.

These woman are truly special woman I'm told. Most are left by their husbands and shunned by their communities due to there stench as the fistulas leave them with a constant run of urine & sometimes bowels. As if their newborn dying and isolation wasn't enough, many curl up trying to make the urine stop and develop severe contractures leaving them with disabilities, shame, fear, hopelessness...

I'm excited to be a part of restoring their hope, changing their story around! Many times after a woman gets repaired she is accepted back into her family & community; dignity is restored, and may even be able to give birth again. Every woman who has surgery on board is given a certificate to have a baby at a hospital free of charge, one time.. as to prevent this from happening again from improper care.

After surgery the woman have a 2 week bed rest period, followed by one more week. Then, Lord willing, discharged! Before returning home, our ward holds a ceremony where each woman recieves a new dress made especially for her to celebrate her new life!!! Please pray for our ward as we interact with these amazing woman. PlEaSe Pray against infections, proper healing both physically, emotionally, spiritually, and wisdom in how to best take care of them! Thanks :)

Emmanuel's Gift

This is a great movie recently shown on the Mercy Ship Aft deck for movie night. I highly recommend it! True story~ It is a beautiful documentary made in 2006 about a boy growing up in Ghana with a disability. Abandoned by his father at birth because of it, but encouraged by his mother, he rises up against ALL odds to get sponsorship to ride his bike across Ghana, in attempt to dismantle Ghana's huge prejudice that the deformed have nothing to offer society but to be beggars and settle deep in poverty. He gets farther than anyone ever expected, and is currently changing the country in a big way. 10% of Ghana's population has some type of deformity!! I want to show this to every patient on our ward! Watching it is also a great way to get an authentic taste of Ghana's sights & culture. So, next time you find yourself wondering thru Blockbuster & nothing catches your attention & you need some inspiration.. you know what to do ;)