"aunTie Steph"

On attempt #4 success! Lets just say there is a reason God made African woman with big packages up front... not holding on me!! This is the way woman carry their bebes here :) They laugh at me in the ward when i pick them up and put them on my hip. Its so precious to see them sleeping in these at the marketplace.

O.R.S. education

In Ashiamen village- the poorest community outside Tema. These are 5 out of the 25 local leaders being taught and trained in Maternal Health principles. They are learning how to take the knowledge back to their villages and educate their communities. Today, sat in on one of Mercy Ship's communitiy dev. classes on how to make a O.R.S (Oral Rehydration Solution)to replace fluids lost from rampant diahrrea. A pinch of salt and a palm of sugar!! Taught simple signs and symptoms to look for in severely dehydrated children and adults and how to treat it, how to break the cycle of diseases that cause diahrrea. Taught three cheap different ways to purify water. (Around 30,650 people die each day from diahrrea)
We had a fun time mixing up the O.R.S. and taste testing each others. I think I put too much salt in mine!

Fishing village

Monday morning went on my walk to the lighthouse and decided to go a bit further outside the offical port walls... what i found was absolutely breathtaking. This is just one of many pictures i tried to capture of this little fishing village in Tema. Fish 3 feet long in bowls on woman's heads, baskets and baskets full of little fish, crabs, stingray. New boats being chiesled into being among the old tattered ones. Thousands of fish being washed and then thrown back onto the dirt to be dried and sold. A little further up the beach we saw remains of old sunken ships, a soccer game, and smoke houses where goats and little children where coming out of no where. This is like a little piece of heaven on earth :) I felt so alive, I can't wait to go back!

(link on the left for the rest of the pictures)

view from my favorite spot at the lighthouse

Agnes my dear & me

She got to go home this week! I will miss her.

Sam & Bernice

Full Moon *

Hello! What a week its been~ was it a full moon this week? Strange things kept happening. My week started with a big CRASH... monday night at the end of my shift we were all sitting down to give the next batch of nurses report when i heard a pulse oximeter beeping on one of my collegue's patients. I walked over to see what was causing it and our very first Thyroidectomy patient (removal of a huge goiter)was coding!! She turned a horrible ash color, eyes rolled back and the left side of her neck started to swell to the size of a cantalope completely occluding her airway! I just froze for a second..looking at her is disbelief, we had JUST talked about how bleeding was a RARE risk from this type of surgery. Adrenaline kicked in and ran for the oxygen and crash cart, 911 emergency team was called and about 20 minutes later she was put on the pulley system to the OR to reconnect her carotid artery. Found out later she lost all her blood, but was quickly replaced with IV fluid and blood tranfusions. Well, I guess God answered two of my prayers... I got to see my miracle and she lived! I keep playing it over and over in my mind and there is no way she should have survived that. I was sure she was gone. It was quite emotional and hard for me to continue work this week, but the staff has been great and we are all really becoming a team. My nightmares have ceased thankfully and 2 days ago she was extubated and walking around making funny comments as she is still a little doped up!

The other real life nightmare this week was happening simultaneously as the code... the sewage system was broken on 3/4 of the toilets on the ship for 2 days! enough said. Its fixed now, thank goodness.

Got another new roommate this week that i'm really excited about. She is working as one of the Community Health directors (one of my other huge interests here) and seems to be really adventerous, I'm looking forward to getting to know her better :)

This week got to go see some of the other ministry sites. Mercy Ships has some on-shore projects such as building a maternity ward unit extenstion to the local hospital. They designed it after the typical model here in Ghana (4 women laboring in ONE ROOM!) yikes. Its interesting how modesty plays a big part here in some ways but not in others?? Also building a HIV/AIDS education center just for teens as they found out that many weren't going to get help b/c they were afraid of running into their elders at the local hospital. They just layed the foundation. I have such a huge respect for these workers. They make it brick by brick in hot, hot weather (6 degrees from the equator)!! Also saw the dental and eye clinics Mercy Ships has out in the community. They were using the same building as a local community health center in which this week in 5 days Ghana is trying to immunize every kid under 5 for Polio and Measles, still killers here. It was a bad house!! ha. Babies everywhere!

Had to get away from the full moon a bit this week, so we had a roommate day and rode bikes to the local health club to swim for the afternoon. The ocean is not safe to swim in around here b/c of riptides and bacteria. Besides riding while inhaling much gas and dust, wearing pants in 100 degree weather... its was a little piece of heaven! Also ventured out to the lighthouse near the port and its absolutely my favorite place around here. If you go in the morning you can see all the colorful, beat up sailboats heading out to catch fish for the day. Its like something out of National Geographic, each boat has three pieces of timber crafted between a bedsheet to become a sail! The sea is gleaming and its stunning, a place for fresh air and peace. I love it. God is good to get me through this week.