ali's african adventures

So, it turns out my life here is pretty plush. I sleep in an air-conditioned ship that's sometimes too cold. I have electricity and running water and food on my plate. Most of the time, I don't really feel like a missionary. I even have access to the internet right here in my cabin. And because of that, I've gotten into the habit of reading blogs. It's becoming something of a compulsion. Whether it's blogs of friends here on the ship or people I've never met spread out across the world, I'm kind of addicted to other people's words.

The blog world is strange, honestly. I'll admit something right now: the only reason I'm here is because I was lazy. I realized that, coming to Africa, people were going to want to hear from me. And I didn't want to send out tons of mass e-mails, because I wasn't sure I'd know what to say. So I asked my trusty tech support (my brother, which is why my family is handy to have around) to set me up with a Really Easy Blog, and here I am. No mass e-mails for me; I just write whatever comes to my head and people seem to be satisfied with that. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Somewhere along the line, though (pretty early on in my time here) things started to go wrong. Little boys were dying and I was so far from home and I just felt lost and disconnected. And so whatever was in my head wasn't too happy, but still I spilled it out onto the screen, throwing my words into some trackless void where there was no way of knowing whether or not anyone was reading them. (I meant it when I asked for a Really Easy Blog; mine doesn't even have a visitor counter. Not that I'm aware of anyway...)

It doesn't really matter if anyone reads, though. Not really. Writing is cathartic and sharing stories about Sadie and Benjamin and Greg, even if it's just typing them out and sending them into the far reaches of the internet, helps me to sort through them. To catalogue them and file them and somehow walk away from them because there are other little people who need me.

And then I start thinking about all the other people out there, writing words and putting them on the internet for all the world (or maybe no one) to see. I wonder if they need it as much as I do. If they can sleep at night because they've written something down.

Or maybe it's just me.

Either way, I'll keep writing.

It seems that people think my love language is food.

I'm working nights again (just two more until I get to see daylight), and I guess all my friends decided I might need a little help in the eating department.

It started while we were getting report. Beth, PICU nurse extraordinare and former Team Greg-er, quietly informed me that there was a plate of the famous Sajj Chicken Bread (so good it needs to be in capital letters) waiting for me in the ICU. My mouth, I must admit, starting watering immediately.

My next visitor was Maria, my lovely Kiwi roommate. She slipped in behind me as I sat at the desk, finally looking at my charts after almost three hours of non-stop kissing and cuddling and laughing with my small friends. Sporting our co-owned dalmation-spotted vest (a piece of clothing which only narrowly escaped a sad demise in the boutique), she came bearing halloween candy corn and christmas gingerbread cookies.

Once Maria had left and I was finally getting some charting done, my boss/friend/altogether awesome Red snuck through the door with a bag of golden oreos. We may or may not be convinced that golden oreos are made with illegal drugs (coughcrackcoccainecough), and we may or may not be addicted to them. But this is Mercy Ships, so I'm sure everything is actually on the up and up.

Todd, the nurse I'm working with tonight, looked at my growing pile of provisions, shook his head and disappeared to go do some work of his own. At which point the door opened one last time and Murray, receptionist-turned-writer, entered bearing a plate of ribs from Man Night. I thanked him profusely, closed the door behind him and burst into laughter as Todd came around the curtain and joined in the hilarity.

We will not go hungry tonight.

It's been ten years since everything changed.

He'd be twenty-seven now, and I can't imagine him like that. He's frozen in my memory, the no-longer-so-awkward teenager, grown into his limbs and confidence. Head brimming with ideas, plans, recipes for smoke bombs and schematics for motorbikes. I was fifteen to his seventeen and I still thought we were all invincible.

I sometimes go weeks now without thinking about him. When I do, again, it's with a vague sense of shame for having forgotten at all. How can life still be going on, when on this day a decade ago my family quietly melted into the hole he was leaving?

I'm at work now, awake through the night, reliving that night as my patients sleep quietly, safe in their beds. We drove through the dark to Toronto, dozing off only to be shaken alert over and over and over again by the realization that nothing was ever going to be the same. We arrived to the hospital with the morning, and my first impulse was to laugh. To tell the nurses that they were crazy because that boy in that bed couldn't possibly be my cousin. Because I'd never seen him so still before.

But it was him. The telltale scars on his head shone white through his short hair, testament to a life lived recklessly. Joyfully. And he was still. And so we knew that it was him and that it wasn't him and nothing made sense.

The next days were a blur, but I have one incredibly distinct memory. The room was quiet. Sunlight flooded through an uncurtained window and a nurse moved quietly around his bed. Her touch was gentle as she put vaseline on his lips and lotion on his hands. It's a sunny day, Johnny, she told him, even though she knew he was past hearing. Everyone's here to see you. They're all here. Her way, I've later come to realize, of letting him know that it was okay to go.

And so he went. And we were left trying to find our way in a world that suddenly wasn't our own because he wasn't in it. It's been ten years, and sometimes I think I'm still lost without him.

Once again, the B in B Ward seems to stand for babies. The beds are full to bursting with small brown people. They crawl around on casted knees. They pop wheelies in their chairs. They lift pudgy hands to be picked up and strapped to someone's back, and today I got to be that someone. I spent the greater part of my shift with little feet sticking out from either side of my hips, another mama's child tied to me with whatever piece of cloth was closest at hand. (I'm happy to report that I tied the lappas myself and only had to readjust once, quite the accomplishment for someone as startlingly white as myself. My future hypothetical children are most definitely going to be carried this way.)

I have nothing of earth-shattering importance to share right now. I love my job. I love Liberia. I love setting up my supplies for a sterile dressing change while feeling my scrub top grow damp from a newly-repaired, formerly-cleft-lipped baby's drool as she sleeps on my back.

But mostly, I love Oscar. I think he might just be the most beautiful kid in all of West Africa.

If you had met Yeme on the day she arrived to the ship, you would probably have been horrified. Even by Mercy Ships' standards, her problem was a grave one. The back of one of her legs was a tumor from hip to ankle, a massive, smelly growth that made up almost a fifth of her body weight. Above one of her eyes grows another tumor, deforming her eye socket and warping the line of her cheek. You would have stared.

It wouldn't have made any difference to Yeme, though, because she wouldn't have met your eyes. She didn't meet anyone's eyes when she came. Her family sent her here from Guinea to be fixed. Dropped her off at the gate where she stayed for hours until someone noticed her and brought her inside to a cold world where no one speaks her language. I have a hard time not getting angry at her family for abandoning her like they did, but I guess I can see why they were desperate.

She's been here a couple weeks now, and Yeme is so different from that downcast, frightened child who had to be coaxed through our doors. The tumor on her leg has been almost completely removed. She's waiting for more surgeries to graft skin over her wounds and take out the growth above her eye. She smiles. She laughs. She colours and makes beaded bracelets like it's her job. She is beautiful. She always has been.

Eric, one of our translators, prayed for the patients during handover this morning.

Make them, oh God, who they are.

That's it, isn't it? That's what we're trying to do here. Trying to peel back the layers of disease and deformity that enshroud these victims of a fallen world. Revealing the truth: that these are glorious creatures, formed in the image of a beautiful God. I will never stop being grateful to that God that He allows us to be the hands and hearts that are part of making these people who they are.

As days go by here in Liberia, I find myself realizing that I'm possibly a real grownup now. Don't tell any of the myriad kids I play with every chance I get, but I don't think I am one of them any longer.

I think the straw that broke my proverbial back (not that I'm a camel or anything; the metaphor just seemed to fit) was getting this poster in the mail. Go ahead and click on that bright red square and you will see the reason I've had to say goodbye to my childhood once and for all. It's not really anything spectacular, nothing but a piece of posterboard with kids' signatures scattered across it in black marker. But if you look up there at the top, you'll see a little card with a photo and an address on it. It just happens to be me. Ali Wilks. Missionary.

I've gone to the same church since I was about two years old. Ever since I can remember, Mr. Don has been leading Vacation Bible School in the summers. Every year there was a missionary of the week, someone he would tell us stories about and someone we would pray for. And every time we would sign a poster that Mr. Don promised to send to the missionary in question; I've probably signed close to twenty of those posters. This year, it was me. I was that missionary, and I sent stories back to be read to the kids each day and I totally forgot about the poster thing until it showed up in the mail a week or so ago. When I pulled it out of the envelope and unfolded it across the floor of my cabin, I was overwhelmed with what I can only describe as the absolute weight of my calling and the unmistakable realization that I've grown up.

I've spent my life hearing stories about missionaries. The last Wednesday of every month sees my whole church in the basement, eating potluck casseroles and listening to a different warrior of the faith from some far-flung corner of the world. I sat there, enthralled, promising my grown-up, future self that I was going to be a missionary. Going to live in Africa and take care of those laughing, dark-eyed children. Going to let God use me however He felt like it.

I knew he was telling me that I'd go. Somewhere, someday. I guess I just didn't completely believe that He was serious.

And so, of course, because that's what happens when you doubt God, here I am. I'm that girl, the one who grew up and became a Nurse In Africa, which needs to be capitalized because I always thought it was such a big deal. And now that I'm here, I realize that missionaries aren't anything special. Not really. And neither are grownups; they aren't the superheroes I'd always made them out to be, because if they were, there's no way I could be one. They're just people. People who laugh and worry and do things right and do things wrong and somehow get through each day more or less intact.

I thought growing up and becoming a missionary would feel different, somehow. I figured I'd get to some magical point where I felt qualified to make decisions that affect the entire course of my life. And where being in charge of someone else's life while they lie helpless in a hospital bed wasn't flat-out scary. Where I'd know what to say and when to say it and then I'd be grown up.

Instead here I am. Just as petrified as the day I heard that still, small voice tell me not to get too comfortable in the States. And just when I'm ready to pack it all in, to throw up my hands in surrender and retreat from this strange world of responsibility and adulthood, that same voice whispers to me again.

There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his daughter, all the way you went until you reached this place. (Deuteronomy 1:31)

These waters are not so uncharted as I've made them out to me. A wiser mind than mine is laying plans. Stronger hands than mine are guiding me.

And a deeper heart than mine is loving through me.

I've been in Liberia long enough to really embrace the TIA philosophy. This is Africa, we say, shaking our heads and grinning as things unfold differently than they would in the developed world. This past week, I went on a short holiday that just screamed TIA. It was nothing short of hilarious.

The wards are well staffed right now. Dr. Gary comes back this week, so we're going to have to open up another ward to house his patients and things are going to get busy again. But for the time being, things are good. Since I've been here six months now, my boss suggested I use my vacation days and take a break. I jumped at the chance, and my roommate, Maria, and I booked a little cottage on a beach about half an hour away from the ship. We knew we weren't getting terribly far away (you can see the ship from White Sands Beach, where we were staying) but being off the ship, if only for a day or two, and deciding our own schedule was an opportunity too tempting to resist.

As we packed our things to leave, torrential rain battered the ship. Undaunted, we pulled on rain jackets, popped open umbrellas and piled ourselves into a battered yellow taxi. We took off through the pouring rain, stopped at the bakery for provisions and arrived to White Sands in triumph. To find that Ellen, the owner of the place, was in town. With the only key to the cottage. TIA. So we sat on the porch until the rain got too serious, at which point we retired to the empty bar where we sat some more. About two hours later, Ellen arrived to unlock our little haven.

It's a little round, concrete building. Maria, my lovely Kiwi friend, called it the killing shed, noting that all it lacked was hooks from which to hang the newly slaughtered meat. One corner houses a bucket-flush toilet and a little nook for showering from another bucket. In the main room, a double bed, a couple chairs and a little table makes up the rest of the furniture. A single, dim green bulb was frighteningly wired to the ceiling, promising at least a little light once night fell. We spent the remainder of the afternoon lazing on the bed, reading books and chatting as the daylight faded. Dinner was a quiet affair; chicken and chips in the still-empty bar, after which we pulled chairs out onto the sand and watched the dark ocean, drinks in hand. We retired to our killing shed. exulting in the fact that we were off the ship past eleven at night, and fell asleep to the sound of the rain drumming on the rooftop.

The next day dawned grey. Rain came in gusts, so we lounged in bed for a while until a break in the wetness when Maria dashed out to ask for hot water for our tea. One of the workers returned with a huge tray of toast, eggs, tea and coffee. In short, all the breakfast ever. We feasted. The rest of the day was spent in a languorous haze. Every time the rain stopped, we ran out of our cottage, exploring up and down the beach, hunting for crabs, watching fishing boats and swimming in the choppy ocean.

As evening fell, we retired once again to our now-familiar bed to read short stories to each other, our favourite pastime during those rainy days. We were happily ensconced in our sheets and blankets when we heard the hum of the generator starting. Our light bulb flickered on, casting its sickly green glow over the room. Almost immediately, we heard a popping noise as the light flared to a brilliant, blinding white. And then shattered. Tiny shards of green glass covered every corner, blanketing the bed and embedding themselves in our hair. After the initial exclamations of Lord, help us! we sat in stunned silence for a moment before breaking into uncontrollable laughter. TIA.

We shook out our bedding and crawled around the room collecting pieces of glass for about fifteen minutes before Ellen, our hostess, showed up. She came to help us sweep, and we were happily employed at that task when we heard the same popping sound again. We looked over at the fan as it started to glow orange and then caught fire. We screamed, Ellen shouted something unintelligible and practically commando-rolled over to unplug the red-hot unit. It was only then, after everything electrical in our room had committed fiery suicide, that she informed us that they had hooked up a new generator that night. It was making too much current, and things were blowing up all over the compound. Maybe we shouldn't have turned on the light. TIA, baby. We spent the rest of the evening happily employed in playing cards and reading stories by the cozy (and much safer) light of a kerosene lantern, falling asleep again in the hopes that our final day would be a sunny one.

True to form, it wasn't. When we woke up, the rain was bucketing down, and we resigned ourselves to hours more of cards and books and laziness. Not a bad deal, honestly. It was wonderful just to be away from the constant thrum of the engines and the inevitability of constant human interaction that defines this ship. I do love people, but being away from them at times provides such a welcome refreshment. Plus, I can't think of anything I'd rather do in the pouring rain than lie propped up in bed with a good book and a hot cup of tea.

Just before lunch, the rain stopped. We ventured outside and were met by our first glimmer of hope; a sliver of blue sky just above the horizon. Emboldened by this promise, we applied sunscreen, put on our suits and prepared to enjoy a real day at the beach. We were not disappointed. The sun gained strength, the clouds scudded away across an ever-bluer sky, and soon we were having to reapply that sunscreen. Joined by some friends from the ship, we played in the waves and lounged on the beach until the growing rumble in our tummies reminded us that it was almost time to get back to the ship. We packed up, passed out our extra supplies of milk and water bottles to the security guards at the compound, called our faithful taxi-driving friend Alfred to come get us, and bid a reluctant farewell to our killing shed. We arrived back to the ship, triumphantly sun-kissed and confused all our friends by trying to explain what a wonderful time we'd had. At the beach. In the pouring rain.

There are some vacations that you'll never forget. I'm pretty sure this was one of them.

(The rest of the photos are here.)

Sorry for the rather protracted silence. I just finished a run of four night shifts and I'm now on holiday for the next week and a half. My roomate and I are braving the rainy season weather to stay a couple nights in a little cottage on the beach, and I might go up country for the weekend.

It might be a while before you hear from me again.

It's hard to know what to say when faced with the death of a baby. What can I possibly offer to a mother who has just lost her heart? What words can I say that will blunt the searing pain? And what comfort can I give when that mama is faced with the sight of her son's bed, occupied by another small, brown baby, one who is sitting up and smiling at the world around him?

Marion came to visit me today. She's something of a celebrity around here, and it took me almost fifteen minutes just to get her down the stairs to the hospital as almost everyone we passed stopped to say hello. As we walked down the hall towards B Ward, she was all smiles, laughing and greeting her friends, nurses, translators and disciplers. It was only when we were inside amidst the bustle of a full ward that the flood of memory overwhelmed her. I stood there with my arm around her tiny shoulders as tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She turned twenty-one yesterday. She's a child herself, and yet she stood there, mute and small, mourning the loss of her third baby.

We turned away and went upstairs to eat lunch. We sat at a table by the window as she pushed the rice around her plate and told us about a dream she'd had. In it, she was out walking. Or working. She wasn't quite sure. People came up to her one after another and told her what a fine baby she had. Asked her how he was. She repeated to them over and over that she didn't have a baby. That he had died.

No, they said, he's right there. He's right there on your back. That was a good dream, we agreed.


Bendu, the sassy-pants who was burned after she had a seizure and knocked over her kerosene lamp, was back for a dressing change in our outpatient clinic. She and Marion became close while Baby Greg was still with us, so when Bendu's appointment was finished I signed her back in as my visitor too. We passed the rest of the afternoon like any silly twenty-something year old friends. We wandered around the ship, ate grilled cheese at the cafe, tried to call friends in Canada and hung out in my room for a while, laughing and filming video messages on my camera.

Weeks ago, as we stood by Baby Greg's bedside, watching him fight to breathe, Bendu told me that she was very sad. I asked her why, and she went on to tell me that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. She didn't meet my eyes as she gently touched the warped, pink skin of her cheek and forehead. Quiet tears filled her eyes and as she explained that no man would want to marry her, not given the way she looks. So I will be alone. That is what makes me very sad.

Marion is a woman living under the shadow of curse. The longer I spend here in West Africa, the more aware I become of the reality of spiritual warfare. It's easy to be in my comfortable room and scoff at the idea that words could have such an effect on someone's life. But then I leave this room and go out and sit with Marion in her house and I am utterly convinced that this battle is so much bigger and so much more intangible than I could have imagined.

Given all this, I was struck today at how normal the day was. I think I expect women who have lost babies and been terribly disfigured by burns to be somehow different. More sedate, more aware, in a way, of the cloud surrounding them. But apart from the small moments when they retreat into themselves, lost in worlds of pain I can only guess at, Marion and Bendu are you and I and any woman ever. They're maybe more broken, a little more shattered, but underneath the scars and shining through the tears, I can so clearly see their love.

I want to love like this.

Life has been fairly busy recently. With one thing and another, it's been months since I've gotten out of Monrovia, so I jumped at the chance to join a group of about twenty to headed for Bong Mines today. Once a site for mining iron ore, it was destroyed during the war. Since then, the structure is slowly being taken apart by locals who sell the pieces as scrap. Groups generally head out with a dayworker from the ship here, Odacious, a man who was working at the mine the day the rebels came through and killed almost everyone. We, however, signed up for the Action Adventure Tour. Led by the ever-fearless Carl and Lourens, our Australian and South African guides, we didn't do things in quite the usual style.

The trip did start out with the traditional train ride. We backed the Land Rovers onto a flat bed, hooked up the engine and took off through the Liberian bush. In the absence of rain, people climb on top of the cars and sit there to enjoy the view. In our case, it was pouring. Phil, Todd and I thought about it for a minute or two, realized we were going to be wet for the rest of the day anyway and climbed up to perch on top of the spare tire on the roof. We sat there, pelted by the rain and watched the countryside flash past like something out of a theme park ride.



When we got too cold on top of the Land Rovers, we climbed back down and into the back cars of the train. No more than big metal boxes with an inch or two of gravel and muddy water at the bottom, they did provide a little shelter from the wind. When the rain stopped, other friends joined us, and we played around in there for the rest of the three hour journey, getting thoroughly wet and muddy. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. Once you've gotten filthy, you're ready for whatever the rest of the day might bring.



What the rest of the day brought was a whole lot of wandering. We stopped at the traditional spots and saw the decaying mine structure and a gorgeous view of the lake from on top of a mountain. This, however, was the Action Adventure Tour, and soon Carl decided it was time for it to live up to its name. We started off in search of a view which he promised us was just around the bend and up the mountain a ways. After a while bushwhacking through ferns and thorn trees and serrated vines that apparently grow about six inches high and perfectly parallel to the ground, we came to the top. Which was a little outcropping of land in the middle of a dense forest. With no view whatsoever.


Not to be daunted, we headed back the way we came, pausing only to pick and eat fresh guavas and crawl through a cool, green tunnel of ferns that had grown up taller than our heads. We piled back into the cars and drove off through the mud and rain to another lookout point. It was at this point that Carl got a gleam in his eye, turned to Lourens and said, Want to see how far we can get? "How far" turned out to be up the mountain even more, through more mud and rocks and rain until we stopped at the top of a steep, rocky slope with an incredible view across the valley.

Away down the mountain, barely visible past the tree line and what looked like a deep gully, the boys spotted a waterfall. The nurse in me almost had a heart attack when the fearless leaders and Phil headed down the scree to see if they could reach it. I briefly considered yelling for them to come back and then, remembering that my health insurance does indeed have coverage for 'repatriation of mortal remains,' I took off after them.

I have never been more scared. There was no good way to get down, so I resorted mostly to sliding as rocks tumbled all around me and I prayed that I'd be able to stop at the bottom. Which I did, quite neatly and with only one or two extra bruises. The payoff was well worth the fear. Cool, clear water rushed down over red rocks stacked on top of each other away up into the jungle. Trees met overhead to form something like a cathedral, right there in the Liberian bush. I could have stayed there for hours.


We finally made our way back through the jungle and up the rocky slope to pile, exhausted, into the cars. We drove home over rutted dirt roads through the gathering dark and yet-again-pouring rain. It was a day well spent.

(Lots more photos are here.)

There are some moments as a nurse where you just shake your head and wonder why on earth anyone would want to do anything else. Today was one of them.

Bush is two years old. His mocha features are framed by a puff of curly hair that smells faintly of earth and herbs. He's not terribly afraid of white people, and stickers work well as bribes for swallowing medicines. In short, we're pretty good friends.

Or so I thought.

Our peaceful relationship ended about halfway through my shift today when I realized that I had to change his bandage. Bush had surgery on a very delicate area of his small body, and men, even two-year old men, are fiercely protective of this particular part. My laughing friend turned into a screaming banshee, requiring three grown adults to hold him down as I delicately took scissors to what seemed like a cast of gauze and tape wrapped around his manly bits. Kevin, the nurse I was training, had poor Bush on lockdown and I was starting to make pretty good progress with the bandage removal when Bush's screams suddenly formed themselves into words.

Hey man! Leave it! Mah toto! Don' cut it! Don' cut mah toto! Mah toto!

At which point I had to put down the scissors so Kevin and I could dissolve into laughter. If you've never looked into a two-year old's eyes and soothingly said I won' cut your toto. It alright, man. You alright. I won' cut it, then I submit that you are missing out on the true fullness of life.