celebrating

Today marks fifty years of independence for Togo. According to our day volunteers, this is cause for celebration. Like the 4th of July or Canada Day, only much, much hotter and with more dust. Cyril, one of our translators, informed me early in the morning that there would be a parade in town at around two o'clock, and that it was in the best interests of all our patients to put them in a bus and take them there to enjoy it. I told him I didn't think it would be possible, so he asked me to at least think about it. Which I did, for a long time, and eventually came up with the only objection to the plan; I didn't own a bus. This satisfied him, and he settled for our version of a party. It was slightly less authentic, given the fact that it took place inside a hospital, but I think we did okay.

Just like everything else around here, things quickly turned from an independence day cheer into a full-out worship and dance party. We sang in at least three different languages while patients who hadn't been out of bed in days shuffled and danced alongside us. Lovelace and Aissa danced next to each other, Aissa's moves a little limited by the pain in her leg from where they took the skin to cover the hole in her cheek. Videssi shook a sasa from his bed and Chantal, true to form, was in the thick of it, laughing and singing and raising songs at the top of her voice.

It's moments like that when I look around in wonder at what I'm a part of. To know that this ship was bought and renovated and sailed across the world so that Maurius can live with a straight smile. (A smile, by the way, which I saw again today for the first time since his surgery.) So that Aissa can go out in public without covering her face. To see all these broken people being asked to dance, being told that they are lovely and valuable and worth a thousand celebrations. Sarah put it so perfectly on the day of Aissa's surgery.

It struck me then, the extravagance of God’s love. Who could have imagined that this little girl, who almost slipped away to die in obscurity would now be the recipient of the attention of a team of professionals, specialists in their fields? That all the excitement, effort, skill and precision would be for her restoration?

Extravagant love, should I have expected anything different?

Whether we're singing the return of a baby to the bed he used to sleep in or cheering for independence, we are always celebrating something on these wards. We are celebrating love.

(Not just love. Today, we also celebrated the fact that Aissa took her meds without a fight, calmly rinsed her mouth and grabbed the swab and mirror to do the wound care for her nose. All by herself. While wearing a tower of balloons taped to the top of her head bandage like a bizarre flower. We're celebrating that, too.)


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