cooking pots and pirogues

I was scheduled to work Friday evening, which made me rather sad, since supper was a picnic-style feast of barbecue ribs served out on the dock, followed by relay race festivities marking the year anniversary of the passing of the torch from the Anastasis to the Africa Mercy. I wasn't sure I wanted to be a part of the race, but I definitely wanted to sit outside and linger over my pork and beans. This season is well on its way, and it won't be long before we're trapped inside by the rains. So, despite a sweet sunrise chat with God, it was with an admittedly heavy heart that I dragged through my morning.

Needless to say, I was more than a little excited when I got a call from one of the charge nurses just before lunch. How would you like to do an activity with the patients instead of working this afternoon? My dinner on the dock suddenly became a happy reality and I foolishly agreed to be part of a relay team. (As a side note, while HCS+ won their first heat but were eventually defeated in the finals, I would like to submit that our flame-bedecked urinal was the best torch of the evening. I'm just saying.)

It was at this point that I hit a small snag; I couldn't come up with an activity to save my life. Our craft cart consists of beads, thread, crayons, paper and playdoh. That's about it. I couldn't even rustle up paper plates to paint, and it got closer and closer to three o'clock as I combed the internet, my sister's brain and the imaginations of every friend I came across to try and find something creative to occupy a crowd of people, aged two to sixty, who didn't really even speak my language.

I had pretty much despaired of presenting anything exciting when I walked past Ines in the hallway. She's the mum of my favourite ships kids and the coordinator of Mercy Ministries, the groups that go off the ship and into orphanages and homes for the handicapped and such. She's amazing, and I'm not just saying that because she quickly supplied me with an idea.

Armed with playdoh and clipboards, I headed down to the wards. I passed out supplies to patients and mamas and began to tell the creation story, encouraging them to create along with my words. I hit my first roadblock when I noticed that half of the patients didn't know how to get the sticky substance out of the cans. Even the ones who had their playdoh in a hopeful lump in the middle of clipboards balanced on knees didn't start making anything until somewhere around the third day; abstract concepts just aren't that easy to fashion out of an unknown material.

Once they had all caught on to how the playdoh actually worked, they got excitedly down to the task at hand. With exclamations of wonder and comments about how God did a better job anyway, they started creating. They fashioned miniatures from their lives, and across the board, in every single ward, they all made the same things. Snakes, spiders, cotton trees, fish and cooking pots. They displayed these treasures to me with shy enthusiasm. Alimou, once I had scraped together enough French to explain what on earth was going on, made just one simple sculpture: a canoe with an oar. Pirogue! he told me, joy sparkling in his eyes.

They were so engrossed. Playdoh and the creation story. When's the last time you were able to stand in front of a room full of adults armed with only playdoh and the creation story and feel confident that you'd be able to entertain for a couple of hours? In what world are people eager enough, simple enough, grateful enough to let playdoh and the creation story be enough? Snakes and cooking pots and pirogues. Works of art created by hands created by God.

It was good.