ali's african adventures

Thank you for your prayers for James; please pray for his family now. He passed away this morning, but he was not alone. That's all I think about, haunted by the memory of the others who have died downstairs. He didn't collapse in the street or die curled up in a corner somewhere. He was in the best hospital in the country, given every possible medical chance; there was nothing more we could have done. He was cared for until the very end and he died surrounded by love and prayer. I wasn't there, but I have been before, and I know how it is here.

And still it seems so wrong. I think I say this every single time, but this is not what we all sign up for when we come to Mercy Ships. We think we're coming to watch cleft lips be stitched back together, to see crooked feet straightened and blind eyes given sight. Nowhere in the orientation packet does it say anything about how, sometimes, they die.

It's jarring, the disconnect. Last night I went down to D Ward to get the keys for the pharmacy, and a little girl with an as-yet-unrepaired cleft lip lifted up her hands to me. She wound her skinny arms around my neck and planted a series of sloppy wet kisses on my cheeks, and right behind her was the door to the ICU where James was dying and it just seemed so unreal.

So please keep praying for his family. It rained all night, and it's still raining this morning, so I don't know how the roads will be when they try to take him home. Strange, to have to think about that, too. At home it's all so simple; you call the funeral home, and they take care of it. Things are messier here. We're more involved, more a part of our patients' lives than is considered really proper in the 'real world.'

I think it's how Jesus would have wanted it. I look into the Gospels and I see Him weeping outside the tomb of a man He was about to raise from the dead, fully present in the moment, sharing in the grief of his friends. And I think of the ones who stood vigil around James' bed this morning, present in his last moments, and I know that this is the way it should be.

We're not on this earth to live our own lives, untouched by what goes on around us. If that's the example we were to follow, Jesus would have lived his thirty-some years out in a monastery. He didn't. He lived in community with the world; He got dirty and He got hurt. Some days it felt like too much, but always compassion moved Him to give more. He loved the unlovable, had parties with sinners and wept with those who mourned.

This is the way it should be.

There's a single tone that comes over the ship's intercom that marks the beginning of a ship-wide announcement. Usually you hear it when we're taking on fuel, or when the garbage container is full or things like that.

When it sounds at eleven on a Saturday night, you immediately assume the worst. Last night, that's exactly what it was. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU.

We arrived quickly (not hard to do when you're living directly above the ICU itself) and everyone fell into place around the bed as we sought to save the life of the man lying there. I won't go into much detail, as I honestly don't know him, apart from everything that happened last night. Suffice it to say that he has an infection in his brain, and after a late-night trip to the OR, things don't look good.

He's being cared for now in the ICU, his family is on the way, and we're all praying for a miracle.

It's strange, this life. There's a critically ill man just below where I'm sitting, and I'm finding it hard to really care. I know that sounds awful, so please let me explain. For some reason this all feels so different from other times. Maybe because the first time I ever saw him he was unconscious and we were breathing for him, but I don't feel the same way I normally do when someone is so sick. There's no background, no common experience apart from that one, long, frantic hour before we turned him over to the OR staff. He's not a baby that I've held in my arms; I don't even know if he has family apart from the brother we were able to get in touch with this morning.

And despite all this, he is just as important as any of them. I am called to love this stranger in the same way I loved Baby Greg or O'Brien or Anicette, but I don't know how. I stood by his bed this morning, my hand on his arm, and I prayed for him. And I still don't feel anything.

Call it compassion fatigue, call it what you want, but you can't always care enough. Or at least you don't always, even if you should. It's one of the hardest things about this life, a life where you come face to face with pains and death on a consistent basis. Sometimes you just step back, throw up whatever shield you can and go on living despite the fact that there's a man fighting for his own life not fifty steps away. And you feel guilty for doing it, but there's no other way.

This is hard, not because I know him, but because I don't.


Please pray for James and his family. I'll update as I know anything more.

It's a little after three in the morning, and the wards are quiet. I'm working my last night shift in A Ward, since one of their nurses called out sick, so I'm not taking care of little Taslim tonight. I checked on her a little while ago, and she was fast asleep, the steri-strips holding her top lip together looking for all the world like little kitten whiskers. I'm also happy to report that the oldest of my nine patients tonight is fourteen. It would be the understatement of the year to say that I'm relived not to be in charge of any grown men with hernias.

Don't get me wrong; general surgery is an important part of what we do here, because sometimes transforming a life isn't as dramatic as rebuilding a face or straightening crippled feet. Sometimes it's the unseen troubles, a hernia that's caused years of pain for a man, destroying his ability to work and provide for his family. When we can step in and fix that, we give life to that family again. But really, at the end of the day, I'm a pediatric nurse. Call me crazy, but I'd much rather be wrestling with a three year-old who's bent on kicking me in the face because she doesn't want her temperature taken (true story, that) than watching a grownup sleep quietly. Seriously, where's the fun in that?

The little ones here in A Ward have all been here long enough due to different complications with their plastic surgeries that they know the drill. (Whether or not they choose to comply with said drill is entirely up to the whim of the moment.) There's something incredibly endearing about a one-and-a-half year old who sees you coming with the monitor and smiles up at you as he holds out his chubby finger for the oxygen probe. Or the six year-old who insists it's cold enough to be wearing a knitted winter hat and then needs to be tucked in when he falls asleep and kicks off his covers.

I'm sitting here, reading down this list of kids on my clipboard, and it's like reading a promise.

Instead of ridicule and stares and whispers behind their backs, they're being rebuilt now. Extra digits removed, fingers burned by fire made straight again, wounds covered, fingers created from webbed masses of skin and bone. These are the things that make you hated here, the things that keep you from school because of the fear that other people feel when they look at you.

Here on the ship, we speak to them of a new reality. We hold their mangled hands, touch their scarred cheeks where skin has hardened like wax, snuggle them into our laps no matter what they look like. We change their bandages, help them bathe, look them in the eye and acknowledge their worth. We who are filled with the love of Jesus can't help pouring that out on our patients and the result is that these nine names on my clipboard are now kids who fully believe that they deserve that love.

It seems like such a small thing, but it's everything. I've been at this for more than three years now, and I'm blinking back tears as I sit here and think about what this all really means.

This place is a promise.

This evening, we had a little excitement, Africa Mercy-style. I was eating dinner with some friends in the cafe on Deck Five when one of them casually mentioned that the retrieval efforts were still going on outside.

Retreive what? I asked, naively.

It turns out that one of the forklifts we use to unload containers had fallen into the sea between the ship and the dock and was buried in five feet of mud at the bottom of the port. The divers (my boss' boss Dan, and dear Aussie friend Tim) were suited up and getting ready to head into the murky water to see if they could attach cables so that the Terex (a huge container-moving machine found in ports, and yes, it's pronounced like the dinosaur) could haul it up.

What followed was easily the most entertaining night in AFM history. The rescue efforts went on until after dark while those of us watching were also treated to a beautiful sunset and a lightning storm off the port side. There were enough people on deck that it looked like we were getting ready to raise anchor and sail away, but really, it was just curiosity and lack of anything better to do. (We're easily amused over here.)

I stayed until the divers resurfaced and it became apparent that the Terex wasn't the man (pardon me, machine) for the job and then watched the lightning storm for a while before work. I headed down to B Ward for my second night shift in a row fully convinced that I had seen the most exciting thing that would happen for a while.

Until I picked up the chart for my little four-month old patient in bed twenty. Taslim was all tucked in and sleeping soundly, making little whiffling, sleepy noises through her cleft lip and palate and when I got to the part about family history I stopped cold.

Adopted. (Child was abandoned.)

Just that. Nothing more. When Taslim was born with a face split wide, her mama couldn't bear it. I dont know why. I don't know what kind of fear or anger or feelings of inadequacy were going through her head when she bundled up her baby in the middle of the night and left her on the doorstep of a woman she knew was a nurse. All I know is that she couldn't see her way clear with a baby born so broken. They found her there the next morning, crying for hunger, and they took her in, fed her, loved her. When the rest of the world ran away, this family ran straight for Taslim, scooped her up and poured life into her.

She'll have surgery to correct her cleft lip in the morning. Tonight she sleeps in the care of her new family.

That's the most exciting thing.

I just finished another delightful shift on D Ward. I spent most of the morning trying to think of games and crafts to amuse Comfort and Abiba, completely forgetting that they were due to be moved to the HOPE Center before I ever arrived on shift. The HOPE Center is something we have in each country we work in, a necessity in a place so different than anything you can probably imagine. In the first world, if you're sent home with a bandage to be changed or a cast to be looked after, there are services in place to make that happen. There are visiting nurses to come to the house, clinics where you can be seen after hours, pharmacies open all night where you can get medications if you're in pain. You have food on the table and a clean place to sleep, and so you don't need to stay in the hospital.

Here in West Africa, we send our patients home to dirt or concrete, to five in a bed and nothing on the table, to raining season and malaria and malnutrition and no money to set any of that right. And so we can't actually send them home. Enter the HOPE Center. It's always packed full of patients who are either being fattened up so they're healthy for surgery or finishing their recovery afterwards in an air-conditioned room with three meals a day. They receive health education while they're there, and each one goes home with a mosquito net.

It's a wonderful place, but I had totally forgotten that my two little models were going to be strutting their stuff over there instead of in the hall on Deck Three, so I was a little disappointed when I arrived. I was looking forward to a rather boring shift when I looked at my clipboard and realized that, of the five new admissions waiting outside, four of them were under three years old.

When their beds were made, I ran outside to where they were all waiting, huddled under the tent on the dock. Three mamas and a papa, each with a cleft-lipped pikin in tow. I felt like the Pied Piper as I led them up the gangway and down into the hospital.

I'm not sure how the children felt about the Pied Piper initially. In my case, the pikins were more than a little nervous, taking in the situation with wide eyes and a few cries from the safety of their mamas' backs. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have yet to meet the kid who isn't friends with me. It just takes some of them longer to realize it.

I am happy to report that all four little ones are tucked into bed as I type, having spent the afternoon playing peekaboo, riding around on every toy with wheels (whether or not said toys were even close to big enough for such a purpose), or snuggled into my lap while I charted. I know I'm not supposed to have favourites, but Philip would totally be mine if I did. He rolled onto the ward sporting a crack that would make any plumber green with envy. His belly was just too big for his pants to sit high enough to provide any kind of coverage, and because big bellies aren't usually the result of too much food here, he won himself a prompt dose of worm medicine. We were quickly forgiven for that, and he turned out to have the cutest little laugh, which he showered on us at intervals in the running monologue he chirped out from his nest of blankets. If I can find a photo of Philip, I will most definitely post it; he's too good not to share with you.

Unfortunately, I don't get to watch over them all after their surgeries; I'm heading back up to B Ward tomorrow night to fill a hole in the staffing schedule for a couple weeks, and since that corner of the hospital is mostly filled with men having hernia surgeries, I don't think I'm going to have as many cute stories to tell.

Wish me luck. I'm about to be working three nights in a row, and I haven't worked a night shift in over two years. Since getting dengue fever, it seems I need about ten hours of sleep a day to be functional, so I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to make it until Thursday morning.

This could be interesting.

In the middle of our shift today, one of the nurses I was working with turned to me and said something that I consider a real compliment, considering the way things were going.

You see, right at that moment, I had just returned from the hall, where I had been swaggering up and down with Comfort and Abiba, both of whom had blankets tied like capes around their necks. We were practicing our model walks; Comfort's posing far outshone Abiba's tentative attempts, but both were giggling. My hair was up in wild, uneven pigtails, tied with purple string, courtesy of the two girls, and I had stickers on my forehead and cheeks.

I was breathless and laughing and one of the nurses turned to me and said, Jenny (one of the nurses who knew me from before) described you exactly right.

If people describe me that way, the way I was halfway through my shift this evening, then I am exactly who I want to be and I am exactly where I want to be.

Comfort is eleven. She's from Nigeria, and when she was four, a tumor started growing out of her cheek until it was the size of a grapefruit. It swelled out from the left side of her face, disfiguring her and condemning her to a life of shame. Two or three years before that, in the bush here in Sierra Leone, Abiba fought a battle with noma that ate away most of her top lip. Both have been here for a while as our surgeons cut away disease and worked to reconstruct their faces. Both have known ridicule and hate, and today we wanted them to know love.

And so we laughed. Rosie and Robyn (two women who work in other areas of the ship) came down to give foot and hand massages, we painted nails in pretty colours and then we headed out to the hall to practice our swagger. Abiba's normally withdrawn demeanor gave way, just for a moment, to a little diva in a red cape. It's the first time I've seen her come out of her shell, and Comfort is now far enough out of hers that there's really no going back. I never feel more like myself than I do in moments like this, in the times when I get to watch little girls laugh and play the way they should after years of not being able to look other people in the eye.

When I walked into the dining room to get some water after my shift, one of my friends did a full-on double take. What happened to your hair?!

Nothing happened. This is just who I am, apparently. Lopsided hair and all.



This is exactly who I want to be.

When I arrive in a new African country, I like to leave my camera in my cabin the first few times i go into town. I can hear from a million people how safe (or not) a place is, but I like to suss it all out for myself, so I go out with nothing on me the first few times while I get the feel of a place.

Today, that was a terrible decision on so many levels.

It started when we left the port gate and found a poda-poda half-filled with our friends, who were heading out to spend the long weekend at the beach. They offered us a ride to town and so we hopped in. There was music blaring from crackling speakers, a wingman to open and close the door (except they call them apprentices here) and I had to brace myself to stay seated while the bench I was on threatened to tear free from a shaky welding job at any minute. I stared out the window beside me at the streets, more colourful and vibrant than I remembered, filled with people selling anything and everything. Tissues and tank tops and flip flops and feather dusters and cookies and crackers and I could go on. We were ten minutes into the day, and I was already regretting my decision to leave the camera behind.

Once we piled out of the van, I was enveloped by it, by the rush of West Africa. The heat, the smells, the open sewers to be dodged, the quickstep out of the path of oncoming trucks, the hands always reaching for me, to touch my arms and grab my attention for a quick word. How de body? I wan talk small wif you. When I got separated from my group by a few steps, a man grabbed my wrist, and instead of the typical greeting, launched into song. (This is the next moment I was wishing for a camera, set to record.) You are beautiful, white woman, he crooned, and without missing a beat I sang back to him. My husband thinks so too! My marital status seemed to have no bearing on the state of his heart, because he sang right back to me: I don't care; still beautiful!

I extricated myself from that situation, and we made our way to a place commonly known as Fabric Street since all the shops and the little stalls set up in front of the shops and some of the kids walking past with bowls on their heads are selling brightly-coloured fabrics in any pattern imaginable. We browsed for about an hour when we looked up and saw a whole group of white people, a camera crew with fancy equipment and intense looks on their faces. And right there, in the middle of the muddy, dirt road, was Eva Mendes, interviewing a woman selling fabric. The girl from Hitch, on the streets of Freetown. Strike three for camera-less me.

We stood staring for a minute until one of the assistants kindly asked us to move aside. It turns out we're a little too white to be in the background of a movie about Sierra Leone. Eva (we're on a first-name basis by now, I'm pretty sure) was filming for a PBS documentary based on the book Half the Sky, which I don't know much about, but seems to be pretty awesome. It's about women's issues around the world, things like child prostitution and maternal mortality and gender violence, and from what we learned, they're flying around the world with different celebrities, doing interviews in lots of countries and bringing many of these untold stories to light.

At any rate, we got the chance to say hello to her, and it turns out she really is very pretty, totally down to earth, and couldn't have been more excited to hear that we actually had Starbucks coffee on the ship. (Honestly, she almost lunged at me when I said that.) When she found out that we consider these crazy, muddy streets home, she asked about what we do, so we told her a little about Mercy Ships. You want to know what she said?

You guys are freaking rad. Except a different word. But this is a family-friendly blog, so you get the point. Eva Mendes thinks we're all 'freaking' rad, and I couldn't believe I didn't have my camera right then.

The rest of the day went as expected until we were on our way back to the ship. We caught a ride home in a Landrover with some other friends, and were nearly there when, for some unexplainable reason, it just stalled and refused to start again. No one hesitated; all of us girls jumped out and pushed the dang thing a good ways to the HOPE center, where we left it to be sorted out by the transportation guys. I was pretty much past thinking about my stupid decision to leave the camera behind, but did wish I could have shot a video of us ladies heaving on the huge, white vehicle. (Interesting note: it's actually better for guys to push cars not because they're stronger, but because the wideness of women's hips means we can't actually fit so many of us back there. Consider yourself informed.)

This has been set of experiences more deserving than any of the title TIA: This is Africa. So naturally it just ended with Jenn calling me down to D Ward to bring the IPod for an emergency dance party. The sight of a little boy who just lost an eye to cancer dancing his heart out in little stripey socks while another pikin sporting a matching tiger-print gown and tiny black loafers looked on approvingly was just the thing to round out the whole day.

(Sorry I don't have any photos to go with all these words. Did I mention I left my camera behind?)

I am home. I've been searching for another word to use over the past couple of days, but that's the only one that comes remotely close to describing what it felt like to run up the gangway on Monday night.

Africa greeted me in style with a sunset that turned the entire world pink while we rode across the bay from the airport to the harbour where the Africa Mercy is docked. I could see her, a little white smudge, getting bigger and bigger as night fell; when we sailed right past, I could pick out the place where my window would be, dark for just a little while longer, amidst the blaze of lights that welcomed me back.



I've spent the last few days getting my bearings again, remembering all the little quirks that make this place better than anything and relearning how to be a nurse on the wards. It turns out that fourteen months away from the desk and a year more away from actual patient care can make you forget a few things. But I've had patient teachers, and after two days of re-orientation I think I'll be able to handle myself on my own again.

I think I realized I was really back just before handover yesterday. I was headed across B Ward to pray with the rest of the nurses when I looked down and saw a little baby, the sister of one of the patients. She sat on the floor, looked up at me and lifted her chubby arms to me. There was no hesitation. I scooped her into my arms and held her while we prayed, her little curly head nestled into my chest as she drifted in and out of sleep. Her brother stood beside me, one arm wrapped around my leg, leaning his head against me, and my heart was full enough to burst.

People keep asking me if it's strange to be back after so long. The only thing strange about this, I think, is how I managed to survive fourteen months without this place. Without the pikins (children) running wild through the halls, without the songs between shifts, raised to Papa God in strong voices by our translators, without those little fuzzy heads tucked in under my chin right where they belong. Jenn was telling me a story earlier about a patient who was on the wards for something like five months earlier this year. She told me how the little girl's grandma tried to thank the nurses with a song, how she burst into tears and could barely get out the words as she thanked them for changing her granddaughter's life.

We looked at each other, smiling, realizing all over again what this ship means. We call out to the hopeless and speak words of life to the dying. We have front-row seats to some of the most incredible transformations of body and spirit. Standing in the gap in a battle against death and pain and rejection, we have somehow been given the task of holding the line.

This is no small task, but I'm not alone. I'm just one of a ship full of people here in Sierra Leone and hundreds more in offices scattered around the world who are living and breathing this same fight, all of us giving everything we have to see Light come to West Africa.

I am home, and I have no idea how I stayed away so long.

It's just a few minutes before midnight, and I'm sitting on my bed, willing the clock to stop, to speed up, to do anything but march on in its slow, inexorable rhythm. In six minutes it will be tomorrow, and tomorrow is when I go back to my heart's home.

And for the first time, I don't know how I'll do it.

Earlier tonight I sat around the table in our dining room, all the leaves in, stretched to its longest length to accomodate the wealth of family around it. Turned to a friend beside me and confessed. It's never been like this. I don't know what to do.

It's always been one way or another. Sometimes I'm bursting at the seams, so ready to get on a plane that I can hardly spare a thought for those I'm saying goodbye to. And the rest of the times that I've travelled, whether from here going there or from there coming here, I've done so with a heart torn to pieces for the place I'm leaving behind.

This time I'm cut clean in two, and it doesn't seem possible that I'll be able to get on that plane tomorrow and it doesn't seem possible that I'm still sitting here, late at night, alone on my bed.

This has been the most beautiful summer of my life, and I say that with all the pain and uncertainty included. The list of things I no longer take for granted has expanded far past family and friends and a roof over my head, and I am so grateful for the chance I've been given to live my life like this. I'm still in awe every time I pick up a jug of milk, every time I sit down on the floor to play with my nephew, every time I get back up without pain. When he reaches out his hand to lead me off for our next adventure, I can give him mine without wondering whether he'll hurt me. I can finally say that I'm ready to go back to work and not secretly question whether I'll make it through a shift.

I'm ready to go back, but I can't see how I can leave. This all feels so melodramatic, but anyone who's spent time on the ship can relate to the abrupt shift I'm about to undergo. I'm going to trade in the stability and predictability of life in my hometown for a world where friends come and go with every departing flight, where one day is almost never like the next, and where not even the floor is steady beneath my feet. Yet again, I've bought a one-way ticket to Africa, signed up for two more years of this constant whirlwind.

I'd have to be crazy to want this.

I'd have to be crazy not to.

Some succulents, a campfire, and a bee on a flower. These are a few of the pretty things I've seen since coming home from Peru, and they're also the wallpaper choices for October. Only of of these has traditional 'fall' colours in it, so I think I might be clinging to summer a little more than I usually do. (Which is weird, since I've been dying for a few cool days before heading back to Africa.)







So if you're ready for fall, there's some yellow and orange, and if you can't bear to let go of summer, have one last campfire by the lake. It's your desktop.

I'm posting these early, because I'm getting ready to pack and go back to Africa, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to forget this if I don't do it now. Happy almost-October!

(Click the photos to get a full-size version that you can use as your background.)

On Friday I boarded a plane heading south, and after a couple of turbulent flights I landed in Tyler, Texas. It's only a short drive from there to the IOC (International Operations Center), the international base for Mercy Ships. The HoJ has been here for a couple weeks already, getting some training in different systems on the ship that he'll be using when we go back, and since he's also heading straight from here to another training course, I figured it was best to come spend some time with him. (We're still newlywed enough that seven weeks apart is considered a hardship, and besides, I just like the guy!)

The time so far has been spent catching up with friends from around the world. We spent the weekend in Dallas with a group from our DTS in Peru, and it was some much-needed closure on that whole experience to sit down with them and talk about things and hear how the rest of the outreach went without us. Here at the IOC there are more familiar faces, either people I'd met during training here in the past or people I've worked with from the ship who have transitioned to a life on land.

Yesterday I sat in on a conference call with the hospital leaders on the ship, and hearing their voices was the closest thing to homesickness you can feel when you're surrounded by other friends from that very same home. (If that makes any sense.) I spoke with my boss again on the phone later on, called another dear friend on the ship, and have spent basically every moment since then daydreaming about being back there.

I can't explain why I love it so much. Those of you who have been on this journey with me for a while will perhaps feel some inkling of it; I've certainly spoken often enough of my heart for my floating home and the work we do there. For now, I want to share a video made by the communications team over on the ship this year in Sierra Leone. It comes the closest to anything I've seen in somehow transmitting some fraction of the emotion and the love that fills me when I work in the wards there. I first saw it while I was in Peru and the ship was just a distant dream. But I'm going home in just eleven days, and I'll walk those streets and care for those patients and sing alongside them again, clapping my hands that no longer hurt and praising God that I can dance again to the beat of the drums.

Until then, until I have my own stories, I'll leave you with this one. Watch it, and if it doesn't make you want to come join me on this adventure I'll be more than a little surprised.

It turns out that when you're home for an entire summer with nothing to do but rest and get over a nasty case of dengue-induced viral arthritis, you get a little crafty. At least I do. Did. Whatever.

My cousin Rae (who's really more like a sister than a cousin, if we're being honest here) is having her second kiddo in just a couple weeks here. If she (the baby, that is; my cousin doesn't have a lot of say in the matter) cooperates, I'm going to get to be there when the big event happens, and to celebrate the imminent event, I decided to throw a party for Rae.

This is the point at which I made a near-fatal error: I went on the internet looking for ideas.

Don't get me wrong; I love the internet. I more specifically love Pinterest, and so I hopped on there and typed baby girl shower into the search bar.

That, my friends, was the beginning of the end.

Over the following days (it could have been weeks; time is blurred together at this point) I scrolled through countless photos of pink, frilly decorations and scrumptious-looking treats and silly games until I had put together all the best bits. I've been slightly obsessed with this party for the last couple of weeks, always coming up with new ideas and more details and different foods to prepare. The last few days have seen me in the kitchen, apron firmly tied, preparing treats from morning 'til night. (This, in and of itself, is a testament to how much better I am health-wise; my ankles hurt by the end of it, but my hands are feeling great!)

And today we partied. We ate until we were stuffed and crafted until we were tired. It was a sweet time with some amazing women, and we made the most of it together. Would you like to see some photos? Of course you would!

Let's start with the treats, shall we? Clockwise from the top left: A shot of the cake (more on that later); rainbow fruit skewers; sparkling white sangria with raspberries, kiwi fruit and peaches; the drink cart (including pink lemonade, of course) and the treat table with lots of other delicious things; grilled brie with thyme-infused honey and fresh figs. That last one? To. die. for. If you ask nicely I'll send you the full-size photo. As long as you're willing to drool. You have been forewarned.



Moving on to the cake! I saw this cake on someone's blog and knew it was the one. I made cupcakes, too, so I just made skinny little layers, four of them, each in a different shade of pink. The little birdies are made of fondant, and their friends were sitting on the cupcakes. I love rainbow cakes, and this monochromatic one was just beautiful. Mine didn't turn out nearly as beautiful as the one I saw on the blog (an unfortunate effect of some sticky pans), but I think it was quite good for a first attempt. (Also, you're allowed to hate Rae; she's due in less than three weeks and she really does look that incredible.)



Here's one of my favourite bits about the shower. Although we weren't giving gifts (other than the onesies we each decorated, but we're getting to that), we decided to bless Rae with some diapers. And rather than just handing her the boring old packs, we broke out the markers and decorated them with pictures and jokes and little words of wisdom for the coming months. Some of my favourites: Let the potty-training begin! Since I probably won't remember to tell you this when I can talk, thanks for keeping me clean and dry, and of course the ever-popular, This one's for daddy!



I also made some 'wish cards' for the baby. Each guest got one and filled it out with wishes for Angelina to read when she gets older. I get a little choked up just thinking about how special this will be for her someday, to know that we all gathered together to love her and pray for her before she was even born. There are even a few extras that are going to go out to family members who weren't able to be here today.



In spite of all the treat-eating and diaper-drawing and wish-writing, we spent a good amount of the time decorating onesies. And let me tell you something, folks - this was one creative bunch!



(That one with the flowers was made by my friend Heather, and I'm considering giving her one of my own t-shirts to work on.)

And now, I present, for your viewing pleasure, the finished products.



Now all we need is for little Angelina to show her face; her wardrobe is all ready! Stay tuned, because if the timing is right with a trip to Texas I'm about to take, I'm hoping to have some beautiful photos from her birth to share with you in a couple of weeks.

Moral of the story: Go on Pinterest if you want to throw a super-fun party. Just stay away if you have any other commitments for the two weeks prior to that party. Because you're going to find a lot of ideas, and you're going to want to do them all!

Remember this one?



Well, she's growing up. And I love her. And I'm starting to feel okay about the fact that I have arthritis, because it means that I have gotten to see her more than once within the same year.



It's one of the quirks about living overseas, this not-seeing the people you love the most nearly as often as you'd like. It's not fun reaching for your niece and having her cry because she's scared of you, because she doesn't know who you are. Nano and Nana have a clear advantage over Auntie Ali and Uncle Phil on this one; they've got video chat and iphones with face time, and so Mya and Abi see them often enough to know them. I have to work for it, every single time.

And it's not a big deal, really; I have yet to meet a baby I can't win over. It's just a reminder, every time, of the fact that we have indeed given something up in order to live this life. Which just means that I need to hold them a little tighter during the times we do get to spend together.

I can live with that.

These are a day late, due to the fact that I dropped the dear HoJ off at the airport yesterday morning at the awful hour of five. In the morning, people. Is that even legal? Which then meant that I had to get myself back to bed until eleven. (I only admit that given the fact that I am still recovering from a tropical disease. That's why I sleep so much. Please don't think I'm lazy.) And when I woke up, it turned out I was heading into the city to hang out with a good friend (more on that later), and by the time I got home it was most definitely time to sleep again.

With no further apology, a few calendars to grace your desktop for September.







It's all things I love to mark the season I love best. St. Patrick's at night, bokeh shaped like things and texture on walls in the third world. As always, click on the photo to get to the larger version.

Happy Septembering, everyone. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head back to Canada to see a couple of the cutest nieces in the world.

Well, it's been a while since I last posted, but the time hasn't all been uneventful. The HoJ and I took a road trip across eastern Canada, covering exactly 3,600 miles and seeing all of our family members there except for one. (This is no small feat, when you take into account the face that I have cousins living as far away as New Zealand!) We got to meet a new baby (who you've also already met here in photos), caught frogs with some dear friends, crashed a couple beautiful weddings, camped for a few nights (the photo of the orange cake in tin foil is, bar none, the best campfire dessert recipe I know) and spent some much-needed time catching up before heading back to the ship for the next phase of our adventure.













We've also managed to live through a much-hyped hurricane, and although it wasn't nearly as bad as they seemed to think it would be, I am typing this to you from a friend's house since ours lost power somewhere around three this morning. The official word is not to expect it back on until the fourth of September, so we're probably going to hang out here a lot. In fact, we've moved the contents of our fridge over here, so if we want to eat anything we don't really have any other choice. We ventured out this morning to take a few photos of the damage, even managing to run along the median of a normally crazy-busy highway for a while until a nice cop came onto his loudspeaker. You folks want to get off that median now? When we promptly obeyed he struck up a conversation, just as loquacious as everyone else on the streets today.













Something comes over people when the power goes out, when there's a common enemy for us to rail against. We have entire conversations with strangers we wouldn't normally make eye contact with. We do favours for people without thinking twice about it. We come out of our houses, congregating on street corners and in parking lots, shaking our heads at fallen trees and making contact with other people for the first time in ages.

Today, wandering around amidst the debris, I felt at home here in the same way I do in West Africa. Just for a few hours we managed to remember that we are neighbours, that there are other people in the world besides the ones within our own walls. We felt the responsibility that we all have for one another, an allegiance so often swallowed up in the more mundane duties that make up our lives.

It made me long for my other home, the one on the other side of the ocean where sunsets and palm trees and little brown hands slipped into mine wait for me. The home where community means everything and personal space nothing, where sharing with those in need comes as easy as breathing.

Soon, now.