leaving

I'm coming home. In less than an hour, I leave for the airport. Twenty-four after that, and I'll land in Toronto where my family will be waiting for me.

There is no way that this is real.

I was awake before six this morning, lying in my bed and feeling the barely-perceptible rock of the ship begin to summon the day’s familiar nausea. The tone of the overhead announcement sounded and I tensed, not quite able to shed the past year’s duties as an EMT even though I’m off the team until I come back for Benin. For those on deck, please no flash photography. It came back with a rush, then. The captain’s announcement at last night’s meeting that the pilot would be coming on board promptly at 0600 to guide us to a berth. Going to sleep feeling for all the world like I was five again and it was the night before my family started the five hundred mile drive to Toronto before the sun had risen.

I shrugged into my clothes and stepped out into the cool, damp air to be greeted not by the familiar wind and darkness, but by a fairyland of lights. I blinked, but they stayed lit, shining through the night to guide us into port. The ship began its slow crawl towards the dock, the lights beginning to distinguish themselves as houses and Christmas trees and street lamps. I saw a man standing on the end of the dock, illuminated by the headlights of his car. He stood straight-backed, a trumpet in his hands, and as we threw out the mooring lines the simple, clear notes of Away in a Manger floated back across the water to where we stood at the rail.

I had to swallow hard just then and make some offhand comment about how insane it was to actually be able to see my breath or else the whole ship would have seen me break down right there on deck seven. Because it finally hit me; I just realized that we actually left Liberia.

It seems insane, after a week of sailing away from West Africa, that I can only just now comprehend the fact that we left. I kept staring at those lights, brighter than all of Liberia, and all I wanted was to see the dim outline of the Ducor on top of the hill. And now that day has come and the mountains are draped in shadows and sun and all around me civilization grinds unceasingly on, all I want is our wide-open port, dotted with canoes and sunken ships.

It’s dinner-time, and I have yet to step foot outside the ship. Granted, that’s partly because I’m on duty and carrying the pager limits me to a pretty small radius, but the truth is that I’m scared. I’m scared that stepping onto Spanish soil will finally mean that I’m not in Africa anymore, that I’ve left Liberia forever, and I’m just not ready to do that.

I’m hiding behind the steel hull of my ship, because the longer I stay here, the longer I can pretend that I’ll look out the portholes and see my beloved third world.

Why is this so hard?

I'm sorry for the long silence. Truth is, I'm in a weird place right now. I've been sicker than I really realized over the past few weeks, and I'm just now coming out of the fog enough to realize how much has passed me by. Maybe it'll be better once I'm well and not so worn out, but I'm overwhelmed by the sense that things are just unfinished here.

I mean, they're not really unfinished. There's nothing left to do; the wards are closed. The last patients went home on Friday, Eddie and Kwelywoh to the MSF hospital for further care. Dr. Gary reported to me today that Kwelywoh's CSF drain is working well and that the swelling between his eyes is gone; he might not need any further surgery. Back on the ship, the hospital is silent and mostly dark, wards piled with mattresses and bed frames and supply carts all lashed together and tied down to bolts in the floor, ready for the sail.

But I missed all that. I wasn't there to kiss Eddie's little face before he headed out the door, and I wasn't there to feel the gentle weight of Kwelywoh's body as he leaned up against my legs, beaming up at me in one last search for stickers. I couldn't even help with the cleaning and packing up, since the thought of dust and chemical fumes was enough to send my lungs into a full-scale revolt against the rest of my body.

There were parties, celebrations for all the translators and disciplers and the myriad other dayworkers who have served alongside us during this outreach. The ship was full of friends, dressed in their finest, and I couldn't find the energy to greet them all, or to say my farewells. They've all left now, gone back to their homes for the last time and I didn't get a chance to tell them I loved them.

I'm sad and I'm frustrated and it kind of feels like I got cheated. I've been here since the beginning. I made it through screening day, I helped open up the wards and welcomed the very first patients. I cared for three of the little boys who went to Jesus over the past months. I have seen so many patients come back for multiple surgeries, greeting me like an old friend as they're re-admitted.

And now, now that it's all over and done with, I feel like I missed the end, and that's not good. I'm not sure how to leave this country when it feels like my chance to say goodbye passed me somewhere last week while I slept through yet another day. I hate feeling like this, but I'm not sure I have the chance to change it; we sail before Sunday.

I just wish it didn't all seem so unfinished.

Remember ten years ago, when that song Closing Time came out? If you're close to my age, you probably had it recorded faithfully on at least three different mix tapes. It ran through my head almost constantly today as we power-cleaned the now-empty A Ward.

Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world.
Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here.
Closing time, time for you to go out to the places you will be from.
Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Three weeks from today I will walk down the gangway and into a Mercy Ships car. We'll be in Tenerife by then, so we'll drive on pothole-free roads to the airport where I'll get on a plane and I'll fly home. And just like that, Liberia will be nothing but a memory, forty-five hundred miles away from the family I'll be winging my way towards.

I can't wait to see them. I don't want to leave. Bring on the paradox. (Which, I'm realizing, is exactly what I typed the night before I left home in February. Oh, how my paradigm has shifted.)

I'm probably going to beat this feeling to death over the next few weeks, but this leaving is so bittersweet. I know I'll be coming back for Benin, so when I disembark it'll be with the assurance that it's not forever. But when the ship sails from Liberia, I don't know if I'll ever return, and I don't know how to come to terms with that. I love so much about this country.

I can't stay here. I have to go out from this place and back into the world, and I'm scared.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

When I left New Jersey to come to Monrovia, I thought this year was going to feel like forever. I remember the months stretching out in front of me, seemingly endless days and weeks and hours to be lived through before I would see my family again. But now, with less than forty days before I land in Toronto, I'm wondering how it's all slipped through my fingers. I feel like such a cliche, but I can't help wondering where the time went.

It's almost not real. I remember how it felt every single June when I was growing up. The spring rains would taper off as the weather got warmer, and everyone started looking forward to packing up and closing school for the summer. It's been the same way around here. The lake-sized potholes in the roads are starting to dry out as the rains become less frequent, and the sun is getting so strong that it's hard to venture out between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon without roasting to a delicate shade of pink almost immediately. (The latter, however, is not such a bad thing; I'm thinking that coming home in the middle of winter without a tan is not going to be the best way to convince people that I actually just spent a year in Africa.)

The thing that's just bizarre is that we are actually packing up and getting ready to go. Nurses are leaving left and right; three of my four roommates will be flying home next weekend, and the fourth leaves me the weekend after that. And after ten months of pouring our souls into these people, we're just going to untie from the dock and sail out of the harbor; I'll most likely never see most them again. They are people I have spent countless hours nursing back to health, and so many of them are people I consider friends.

I don't know. I'm just not sure what I should be thinking or feeling right now. Part of me is content in a job well done, looking back over so many successful surgeries. Another part is frustrated at the overwhelming need that still remains, the countless time we had to say no. The rest of me just wants to plant my roots right here and wave at the ship as it pulls away from the dock.

How am I going to do this again next year? It's a whole new country full of stories I've never heard, spoken in a language I have yet to learn. I'm afraid that I'll have been drained too dry here in Liberia, that I won't have anything left for Benin.

Pour out your soul, He reminds me. Don't ask where it's coming from or whether it will be enough. Just pour it out. That's all I want from you.

Deep breath. I can do this. I can find the courage to leave. And I have a feeling that it's that same strength that will bring me back.

Living in constant community with some four hundred people has its advantages. I end up doing things like throwing nearly-silent parties at midnight, whispering the words to the birthday song so as not to wake up the girls one paper-thin wall away in the next cabin. Or sitting together with friends at breakfast talking about anything from lab reports to harebrained schemes for cross-country travel. Or feeling unwell, heading to bed and having someone stop me in the hall and pray for me right then and there.

But community living can get tiring at times. It's nice to know that walking out of my cabin and into the midships lounge means that I'm going to find someone to hang out with at pretty much any hour of the day. But the reverse is also true; walking out of my cabin and into the midships lounge means that I'm not going to be alone. We live on this ship, five hundred feet of four, six, ten-berth cabins, and we are never alone. The only escape is to get off the ship, which plunges me into the whirling cacophony of Monrovia. It can hardly be considered alone time when every eye is fixed on me as I walk down the street with my equally-white companions to calls of White girl! You fine! Marry me! You guys are princesses! Give me your number! (Exclamation points being absolutely essential to this particular style of communication.) And we can never be alone; it's just not safe. So Mercy Shippers go out in droves. Landrovers packed to bursting with eager, pale people who just want to get away from the wireless internet and air conditioning, if only for a few hours.

This is all starting to get to me, especially since The Exodus has begun. No, we're not clawing our way out of Egypt, but it seems like everyone on the ship is packing up and boarding planes for home. Between the end of April and the middle of June, almost everyone who I was friends with when I first got here will have gone back to their lives in the real world (if such a thing even exists anymore). Goodbyes consist of long group hugs on the dock and huge packs of people going out to eat food; there is no such thing as solitude.

To that end, Liz and I went on a date yesterday. Just the two of us. In a taxi. Nary a Landrover in sight. We stopped at the end of Broad Street and made our way up the hill through the cool green shade of mango trees to the Ducor Hotel. We climbed the seven or so flights of stairs and then the ladder all the way to the roof. We sat on the edge, feet dangling over stories and stories of air, shared our hearts and felt like we owned the world. We played with monkeys and ate dinner on a balcony overlooking the ocean. It was refreshing in so many ways. Liz has become a close friend in less time than I had thought possible. Perhaps it's a function of living in such close quarters and seeing each other all the time, or maybe it's just true that we actually are sisters separated at birth, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to say goodbye to her on Sunday. She's the kind of person who will drop everything for a two-man dance party at any given moment, whether we're on the ward at two in the morning or on the remnants of a dance floor on top of a ruined hotel with no music anywhere in earshot. She's the one I can go to on a bad day and know that I'll get sympathy and a cup of tea. And she's become the one to encourage me in my walk, reminding me often that God has big plans for the both of us, but that His timing isn't necessarily what we might think and that it's okay for next year to be a wide-open question mark.

Meg (my PICU buddy from Philly) says that Mercy Ships should maybe advertise about The Third H. We talk all the time, eyes shining, about hope and healing; it's what we do here. But no one mentions the heartache. Whether it's a patient's story of years of sadness and pain or the constant leaving of new friends, this place is hard on the heart. Some say the only way to combat it is to find your group of long-term friends and huddle over by the windows in the dining room, staunchly refusing to meet new people because it just hurts. too. much. to say goodbye again when they inevitably leave. There's much to be said for that method. For crying out loud, at home I'm still friends with the same people I've known since grade one. Creature of habit extraordinaire.

But if I do that, if I refuse to check the new arrivals list and I sit behind the glass at lunch, I'll miss out on all-night talks on the beach and extra plates of popcorn and so much dancing. And that's just not an option. Because I like popcorn.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. (C. S. Lewis)

I woke up today with the feeling that it was something really momentous. A day I never honestly thought would come. It seemed to lend itself to overstatement: My Last Day Before Africa (or something equally self-indulgent and capitalized). And yet I spent it doing the most commonplace things. I went to the bank and signed some papers. I visited Marco and Jonah and got to marvel at the fact that they are not, in fact, babies anymore. I went to Target with my cousin, had dinner with my family and watched American Idol while drinking tea and eating Dunkers with my sister.

I said goodbye. To everyone and anyone I came across. Yes, lady at the bank, I'm leaving tomorrow. Yup. I'll see you in a year. Cousins? It's been real. Until next year. Sister? Couldn't quite manage that, so I'll get up tomorrow before she leaves for work.

I just got off the phone with a friend after saying yet another farewell and collapsed into tears. Call me a girl, call it hormones, call it normal, but I can't shake the feeling that it's weird for me to be this upset. I've always known that I'm supposed to be a nurse in Africa. This is, in effect, the culmination of all my schooling and all my life up until this point. I feel like I should be ecstatic, excited out of my mind. And yet I'm fighting the urge to quietly unpack my bag and stay curled up tight in my bed until long after the plane has flown tomorrow.


And then, of course, I just happened to look over at the corner where my things are stowed, and my eye was caught by a flash of purple and yellow. You can just barely see the rattle in the picture here, to the right of the baby. It was the favourite toy of my favourite baby at work. He was a little African monkey of a boy, left alone most of the time by parents who didn't know how to face having two babies- one perfect and the other so broken. I loved him with all my heart, and when he went to be with Jesus, the rattle was buried with him (placed there by an unknowing funeral director who had the good sense to think it was the most natural thing in the world that he had picked out that very one from a vast pile of toys). When I first met Jennifer, the mother of the twins I visited today, we bonded easily over shared stories of ICUs and love of babies. It wasn't until she pulled out that same stupid fish rattle, explaining that it was a hands-down favourite of her own boys, that I knew we were kindred spirits. She said she had no idea where it had come from. It had just appeared in Jonah's pod one day and the nurses said they could keep it.

Today, as I was leaving her house, she disappeared for a moment, reappearing with eyes that glistened suspiciously (through my own tears, though, it was hard to be sure). She held out the rattle to me, a little worn and wobbly now, adorned with a few bite marks. "Jonah and I had a talk and we think you should take this to Africa with you. Share it with lots of babies or give it to one. Whatever needs to be done."

And, once again, just like that, things make sense. I've been scared because all of this is so much bigger than me, when it should be just the opposite. Despite the fact that I see this as all so huge and momentous and flat-out scary, I should be jumping at the chance, because God has been showing me all along how He has been preparing me for just this task. I want to save the world and I'm awed by the size of that challenge. I forget that God's not calling me to the whole world. He's calling me to Liberia, to one ship in one port. He's asking me to take my fishy rattle and trust that He will show me the one baby in the whole world who needs it. Strange thought, perhaps. But on this eve of departure, I'm finding it oddly comforting.