Alison & Joanna....waiting to show off her knitting 
The girls, after community meeting
An essentially unrelated picture I found on my computer of Massa, Edwin, and Vivienne, but aren't they cute???
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It seems that as of late, a wide variety of skills that I have acquired throughout my life have been coming in handy for me here on the Africa Mercy. It started with an influx of patients from Guinea, a predominantly French-speaking country, over the past couple of weeks. As challenging as Liberian-English can be for us Westerners to speak and understand, I have become more and more appreciative that we aren’t in a country that speaks a completely different language. That being said, if there was a language that I could pretend to be fluent in, other than English, it would be French. At least it used to be. I think I remember something about one being considered officially bilingual if one was to take French until the end of highschool. Which, I did. Sort of to appease Mama Sue. Sort of because I thought it might be useful at some point later in life. I probably had no idea that I would ever end up working as a nurse on a hospital ship serving West Africans who speak a diverse myriad of languages and adaptations of languages. I also failed to consider that language is definitely one of those “if you don’t use it, you lose it” kinds of things.The Americans and Africans all share the same misconception that all Canadians are fluent in French. Thus, I was nominated to explain to the Guinean patient in bed 17 that I was going to remove the small small stitches from his inflamed cleft lip. Overconfidently, I approached the situation with enthusiasm. Here is how the conversation went:
Me: “Bonjour”
Patient: Head nod
Me: “Comment sa va?”
Patient: Slight head nod (the African equivalent of whole-hearted agreement, approval, or confirmation)
Me (clueless nurse): “Je……” long pause…...awkward facial expression indicating that I had absolutely no idea how to proceed with the statement or conversation.
Seriously. Thirteen years of French education and I had not a clue. To make me feel even more competent, one of our Head & Neck surgeons, Dr.Mark who did a fellowship in Canada last year entered the scenario a few moments later had a completely coherent, fluent conversation with the patient. He told me he grew up speaking French. So did I. I wonder what it would feel like to remember the things I learned in school.
So, in hindsight having stellar French skills in my back pocket really did me no favours. However, my extensive career as a camp counselor actually did prove useful this week. Many of our patients are here for a couple of weeks. Some even months. The hospital is on the third deck of the ship, where there are no windows. (Side note: The windowless deck three is also the location of my six-berth cabin….say a little prayer for me). We do our best to entertain the patients and whenever possible, we take them up and outside for a brief break everyday. But, realistically, these days, it is a challenge. With fewer and fewer nurses (Another side note: pray that some more nurses get inspired to come hang out and play with us here in Africa), the patient loads are increasing, and we don’t always have the chance to entertain or take our patients outside. So they end up being quite bored. Which is fine for about a week. But after that, I think a person goes crazy in a windowless, 20-patient ward. So, this week, we have been on mission to raise money to buy supplies for the patients to do crafts.
I think the term “crafts” is funny. At camp, nobody wants to do crafts. It is the sucky activity. Who wants to play with sparkles and glue when there is a lake and a high ropes course and sports? But in the wards of the Africa Mercy, the crafts are a hit. And, our goal is that, if we can teach the patients a skill here that they can use and make bags, knitting, jewelery, etc, it can potentially be a source of income when they go home. I understand that this may sound ridiculous to everyone at home, but it really is a different world here. These are people who lived through a fourteen-year civil war. Most people didn’t have childhoods. One of the most bizarre and humbling experiences here is to watch a 25-year-old man enthusiastically colour a children’s colouring page with crayons. It is bizarre because they didn’t do it when they were children. They were fighting a war. They had been captured by rebels. Or they were hiding from rebels. Or searching for missing members of their families. Therefore, doing crafts is novel. And lovely.
This week, I taught Gaye, a 21-year-old man whose story would break your heart, how to make friendship bracelets. The kind I used to make when I was ten, with my friends. At the time, I was really good. I laughed when I was recalling with the patients that it had been fifteen years since I had had the opportunity to make use of my friendship-bracelet-making skills. I taught Blessing how to make pom-poms. I tried my hardest to remember how to make gymp bracelets but apparently that one has eluded me. I think that is what makes it hard on my heart. I can barely remember how to do these things, because it has been so many years since I would let my mind be consumed with such menial tasks as making a bracelet out of thread or making a hand bag out of scraps of fabric. Yet, the group of patients we have on the ward are unfailingly enthusiastic about learning such “skills”. Things that at home, we would designate as ineffective or juvenile pastimes. But, when you didn’t have a childhood, you didn’t get to experience the simple joy that comes from producing something lovely. I am so glad that some things I learned as a child were still tucked somewhere in the back of my brain. And I am glad that the patients on the ward this week helped me remember how simple joy can be.
