I was excited about my birthday this year. Something about being so close to 30 makes me feel like I have almost, maybe, come to verge of “arriving”. Arriving to true adulthood or maturity or something. When you are 23 and you present your wild and crazy ideas to the world, people smile sympathetically, pat you on your head, and tell you that it is simply your naivety that makes you think the way you do. But when you tell someone you are 30, they are suddenly a little less justified in assuming that “life” will eventually jade your rose coloured glasses. I am not for a second suggesting that I know all there is to know or have seen even a fraction of all there is to see in my 29 years on this earth – but it is nice to be given a little bit of the credit that living life grants you.

Back to the point – I was ready to turn 29.

And thanks to a small rock on a particularly long runway at Banjul International Airport, I rang in the beginning of my 30^th year of life with an experience that I can now add to my list of ways I have lived.

So, it all started with a bird. Or what we thought was a bird and turned out to be a rock. We had stopped in Banjul – capital city of the Gambia – to drop off about half of our flightmates and would have been carrying on and arriving in Freetown, Sierra Leone, approximately an hour later.

Except that we never took off. The plane sped down the runway and just as we would have been about to take off …

“THUNK” ….. followed by a smooth deceleration….. followed by a screeching stop (when the runway, which ironically and thankfully is significantly longer than the average runway, ended).

The captain came on the overhead to announce that a bird had flown into the engine and we would have to taxi back to the airport to check the plane and make sure it was safe to fly.

At which point, I decided that I wasn’t going to see the Africa Mercy any time soon. Because you see folks, this was not my first time in West Africa. Within a few minutes, a crowd of people had gathered around the plane – some of whom appeared official with uniforms or fluorescent vests; others of whom seemed to just have shown up because there seemed to be some commotion. Some people started crawling inside the engine. One dude shone his pen light into the cavity in an apparent effort to help identify the problem. Cameras were out and everyone seemed to have an opinion about what was wrong and how to fix it. Our stewardess even ended up out there having a look. Just didn’t seem like an effective recipe for “airplane repair following bird damage”.

To no surprise, three hours later, after having checked in to a lovely Gambian hotel courtesy of Brussels Airlines, I was sitting down to my first African dinner in over a year with all 150 of my flight 0225 mates, under a blanket of palm trees, minilights, and stars.

And two days later, I turned 29 and found myself still stranded in the Gambia – which turned out to be about the loveliest place on earth to be stranded on one’s birthday. Between pina colodas, a trip to a treetop café, a cherrycheesecake – esque dessert that the hotel chef made for me (which ironically tasted terribly, considering how beautiful it was) , and pretty much lying by the pool for the entire day…..I really couldn’t have asked for anything more.

That, plus the fact that after traveling the entire next night, I finally did arrive, safely and soundly on the ship, made me a fairly happy, legitimate almost 30-year-old.

It's happening again.

Last weekend, it all sort of clicked in my head. It's time to start getting excited again. It's time to start feeling the things again that only Africa can stir up in me. It's time to start thinking about the things that, despite having experienced before, I know I can't truly prepare for.

It's happening in my head and the excitement is quickly working it's way towards my heart. As desperately as I try to avoid romanticizing the whole thing, I can't help but find life a little bit sweeter, just knowing I get to spend the next 4 months on a floating white hospital.

I don't have my plane ticket. My apartment looks like it has been attacked by a group of college kids. I still don't know what to do with my car when I go. I work about 452hrs/week up until the day I leave. Never in my life have I felt so strikingly aware of my personal flaws & weaknesses. My to-do list is rubbish.

And yet, I have never been more ready. Because I think I finally get that we are never really "prepared" for these things, the way we think we should be. I might find the time to clean and organize my room. I might make and cross off every item on a highly structured list. I might finally take the time to figure out how to overcome the things in my life that hold me back. I might even figure out a sleep routine amidst flipping back and forth between day & night shifts and actually land on the other side of the world not already jet-lagged. The funny thing is that these things always come together.

Despite it all, I feel prepared. I think that preparation really has very little to do with lists and finances and plans. The reality is, I am ready to be used for the purpose my maker designed me for. Ready, once again, to learn and to teach, to laugh and to cry, to be challenged and broken and to fail and succeed - in a place where I know my heart beats a little bit stronger.

The other day a friend, who had recently left our floating home sent me an instant message asking how ship life was going for me. The tricky thing about instant messaging is that it forces you to summarize oceans of emotions together into brief, cohesive sentences. I had no problem.

“You know…..the same….amazingly wonderful and horribly challenging all at the same time”

It’s just how it is. The wonderful side tips the scales, obviously. I can think of nothing that I would rather be doing than living this life, doing what I am doing. It is overwhelmingly rewarding and downright incredible to spend the better part of all of my wakeful hours contributing to something in which I believe so strongly.

But, the challenge part of it all is just as existent, and I am beginning to think, just as important as the rest of it.

We are taught from such a young age that through trial, strength is developed. The preacher at church last Sunday morning reminded us that “…when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:2-3). His words came as an insightful conclusion to a challenging, yet entertaining morning. Rainy season has arrived in Togo. When we woke up and saw the massive amounts of water streaming from the sky with intense determination, we briefly considered bailing on our plans to go to church. But that would have meant we missed the important part – the part where our group, plus about 25 of the members of the congregation bailed a foot of water out of the church, so that church could happen. As I looked around at the group, in probably what is their only set of church clothes, soaked head to toe, using buckets and serving bowls and towels to defend their church home from water damage, I couldn’t help but be touched by the devotion and determination displayed.

When you care about something, you work for it….sacrifice for it….put your heart into it. And if you have to work, sacrifice, and put your heart into something, you can’t help but end up caring deeply about it.

Our approach to adversity is peculiar really: despite the fact that it is entirely inevitable and most often, completely out of our control, we dread its presence. And because we are in the habit of convincing ourselves to believe in a standard of utopia, we feel slighted when it shows its unfortunate face. The thing is - there is not a single one among us who has been promised a life free of trouble. The Bible doesn’t say if you face troubles, but when.

As I reflect on these last couple of months, I wonder what has changed me the most…where I learned the most….what will stick with me and define who I become. O’brien, Aissa, Tani, Abel, O’brien’s mama, fat baby Marius, bartering for hours with vendors in markets, being squished in taxis with seven others, working in areas that aren’t my comfort zone, having to make “bunk beds” in the wards to fit all the patients in, eating foods that I didn’t think I would like, trying and failing at walking across Togo, failing miserably at communicating in French – small trials that forced me to grow and learning from people who have encountered much greater trials than I have yet to face.

As much as the anticipation of adversity can be overwhelming, I would argue that we are completely dependant on it. A life of perfection on this earth is, at best, a falsehood. Trials will come. They will hurt. They might leave scars. But they will make us people of substance who are intensely purpose-driven in their passions.

Two years ago, Africa changed me. It changed the way I thought about what it means to be human. Perhaps at the time, I thought the change was like a one-time graduation from naivety to enlightenment. It seems however, that as so many before me have cautioned, learning really is a never-ending journey.

These last couple of weeks, one of our patients - an absolutely delightful little girl named Tani - has completely changed the way I think about beauty.

Physical beauty is one of those forces whose power over us we hate to admit. When you stop and think about it, basing our opinions of one another on a somewhat arbitrary criterion such as beauty seems not only superficial, but also simplistic and downright cruel. However, the unfortunate reality is that it does have a very significant impact on our interpersonal relations. We are innately attracted to beauty. It’s one of the reasons we do what we do here on the Africa Mercy….Because eliminating a feature that is grossly deforming means that a person can go from living a life of disgrace to living a life of acceptance.

Tani came to stay with us around the same time as Aissa was on the ward. I distinctly remember my first day with her. I came on for my charge shift and one of the first things Ali said to me was “Check out bed 8. She’s beautiful. You’re gonna love her!”

I turned my attention to the new little girl in bed 8. Tani didn’t look beautiful to me. Having been in West Africa for a little while now, and seeing what I hope are some of the most disfiguring cases out there, I credit myself with having some degree of tolerance for the worst of it. I would like to think it takes a lot to shock me at this point. But, Tani did.

Though nobody really knows the story of when or how, at some point in her 9-years of life, Tani’s face was burned off. She was left with bits of a mouth, and one eye. Though most of her little body was spared, one of her hands, which she probably used to catch herself when she fell into the fire, was left mangled. To be completely brutal, at first glance, Tani was hard to look at.

Until my experiences with this little one, I don’t know if I ever truly believed that beauty comes from within. It always sounded nice, and makes us all feel better about our imperfections, but then again, we make stuff up all the time to make ourselves feel better. But, Tani made it real for me, because my friend was right. Within 5 minutes of encountering Tani, I absolutely loved her. I like kids, as a rule, but Tani has a special quality within her that is unmatched. She makes it absolutely impossible to see anything but her inner beauty. Every day I spend with Tani, she grows more and more radiant. Her loving, joyful spirit can almost not be contained within her tiny little body.

Looking at her, you would expect that she would repulse others, but Tani cannot help but do exactly the opposite. Her presence is actually magnetic on the ship. Our head chef came up from the ward last night and announced:

“I just spent 10 minutes playing with Tani. It changed my life.”

It probably did. And it defies everything I used to think about beauty. Because Tani has a beauty that is legitimate, undeniable, and worth so much more than I could have ever realized without her.

In order for a weekend trip away from the ship to truly qualify as typical, there are several criteria that must be met. They are as follows*:

• Just minutes after your departure, the driver will need to stop at the station, where you will have to...

a) Renegotiate the fare (which will have inevitably gone up from what you originally agreed upon)

b) Pick up a wingman

c) Sit around in the vehicle with all the doors open while the driver and the wingman exchange pleasantries with everyone else at the station.

d) Get gas – which, as a side note, cannot be done in combination with any of the above tasks.

• You will begin the trip in a mildly uncomfortable seat, sitting relatively close to one of your friends, with some degree of leg / breathing room. You will conclude the road trip sitting on someone’s lap (in the most ideal scenario, this someone is a wet stranger that you picked up along the road), unable to feel your legs, and with your arms either directly out in front of you, straight up in the air, or wrapped around one of your other twenty travel-mates.

• Numerous times along the way, the driver will pull over to the side of the road. The wingman will hop out of his seat (which is always conveniently located next to the one sliding door) and disappear under the vehicle for about 20 seconds with a bottle of discoloured water. Immediately after he resurfaces, the vehicle starts in motion and he hops back in. Nobody has ever been able to come up with an explanation for this one.

• When you arrive at the hotel, the first staff member you encounter at the desk will respond to your attempts to explain who you are with complete bewilderment. After a couple of confused minutes, someone else (usually of higher power) emerges and provides you with some reassurance that you did, in fact, make reservations. These reservations will most likely not resemble what you intended them to, but they do usually exist.

• You will then carry on to have a fantastically entertaining, re-energizing weekend with your friends in a setting that makes you consider throwing it all away and living in the jungle, under a waterfall for the rest of your life.

Thankfully for us this weekend, every single one of these criteria was met. Although it is always nice when things play by the rules, it was of particular importance this weekend, since Ali’s parents are on the ship right now, and she was committed to giving them a truly African experience. We had an incredible weekend marketing, swimming, eating, hiking, and playing in the waterfall. And, it truly did represent all of the things we love about Africa. TIA baby!

*this list is not exhaustive.