Arrival

Dear Friends,

I hope you are all well! I'm so sorry for not updating or sending out much word about arriving here in Africa, or what life is like in Africa. It seems like just a second has passed since I was in the states, freaked out about whether or not I would ever board my first plane for JFK airport that would finally take me to my destination: Niger. Time has flown by, and the time that felt like a few seconds has almost been a week, packed to the extreme with truly incredible, incredible occurrences. To try and describe everything that has happened in me and around me would be pretty impossible, so I am going to try and hit the high points of the trip so far. 

     I left Atlanta on Thursday the ninth and began a very long trip. I flew to JFK airport in New York, and then to Casablanca. Flying to Casablanca was altogether an 8-hour affair, elongated even more by a three-hour wait on the runway (almost wrote funway ha!) before take-off. With around a total of 7 hours of sleep from the past two nights combined, I was a little tired. Thankfully, my eleven-hour layover in Morocco was really a rest and delight. I had the pleasure of meeting some undercover missionaries that were working in Casablanca, and got to hear from them firsthand about the persecution the Church is facing there, and the difficulty of living in a strictly Muslim and highly Arabic culture. I had planned on going to see the second largest mosque in the world with these missionaries, but ended up asleep on their couch for about 6 hours. The missionaries in Morocco were truly wonderful, and I am so thankful for their kindness and hospitality. 

      After this I got on a plane that flew to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and then finally Niamey, Niger. I ended up getting to the place I was to stay at in Niamey around 5 in the morning and ended up sleeping in until 3 in the afternoon of that day. My hosts the Browns, were old missionary friends from back when my family was in Niger, and it was a treat to get to spend time with them. I had the chance to re-visit some very familiar places from my child-hood--places that seemed to have remained the same despite time. I got to bump into other old missionary friends as well: the Johnsons, the Childs, and the Kusserows-- kids that I had grown up with and hunted lizards with--now college students revisiting their old homeland, or getting ready to head back state-side. It was such an exciting time, and a little bizarre to see such familiar places re-inhabited by familiar and yet changed people. Just being in Niger, was such an exciting feeling. It's so hard to describe, but there are feelings one gets in Niger, that one gets nowhere else (at least that's what I think). The balmy, sand-ridden wind that sweeps down streets late at night. The smell of burning trash (one of my favorite smells). People at work listening to Nigerienne radio, and Nihm trees. It has been so good to be back!

      On Monday, I headed out to Galmi with the Stark family, the team leader of Galmi and her husband. The drive up to Galmi was again such a mind-blowing journey. The road that used to be so bad it would shake my dad's headlights from his Toyota Hilux, had been replaced by sweet smooth asphalt, and as we clipped along, the Nigerienne landscape was truly amazing to behold. Plateaus, sand mounds, scraggly bushes and Baobab tress. Large volcanic rocks and purple mountainsides, interspersed with bits of grassland, a hut here and there, and sometimes a lone traveler in the middle of nowhere just walking on his own. We finally arrived in Galmi at the end of Monday, and I have been there since. 

       Galmi hospital is truly amazing to be a part of. Because I don't as yet have any medical skill, I cannot actually perform medical procedures. However, I have had so many chances already to see so many amazing things, and to touch, to see and to smell the tangible physical needs and challenges present within Galmi. I got to comfort a woman as a cesarean section was being performed on her--my first actual surgery, but her third C-section. Her baby was living, which is too often not the case here. Then I observed the local occupational therapist (OT) who was helping in changing the bandages of burn victims, and I handed a few bandages or surgical tools to her when needed. We worked on three boys each of whom had severe tendon, and nerve damage on their right arms. The boys had all been damaged in different ways, but they all had similar visible damage that included missing digits, skin, and exposed muscle tissue as well as radius and ulna bones.  We worked with two other burn victims as well--one with third degree burns on his legs that exposed tendons, tibia and fibula, and then another patient who had surface tissue burns that had to be scraped clean minus anesthetic. 

      All of this was very...incredible. To be thrust into the crux of some very nasty things was something that I knew I was headed toward by the very fact that I had signed up for Galmi. Before I first went into surgery and viewing the cesarean sections, I thought I was going to be sick, but was actually surprised when I entered into the surgery and realized I felt totally fine. As the shock of seeing things that normal American college students my age don't get to see wore off, my shock was pretty quickly and totally replaced by fascination--a desire to learn more--and the realization that before me were real tangible needs. This wasn't Hollywood--the people before me were really suffering. 

     I think that has been one of my biggest realizations thus far. To come into a place like this one must be a vessel of God's love. There is too much pain and suffering even for a Dr., for it ever to be humanly dealt with in the right way. Yesterday, I got to work in the pharmacy splitting pills. There, I got to meet the pharmacy director--a very nice man, an elder in the local church, kind, gentle and with a big smile. Today as I was in the OR, someone came in and yelled out that the man had died. Apparently, as a single man and an epileptic, Ilya had died during the night alone. The news was shocking and saddening to me who had only known the man for a day, but for the rest of the hospital it was devastating. Out patient delivery was closed, and the entire compound shut down in preparation for this man's funeral, which by law must occur within twenty-four hours of death. At the work-shop on the compound, the man's friends got together and built his coffin, while his body was moved from the village into the cold room of the pharmacy--the one place for hundreds miles that could slow down the process of natural decay, but the one place that was perhaps most painful for him to go. 

         Pain and suffering must meet with the divine and supernatural force of God's love. I have already struggled with the fact that as a short-termer, undergrad student, I don't have the skills necessary to help in the ways that I want to help. There's something in me that echoes the sentiment of good friend of mine, that wants my hands to be able to touch people and be a vessel of good, love, and healing in their life. I want to put salve on burn victims and perform surgery--it's not just a scientific fascination, but a desire flowing from God's love for the people around me. But the cool thing that I am beginning to realize is that to spread the love of God, I don't have to be a Dr.. I can be an undergraduate student and love God with all that I am, and from that well-spring of life, begin to love others the way they need to be loved.

     I've also realized that sometimes the very fact that one does become a Dr., can limit one's ability to exercise that love of God. I don't want medicine to ever become an end, in and of itself. Ephesians 6:12 which states: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” takes on a whole new meaning when dealing with medicine. As a potential Dr., my job is not to win against cancer, although I may fight cancer, or diabetes though I may give someone an insulin shot--my job is to use my gift, to share the love of God with some of the greatest pain and agony in the world and fight against the spiritual darkness surrounding individuals.

      Although I sound like I have things all figured out, most of this is sort of flowing out of me, and I'm processing all of this as I go. I think the blog idea may be very therapeutic just for that reason. Please pray for me, for this journey, and for this place. I am so inadequate in so many ways, and I see my own flaws as gaping holes that only God can fill. Sometimes I don't even know what to do to be helpful here, and other times I feel like I'm really getting the chance to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Please pray He would show me how to love Him most of all, and then to let love for others flow from that. Please pray I would be filled with the Holy Spirit, and see things through spiritual eyes. Not just through physical eyes. And even bigger than my needs are the struggles of the doctors who work here. Every day is a battle for them, with limited resources and limited expertise. They are the ones who lose patients every day to crippling disease and death. Please pray that they wouldn't be discouraged, de-sensitized, burned out, or otherwise removed from God's calling in their lives. Finally, please pray the people here and in this nation. They need hope, and they need love so desperately. I was thinking the other day: how are people supposed to sustain agriculture and move up in the world when they live in a desert without water? That is the reality for so many, and when they have a medical problem they generally have no idea what to do. Lift them up with me.

      Thank you so much for your support and prayers. It is so encouraging to know I have brothers and sisters across the world in prayer for me. Please keep praying and I hope to update you soon!