Back to Work...

I arrived safely to the ship at 5am on thursday morning, after a bit of a mammoth journey it was great to finally make it on board! With the mini adventure over it was time to get stuck in and start working... I had an orientation of the hospital on thursday afternoon, but soon found out that Friday was a ship holiday - so I went with some friends to a place nearby called Lakka Beach, where we stayed for the night. Our rooms were right on the beach, it was beautiful and a really great way to spend my first few days back. Spending time with old friends, swimming in the sea... a baby whale even washed up onto the beach on Saturday morning! We visited a local church on Sunday with one of the local doctors which was also a great experience!

So finally, a week after I set off from home, it was time to start working on Monday morning... I've now spent a few days in the sterilising room and I'm having a great time! People keep asking me if I'm bored yet... but genuinely I am having a lot of fun. There are 6 people working altogether but we work in shifts so there are about 3 or 4 of us at any one time. The other people in the department are lovely, and we have a lot of fun! Two of the guys are day volunteers who live locally in Sierra Leone - I think one of the girls is going to bring a Djembe (drum) into work today in the hope that one of them will teach us all how to play it!

Being right next to the OR means that I'm able to pop in and watch surgery if we have any quiet moments. At the moment we have two operating rooms running... one doing Max-Fac surgery, so lots of cleft lips/palates and large facial tumours. The other is general surgery.

It's really great being back on the ship again - seeing old friends and getting back into the routine of ship life and community living, it's a diverse community, there are currently 33 different nationalities on board!

Although I haven't seen a lot of the country yet, I'm enjoying Sierra Leone... as you would expect the poverty is extreme. Years of civil war left the country devastated but it's now recovering. We're in the middle of rainy season at the moment - this is the first time I've been in West Africa at this time of year and the surrounding area is lush green - making for a beautiful landscape. This is the 5th time the ship has visited Sierra Leone in the last two decades. Here are some stats of what has being going on on board. They are a little out of date and only cover from Feb-May but it gives you an idea...

505 specialized surgeries
• 8,758 dental procedures for 2,675 people and basic oral health education for 2,405
• 1,979 eye evaluations and treatments and 889 refraction/eye exams
• 2 clinicians have received surgical mentoring
• 18 trainees in Orthopaedic Ponseti casting while providing services for 40 patients and 791 Physical Therapy services
• 45 health care professionals, 16 mental health staff and 22 church leaders have received training in mental health evaluation, treatment or counseling
• 15 trainers of trainers from 4 national organizations are receiving training in agriculture production and nutrition
• 10 palliative patients and 13 caregivers are receiving care and support
• 30 health care workers received training in First Aid at a partner agency in Koidu
• 152 patients or caregivers have received community health education at the Mercy Ships H.O.P.E. Center
• Anesthesia conference hosted 79 participants to exchange ideas and learn current developments in anesthesia
• A midwife conference hosted 28 participants to exchange ideas and receive training
• 225 church and community leaders from the Bo area participated in a development conference that explores ideas for community development

I'll upload some photos soon!

Sierra Leone 2011 - almost there!

Having made it most of the way to Sierra Leone, we have unfortunately been held back from reaching our destination for the last 24 hours! We were just about to take off from the airport in Banjul - Gambia, when a bird flew into the engine and destroyed it. Initially the situation was quite frustrating, but having spent the last 24 hours in a beautiful hotel, I'm starting to feel grateful to the little bird who martyred himself for an unknown cause so that I could have an extra 24 hours rest before the hectic next 3 weeks begin.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with the world what I am doing for the next 3 weeks in this somewhat last minute trip!

This is my 3rd trip to volunteer with the charity Mercy Ships. This evening I will finish my journey and make it to Sierra Leone, where the ship has been for the last few months. If anyone isn't sure what Mercy Ships is. check it out.... www.mercyships.org. But basically it is a charity with a huge floating hospital called the Africa Mercy that is currently travelling round the coast of West Africa delivering free medical care to some of the poorest people in the world.

This trip I will be working as an OR Steriliser - basically cleaning all the surgical instruments! It may sound slightly unexciting, but I actually can't wait.

The picture is of the pool at the hotel where Brussels Airlines have kindly put us all up for the night. Having had a pretty busy few weeks before coming I've actually been so grateful to have the extra rest day!

So that is why I'm here and what I'm doing!

Togo 2010 - Abi and Jen's Blog - and update on willing and able...

We arrived in Togo early sunday morning, rather behind schedule, having frustratingly been delayed in Libya (where we are in a small riot) for 5 hours and Nigeria for 2 hours. Thankfully, this time I travelled to the ship with 3 friends; Richard and Victoria who are in my class at dental school and Jen who is a medical student, so we passed the time playing medical hangman and managed to sneak into first class to have sleep and massage on the luxury chairs, so it wasn’t too bad.

This week has been very busy with screening, a full operating list, a few emergency patients to squeeze onto the schedule. It is great to be back and am loving the max-fac surgery and seeing old friends.

It is also great to share the ship experience with people from my London life - Rich and Victoria have been in dental clinic and are loving it! They have both seen hundreds of patients and pathology that we have previous just read about in books.

Jen is doing well, though working in the hospitality department, we are trying to get her medical experience wherever possible, this week she has been practising taking blood from her friends arm (or in some brave cases both arms).

We now have a few days off for Easter, so are doing some dentistry revision, but mainly table tennis, reading on deck and a spot of swimming : )

Aissa will be traveling to the Mercy Ship next week. Accompanied by her uncle, (Jean) and a missionary, (Sarah) they leave Meskine, Cameroon on 12th April to fly to Douala (in the south) and then fly to the ship in Lome, Togo on the 15th. Please pray for safe, direct, smooth travels and then for the operation itself, which will take place on the 19th, by Dr Gary Parker and Dr Tertius Venter.

We are also in the process of making arrangements for Regina, Deve, Cedric and Namina at the moment. For more info please see:

http://www.willingandabel.org.uk/

to make a donation please see:

http://www.justgiving.com/willingandabel

Adventures...

Again, I know it has been a very long time with my last post! It's been very busy!!! But that's really no excuse...

I spent the last 4 days in Ghana... We went on quite a last minute trip! It was an epic adventure... Through Togo... 4 boarder controls. It was a crazy experience! It was an amazing experience to see two other West African countries... Ghana is so different to Benin obviously! But having driven for 7 hours of so, it was amazinig to see the difference... it is far more developed, the air was cleaner as we weren't living in a port! We stayed at the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) Base and woke up to the peaceful sound of birds singing! Something I haven't heard for a long time!

Anyway it was a fantastic trip, and it feels strange to be back on the boat again!

I'll try and keep this post as brief as possible as well as filling you in on everything that's happened!!

I have another new part time job!! I now work in the starbucks cafe in the mornings to help out as they are short of staff... So that's another new job!

The weekend before last I went to an orphanage... Having spent a lot of time in Romania in orphanages I was intruiged to see what it would be like. We didn't get to see a lot of the facility... though I don't think it was very extensive. I guess from what I saw that all the children just sleep in one room... and their ages range from babies older teenagers of 16-17... It was a lot of fun singing and dancing with them... and I chatted to some of the older girs... in very limited French... But overall it was a great experience!

I visited a different Benin church a few weeks ago... and one in Ghana at the weekend... One thing that struck me was how loud they are! I guess they want to make it as loud as possible so that everyone in the neighbourhood can hear what's going on! I found this particularly liberating, due to the fact that we have to think so much about how loud we are being at home! The one thing I love about all the African churches is the music... they are all so musical, singing dancing...very loudly! And sometimes a random person will just get up and start singing a song... a few seconds later everyone joins in! A few times there has been nothing more than a drum accompanying them!

to be continued...

Dental Clinic, Weekends, Easter...

Firstly, I know it has been a while since I updated the blog! So I apologise for that...

Since the last post I have started my minor job as a dental steriliser, this week was my third week in the job, and I love it! Thursdays has now become my favourite day of the week! We travel for about half an hour to a nearby village called Abertrou, The clinic is a very modern building for the area; we work off a generator and have some fans as well!

These are a few pictures of the dental clinic...

My job is a dental sterilizer, the work is not particularly hard or challenging however, I have decided that this is the case with quite a few things in life, it’s not about the exact work you do, it’s about the people you work with, the place you work and your attitude towards it... In these three areas I think I have come up trumps... I work with some amazing people from all over the world, New York, Norway, California, England, Germany, not to mention all the local day volunteers who are trying to teach me French, I work in a village in Benin, in Africa , if I go just outside the door, I can play with the local kids, buy the local food and ice cream (known as fan ice, which is delicious) and I am so excited to go to work every week that not much tends to get me down once I am there!

The amount of dentists varies as they tend to only stay for a few weeks at a time... But with 3 dentists they saw over 100 patients in the first day I was there... the next week two of them saw 78 and pulled out 137 teeth, 2 days ago there was only one dentist and he managed to see over 50 patients by himself in one day! So we are kept pretty busy sterilizing all the instruments, we have 3 machines called autoclaves which sterilise the instruments and two out of three of them have now broken, which makes life interesting!

I have spent the last few weekends exploring the local area somewhat... We went to the big market a few weeks ago, called Dantopa, it is so enormous you get totally lost, and it sells everything you can imagine! I bought some flip flops....and quite a bit of African material. Last week I made myself a skirt, and today a bag! I love just hanging around in the market area, it is such an intense atmosphere, full of so many people, and it is amazing.

Last weekend I visited a place called Bab’s dock... it is basically a lagoon area. Some Belgians one day decided that they should up and leave Belgium, and move to Benin. This they did and built a house and little resort area, with a bar, hammocks, sun loungers, canoes and even a sailing boat! You have to take a little speed boat to reach the lagoon. It was a fantastically relaxing day!

Some photo's of Bab's Dock

This weekend is of course Easter weekend... I am in fact on duty today (Saturday) and tomorrow, which means I can’t leave the ship... but I am still having a brilliant weekend so far. The celebrations started for us on Thursday evening.... we had our community meeting with the room decorated with an Easter feel and one of the other rooms on the ship was decorated as an upper room, where you could visit with your friends to pray or partake in foot washing... Yesterday morning we had an amazing service in the morning, the atmosphere was amazing and it was a very powerful meeting. We also watched the passion of the Christ last night. The atmosphere of the weekend has been truly amazing... I think it has been the best Easter I have had so far!

Yesterday I went on a little adventure with a friend... we took the zimmy’s (motorbikes) to the local airport where we knew there were some beaches nearby.... and basically went for a wander along the beach! We bought some amazing local food, and had such a fun day!

I hope everything is well in England! In case anyone didn’t know I have extended my time here and will in fact now be coming home on the 1st of June instead!

Medical!!

The last week or so has been a lot slower in terms of work in Hospitality.... therefore I have had the chance to work in some other areas which has been super fun!

I spent monday and tuesday morning in Hospitality, and both the afternoons I worked in the galley helping prepare the dinner for the crew. You may not think this would be the most exciting job, but working with new people, in a different team was so much fun. There is such a great atmospher in the Galley, and many local Beninese are working as day volunteers... this happens in most of the departments on board the ship. Many help in general areas such as housekeepers, transportation, galley, dining room... but there are also a lot working in the hospital as translators cleaners and many many other jobs. They are vital to the work here and we couldn't do it without them!

So my time in the galley was spent with a lot of fun people, some african music.. and so inevitably there was dancing!!

This morning I went out to the eye clinic, with the eye team, We were at the 'hospitality centre' where there are 2 'wards' and the eye clinic, patients go there if the are having an operation and live very far away, and there are some post op patients that stay there also. It is basically just a warehouse, where they have built in 2 hospital wards and the eye clinic is a tent inside...

The clinic I was helping at this morning was seeing patients that have been through the screening process and are having their surgery this afternoon so we gave them pre-op checks... we also saw lots of the patients that had their surgery yesterday. It was so exciting and the first time I actually got to help with something medical!

I have also managed to get a minor job for the rest of my time here, so I will be working as a dental sterilizer for one day a week... I cannot wait to start that!

It has been a real blessing, from a situation last week where we were getting a little frustrated with lack of work, I prayed about it with a friend and this week so many oportunities have opened up!

Children's Choir at the Church, 8th March