[No news. A standard greeting is ‘Ini Vaovao’ – any news?. A bit like ‘how are you]
Hello friends,
It’s easy to forgot I have a fully operational hospital just below my feet for a moment. I often do. While I am teaching the joys of science people are undergoing life changing surgeries. I doubt our patients guess of children in class 3 decks above them.
My experiences of the hospital have been somewhat fleeting. My classes and I have visited and analysed blood, x-rayed various objects and toys and passed through on the way to visit the engine room. Occasionally I ‘bump’ into a group of patients heading for some deck exercise. They don’t look pretty, bandages everywhere and lacking the spritely nature they will develop as they recover, but are all making progress to transformed lives. Amongst them there are obscenely large facial tumors, bowed legs (from rickets), children with freshly repaired pallets or faces. This year is a particularly popular for our Obstetric Fistula program, a condition particularly prevalent in Madagascar where during a difficult birth damage is done to a woman’s bladder which leaves her incontinent. Every day we have a stream of Obstetric Fistula surgeries with the world’s leading surgeons. And the great news is we will be leaving behind a running Obstetic Fistula clinic, run by another NGO ‘Freedom from Fistula’ to continue the great world we’ve been doing.
One day I visited the HOPE centre. It’s a large renovated building in the local hospital where we house up to 250 patients who are waiting for or recovering from surgery. Many patients had an obvious need for urgent surgery with tumours, contracted burns or other issues that were obvious. Others…I would have to wonder why they were there. I played some ‘Chimney’ folk tunes in the large hallway, patients and nurses danced and the solo whistle sounded amazing echoing around the hallways.
The dental clinic continues to be a huge success story. It would be in any country in the world but here it helps those with no other option. Imagine putting up a sign ‘Free world class dentistry’. So many people have terrible toothache and have to get on with life. One patient described putting burning metal in his mouth to dull the pain of toothache. So many people suffer from terrible toothache and just get on with life. Our lead dentist is running a program to upskill local dentists which should help them become more successful and trusted by the population. Part of what I see as our most important ministry…capacity building.
I’m much more settled into community since my last post. We’ve just had our school ‘inspection’ (my second in 12 months), which went well. Our Accreditor was wowed by his visit – he has never seen anything like us! We are one of the last schools primarily for ‘missionary’ kids, as most former missionary schools accept other students now. He was surprised at our very practical science curriculum as many schools he visits work solely from books. We’ve been doing a lot of theory lately however I’ve sill been cutting up hearts and lungs, measuring the speed of sound, performing lots of vacuum experiments, and my students science projects are all coming along well).
Biking is amazing here. The local roads are poor, there is little motorised transport, this makes for some of the best mountain biking I’ve done in years! There are many adventures to have…in the last couple of weeks I’ve climbed the tallest lighthouse in Africa, visited a British fort that protected British ships who were refueling on the way to Brunei…(East India), seen flying foxes and giant bats in some nature reserves, etc… It’s a great place to live…but there are some significant challenges to being here.
I hope all is well with you? Do get in touch with your news, would be great to skype or call sometime.
Some things you might enjoy reading:
www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34528978
https://twitter.com/MercyShips
If you like to pray please pray for:
- Health and safety for the crew. We are all healthier and safer than I would have expected however there are illnesses, accidents and other incidents at times.
- Me to settle into more of a spiritual routine.
- Give thanks for the lives that our work is transforming!
- Pray for crew raising support. Most on ship are unpaid volunteers who need to raise all their support to be here.
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