A new season

It is officially 35 days since i walked down the gangway of the MV Africa Mercy for the last time in Sierra Leone. Do i wish i stayed, yes!Do i think i'll go back? If thats where God wants me!

Saying goodbye

Final wave off

Since I came back to the UK I have had the most amazing support by friends and family and church family to help me transition back into western life. 9 weeks was not the longest amount of time but it certainly made an impact on my life. My wonderful mam came to Heathrow to collect me with my adopted english family who had huge banners and massive smiles as they wrapped their arms around me and said Welcome Home Hannah! I can honestly say at that moment my heart sunk and I had a moments thought of....right, how do I get back on that plane? Not because I didnt want to see them but I just felt I had left a massive piece of my heart in Africa and i needed to go back and collect it. I relunctantly got in the car to drive away from the airport and officially was 'back in the UK' where it was clean, not very warm, and organised!Everything is very neat and tidy.

It was and has been an overwhelming 4 weeks not helped by the fact that my job didnt start when it was supposed to and I had way too much thinking time. I finally started my job last week in a palliative and elderly care unit. It is very differant to the ship for sure but I do love looking after elderly people and making a small difference on their day even it means putting some rollers in their hair or reading a newpaper with them while also attending to nursing needs, i do get some satisfaction from it. Its very slow paced and I know I wont be there long as I like the fast paced movement of the wards but its good for now while I plan my next escape to Africa.

I wanted to write this note as a thank you to all of you (you know who you are) on the ship and at home for your continued and loving support of my time in Sierra Leone with my fees and with prayer. I have met the most amazing beautiful people from Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone not to mention the other 41 nationalities that were onboard while i was there. I have so many memories and wonderful moments etched in my mind that will never fade. Moments like carrying a baby (on your back if you prefer) while mum is in surgery, sitting with the day volunteers trying to learn some more Krio to make communication with the patients more effective, giggling when trying to open the doors of the ward and they are just so heavy because the ship is leaning to the side or the opposite and running after the BP machine as it trundles on its own down the ward as the ship leans the other way, the ship shuddering and bouncing right at the moment you are about to pour some lactulose, peaking out of B wards door and seeing that the laughing and giggling is coming from beautiful children from A-Ward looking like the walking wounded with many bandadges wrapped around their healing limbs but smiling and playing none the less. I could go on and on and on!

Tamba, Umar and Alberta

These children and patients have made a lasting impact on my heart and life. The pain and agony they have gone through both physically and mentally after years of verbal abuse and hurt from their communites and they still laugh and smile and see the good in life makes me actively conscious about how much i moan and complain about such stupid things. I wish i could watch these wonderful kids grow up and see what they will do with their lives. I can truly say i have never met such wonderful and thankful children as them.

Me and two of my Padis (friends) Umar and Osman.

One of our precious ortho patients

I am thankful that I as given this opportunity to serve with this organisation and I encourage you to keep them in your prayers as they complete this outreach in Sierra Leone until December. This outreach has been known to be a particulary difficult one and resources and options for wound healing and managing chronic condidtions are becoming more and more difficult. As are the nurses bodies and minds. It is hard for some to be so far away from their familes and it is hard to have a refreshed mind when you are surrounded by people 24/7.

I am content being back in england knowing that I am here because that is how God planned it. He knows exactly where and what and who and why! It says in the Bible that He knows the plans he has for you....thats not talking just about the future. Thats about right here right now. I went to Sierra Leone for 9 weeks and I came back and God was with me the whole way. I will honour him if i am I England or Africa and I now look forward to this new season in my life whatever it may hold. I am willing to come and tell you about Mercy Ships and give you a more detailed idea of what they do there if you are interested in serving. You dont have to be a nurse. Anyone can serve there!

Team B!!

Me with Ali

Umar saying goodbye in his own way!lol!FISHFACE!

Alberta

And now after radical surgery she is free and can use her arm completely!

Faith

Faith is so evident, clear and spoken about here in Africa. I feel free and finally content that I can care for patients and show them Gods love and compassion through actions but also through prayer. It is such an encouragement to walk down the hall and see people praying together in a little group, walking into the ward where the patients and day workers from Freetown are singing freely and worshipping their God, sit by someone and have them ask for you to pray for them, walk hand in hand with a patient to surgery and pray with them before they walk through the OR door, praying for peace before a shift and thanking God for another day and honour to serve Him in Africa. I ask patients how they are doing and their response so often is' By Gods, grace I am well'. I am sitting here on a night shift listening to Tamba who is 40 praying and exercising as he does. He has recently had a Mastectomy (breast removal) for a cancer. He is now on treatment that he has managed to pay for himself for a year but he needs to have the treatment for 5 years. It is so difficult to know that we cannot help everyone as volunteers on the ship and as a charity. Our money and resources just do not extend to providing chemo or required medication to all patients. It is so frustrating to know that even if we had all the money in the world we still would not be able to help everyone physically however, it is a blessing that the ship managed to removed the cancer before it spread any further. The best thing we can do is pray!

God is a very present help and source of strength for these patients. It blesses me to see their faith and hope in God and that He is praised in good and bad times. Tamba is one such a patient who displays such faith in God. He knows that even if he does not have the money to pay for treatment for the whole 5 years he is trusting and relying on God. Do you trust that God holds your future and cares for you? His love is so unlimited and free and He just wants you to accept it. Trust that He knows what our future holds and cares so deeply for us. He just wants us to accept His gift of freedom, peace and love. All things work together for good even if we cant see it or understand it.

Ephesians 3 v 20:To Him who is able to do far more than all we ask or even think be glory forever and ever.

Changed Lives

Fanie when he came for surgery

There he is on the left walking with a crutch about 7 weeks ago....and here he is now on the day of discharge walking free smiling that gorgeous smile with his Physios and mum!

Lives are truly changed here!

Reminiscing

As i sit here on my cabin floor dressed in my scrubs ready for an evening shift on the worlds largest NGO i am feeling a bit reflective....I am first of all blessed for the amount of amazing and awesome (becker, that's just for you) friendships I have made here in 2 months. Living in such a cramped and small community forces you to be friendly and talk, not that i have a problem with that but thankfully by doing that I made friends that i know i will be in contact with for life!!you know who you are :0) I am sad that today i have sad goodbye yet again to a precious friend and crew member but at least I know I have places to stay when i go on holidays now!lol!

I am also blessed that i have have had the privilege of being a crew member on Mercy Ship. Although its not perfect like every organisation run by man it is no doubt trying to make a difference in the world and is achieving some amazing things. Lives, bodies, faces and limbs have truly been transformed and it is an honor to be part of it. I have uploaded some photos on to my facebook of the patients I have met and I will try to get some more pictures uploaded on here as a stories can truly be told through some of the before and after pictures i have seen!

So, as another evening shift begins where I will greet new patients who come onto the ship for the first time and walk into the ward for the first time and maybe even meet a white person for the first time I will attempt to show them Gods love and honor Him through my actions. It will be an evening full of teaching like how to use a toilet, how to wash their hands correctly, cannula ting which is absolutely NO problem normally because these men have veins like ropes because of all the manual labor they do and perhaps receiving some patients back from surgery. All in all I am feeling blessed and honored today and slightly sad because I don't have much longer left.....

Love to you all....

A day in the life of a nurse on Africa Mercy (Morning Shift)

Morning shift:

6.15:Smack my alarm off, stumble down the ladder from my bunk, jump in my scrubs, grab my pens, badge, door key and water bottle and wander up the very steep set of stairs to the dining room.

7.00: After breakfast walk 3 minutes down the corridor past the hot engine room door and past D and C ward into B ward where i work, whispering as some patients are still asleep and grabbing my assignment sheet from the magnet on the door (everything is magnetic) and seeing what my day holds for me. Some days I have 4 patients , some days i have 8. It depends!

7.00-7.30: We pray together as a group and commit the day to the Lord asking for healing for our patients, wisdom what to do in difficult situations, that that we show Gods love through our actions and that we have fun as a team working together in Africa on a ship!!Then we have handover, i get to meet my patients for the day or i see the ones i have got to know very well over the last month or so who have been with us due to complications post surgery. I introduce myself 'Na mi name Hannah, na mi na u nurse tida' and i get a smile and a bemused look as i then explain that ' I de try fo tok small small Krio' and they nod and smile. Happy I have remembered my Krio i continue to meet the rest of my patients.

7.30-12.00: We give out our medications, teach patients who are about to go for surgery that they need to 'scrub very fine' the area they are having surgery and explain how and what will happen. So many people here have never interacted with white people, never been in hospital, never been on a ship, never had a cannula inserted in their arm, never had their blood pressure taken, never had some of the medications we give etc. The list is very very long. Some people don't even know for sure how old they are which gets very interesting when doing medications for kiddies because its done by age and weight but that's another story. We encourage people to go for 'small walka' but they really do like their beds so its hard to get them out into the corridor but we eventually manage after our translators have a little chat with them. We have devotional time with a team from Freetown who come in a sing, pray and dance with our patients African style for about 20 minutes. They are LOUD! I didn't know how loud people can clap, its unreal!I feel slightly deaf after they leave. Then its movie time...we try to cater for kids and adults so its Madagascar or some other cartoon most mornings and we get to sing along to 'We like to move it, move it'. Patients go to and from surgery. Life can be very busy in the mornings along with trying to entertain some of the kids who either hate or love white people. We blow balloons up or blow bubbles for them!

12.00- 14.00: Dinner is at 12 and no matter how much you need to do their observations or a dressing or give medication you do not disturb them during their meal. They do not like it and you either get a very resistant arm when trying to do a blood pressure or a disgruntled grunt. So, its best to either plan every just before 12 or just after. We then run around doing bits and pieces just before the next set of nurses come in at 14.00 for handover. We check our all charts, make sure any of the orders the doctors made for the morning have been done, do the dressing changes and give more medications.

14.00-15.30: We pray, commit the evening shift to the Lord and then handover to the new set of nurses. Then its time to bring the patients up to Deck 7 where the patients get to get some much needed 'fresh' air and for them to see Africa!! We either climb up the steep steps together or use the lift depending on what surgery everyone has had. We open the doors feeling the massive blast of either hot or humid air after being in air conditioning all morning. The kids from the other wards cycle around up and down the deck on the little bikes and carts we have up there while the adults watch the boats and ships passing by, chatting and talking on their mobiles. Its a great chance to just interact and get to know your patient which has been such a blessing and enjoyment. I love hearing their stories and seeing the impact the surgery is going to make on their lives. We stay together on deck for about an hour if it doesn't start getting too stormy and then we wander back down to the hospital and that is the end of my shift for the day!

Grace

Meet Grace....
She is a 50 year old lady who is a Sports coach at the local women's prison. She has attended courses in South Africa to become a certified coach and she has been able to teach boxing, cricket, football and handball. 5 months ago she found a lump in her breast. She has breast cancer. She lives in a country with limited resources and limited finances to do anything about this tumor growing inside her chest. She comes to Mercy Ship for surgery to remove the tumor which she would not have been able to afford to have here in Freetown. We have no resources to give her the medication she needs so she needed to find her own supply of Tamoxifen. She has been able to do this as she has some family in Australia but it is distressing to see the difference in how a women with breast cancer in England and Africa is treated. In England, within two weeks of a referral the lady is seen and a plan of action is made in regards to getting rid of the cancer that is growing.

Grace is one of many women here who have probably found lumps and never been able to do anything about it because they cant afford surgery and they are too scared to go to the doctor. So they live with the cancer and they allow it to eat away at their bodies until they cannot provide for their families anymore. I had the honor of looking after Grace at length this week and I had so many opportunities to chat, pray and read the bible together which was such a blessing to us both. We spent half an hour together singing and praising our God (Oh Happy Day & Our God is an Awesome God) while removing her staples and dressing her wound on her chest. It was such a breath of fresh air to be able to release such a big part of my life into the open and into my patient care rather than suppressing it and worrying every time God's name is mentioned at work that someone might be offended. Her faith in God is amazing and so strong. Pray that she holds onto the promises that He is with her and will strengthen and guide her through the hard times. She has three girls (one who she adopted) and because she has pain in her hips and the back of her head we are worried the cancer may have spread but there is nothing we can do. We have managed to contain a problem that may spread and become fatal for her.

Remember her in your prayers.

Hope

The Hope Centre is a place of healing, waiting and hope before and after surgery. Patient wait there after their surgeries for outpatient appointments if they live far away, patients wait if they are not strong enough or healthy enough just yet for surgery and patient wait there after they have had extensive surgery such as Tamba who walked on top of his feet...his toes were facing backwards and now they are completly up and straight and pointing the right way! He is going to continue with physio for the near future and no matter how much pain he seems to be in he continues to smile big and laugh the most gorgeous heart felt laugh!



















Notice the little boy standing beside Andreas, He is the little one i mentioned who has the tumor. He is waiting for surgery which will hopefully be next week. The boy on the right has

also had surgery for club feet and is almost ready to go home!








You always end up with a child on your back, knee or generally just hanging out of you when you get to the Hope Centre but it is such a fun place to go on a day off!

Screening

I joined the Max Fax team on Monday morning for screening and to see how they decide who and when people have surgeries. It was fascinating to see what came through the door. My day started by running down the gangway into the little white cabin outside to avoid the monsoon rains, we prayed together for wisdom and guidance for making tough decisions and then started bringing people in one by one from the tents the were sitting in outside.

I saw ladies and men with parotiod tumors- swellings and lumps under their ears which cause discomfort and stigmatisms in their communities. These surgeries can take up to 3 hours so it was not possible to accept the 7-8 people we saw. These growths can also sometimes be a sign of HIV so these patients went for a counselling session before having their blood drawn so they understood that we would have to wait for the result before making a decision about surgery. So many people wanted to know straight away if they would be accepted and some were upset when they found out that we would be screening them for HIV (if positive many would be ex-communicated from their communities).

I saw a little girl, 6 years old with a golf ball size lump on her chin. A man in his 60's that lived with a lump the size of your fist on the back of his head, another man with one on his forehead. I saw a man with a lump over his eye that was starting to push his eyeball back into his head causing pain, a little 2 year old with a big growth behind his ear and the only way to entertain him and get a good look at the tumor was by doing the good old blowing up a glove trick and drawing a smiley face on it!He managed to burst it before he left after chewing it and bopping all the chairs and kicking it around the room!I almost brought him back into the ship with me, so so adorable! We had another little boy come in who nose was completely blocked after an attack of scabies so he found it difficult to breath sometimes, a 13 year old boy with a big tumor on his face which he found very distressing and difficult to fit in among his friends. All very strange and i do wonder how on earth all these growths develop but i am seeing it in such a condescended amount of time and space. I'm sure most of the lumps that develop in England are caught while they are still tiny which is why we don't see such extensive lumps and bumps like we do here.

These patients will hopefully have clear blood tests and as long as we have theatre space we will schedule everyone in if they are fit and well. It was a good day to see how the process works in Mercy Ships and how the screening process goes. It is a hard decision for the doctors and nurses down there every week and i don't envy them their job but they do it with such love and gentleness, it was a blessing to see them at work! Good job Jane and Missy :0)

Kusheh

How de bodi?

Na mi name hannah. Na mi na u nurse tida. If u want anytin call me i go cam.

Grap wit u elbow. Hol tight wit u side. (What i say to hernia patients)

U wan Drink wata?

U wan fo wet? (No.1)

U wan fo toilet?(No.2)

I da try fo tok Krio small small!!!

I am still learning but i can just about say all this...its grasping the african accent i'm struggling with but hopefully it will come.

Team B!

These are a few photos of my colleagues and I at 'work'!We had a quick break to have some photos taken! I havent had any photos taken with patients but hopefully i will next week so you can see what and who I look after!

PodaPoda bartering.

So if you want to go somewhere in Sierra Leone and you don't have your own transport you need to allow at least 2 hours if not more to give time to barter for a PodaPoda (taxi). We set off on Saturday morning at 12 up BadBoy lane (road to the dock,don't worry apparently its an old name) to aquire the services of a PodaPoda. Little did we expect it would take us so long...

You need to have a price in mind and be willing to move up or down about 20,000 SLL at a time. So if you start at 100,000 and get a PodaPoda for 120,00 (17 pounds) then that's not too bad. Bearing in mind we are still paying at least twice what an African group would pay. However, the price we were offered was no less than 600,000 SLL. (85 pounds). Someone from the ship had paid this price before so it was expected and word was on the street that the white people from Mercy Ship pay big money! (10,000 is about 1.40 pounds) White skin triples or quadruples the price!

We proceeded to barter which is a custom and must be done in Sierra Leone. Everyone barters!Its expected of you. So, the big group of white girls managed to gather a nice little group of maybe 20 + people who all got involved in the bartering or they just stood and started at us until it wasn't clear who the driver was and who we were supposed to be bartering with!TIA- This is Africa! After at least 3 bartering attempts, each of which lasted at least 20 minutes each, we managed to find a PodaPoda for 100,000 just like we wanted in the beginning! Unfortunately we had become so exhausted with the whole 'arguing' process that we ended up taking a PodaPoda that seats 8 and we had 11 in our group! Finally we set off at about 14:00 that afternoon!
We become quite close that weekend!lol!We piled in, rucksacks and all including a random guy which added to our number making it even cosier!

We had a great time at the beach again and made some little friends with some beach kids who had lots of fun in the sea and showing off doing cartwheels.

We did all get food poisoned or had some bad water or something so have been suffering for the past few days and i have had two days sick off work and i finally managed to have a proper meal today but i suppose that's what you get for eating off the ship!Wont be doing that again in a hurry!But the beach was amazing and i had an awesome weekend! Bring on the third week on Mercy Ship! :0)

Holiday!

Today is a ship holiday so everyone gets an extra long weekend!Think it is well deserved by those who work 5 days a week all the time...us nurses get afternoons or mornings off depending on our shifts. So a group of us girlies have decided to go to the beach tomorrow! AND we're goin to stay overnight in mudhuts!Bring it on!!SO excited....It is monsoon season though. Everyone was dressed for sun this morning and suddenly the heavens opened!The sun is out again now but there is no knowing when the next thunder storm is coming :0)! Bit like Ireland really, except its lovely and warm!

We had a manic day yesterday with unexpected admissions but thats the way things go in hospitals and the ship is no differant. We had amazing teamwork and sang our way through and played with children in the middle of the chaos!Team B!!!I absolutely love working here!Please pray for some men who have come back with wound infections. It is so difficult to manage wounds on Africa and no matter how much advice is given or instruction about how to keep the wound clean, some people do end up back with us. We also have been battling with high temperatures for no apparent reasons. Blood cultures, wound swabs, HIV tests and Malaria tests are all negative. Its a mystery!

We have a moment for praise though. A crew member was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago and needed emergency surgery. The ship crew were devestated to hear that a beloved crew member would have to leave the ship and go through gruelling amounts of treatments. I arrived the night she left and we prayed for her and her family. She was flown back to the UK where they have now found she has NO cancer!How amazing is God!She may go through some chemo rounds just to ensure the cancer is gone for sure but that is down to the consultants who are treating her now.

Right well i'm off out to the Hope centre for a few giggles and cuddles and bubble blowing with the kids before i go to work!Hope your all having a good day x

Bubbles!

Some of the kiddies here have never ever seen bubbles!I just struggle to understand it but it does make sense, why would they spend their precious money on something so unnecessary? But it has proven a good way of making friends with these little ones who are terrified when they come through the door of the ship. My little one yesterday would not smile. I tried books, puzzles, balloons and stickers!None of them worked so i got the bubbles out :0) He loved them! He spent a good half hour catching bubbles with me and trying to blow some and when he did he looked so proud!Such a simple way of showing love to these children and I am enjoying every moment!I don't have any pictures but those moments will be in my mind forever!Hopefully you can appreciate how special it was.

The weather is not amazing here. Its cloudy and overcast most days, it is rainy season so don't worry I wont come back with a really good tan! :0) The ship is rocking a lot today!It a very strange sensation to constantly feel like you are moving even though we are strapped tightly to the dock. Its not ideal to close your eyes and try to stand still....you just fall over!ha ha!We pray before our shifts holding on to any item near us so we can keep balanced!

I looked after some men today with hernias, hydroceles and a lady with a hernia also. These people carry such heavy loads its not surprising that they come in with such problems. When we discharge them and explain they cannot carry an 'evi lod' (heavy) and have no 'man or ladi bisness' for 6 weeks. We regularly get blank 'whatever' faces! We all know it is not possible for them to follow these instructions but we try to encourage them!I am slowly learning Krio. It is basically broken English with a few words added. I still sound weird but hopefully before I come home I will be able to conduct a whole conversation in Krio!

I am spending the afternoon doing laundry and reading and maybe uploading some photos if the computer decides to work for me! The only Starbucks in Africa is on this ship so i might wander down and have a hot chocolate. I hope you are having a great afternoon where ever you are!

x

Hey, How d' bodi? (Its going to be a long one)

Another week has flown by and i am struggling to think about what i should write as so much has happened. Life is going by very quick on the ship and I am now here two weeks!!I am working 5 days a week, 8 hour shifts (Early's and lates) and then off at weekends for now which is great for getting to the beach and out into town for some shopping. I haven't been sleeping very well but that's life living in a cabin with 6 people. We have little pods with two people in each. My roommate and I are on opposite shifts most of the time so I either have to tiptoe out in the morning to work or tiptoe in when she's sleeping after a night shift. I have a week of nights coming up soon so maybe I'll get some sleep then...

I have managed to get out most evenings to sit on the dock and watch the sunset which i have to say is 100 times more amazing than Hatfield! It is so relaxing to sit listening to the water, kids playing on the shore beside their homes and looking back at the big huge ship which i call home! I will be uploading photos i promise but the Internet connection is not great and quite slow. I don't have the patience to upload one at a time just yet!

I got out into town the other day with one of the day volunteers (translators) from the ward and went fabric shopping which was an experience. I almost got run down at least 20 times by PodaPodas who just don't look where they are going and i got very very muddy but i enjoyed finally getting off the ship to walk and get 'fresh' air! If you can call car fumes and goodness knows what else they burn around here fresh! We finally got the market where we were mobbed by traders trying to sell their goods. Fabrics, bags, flip flops, necklaces of every size and description. My name was mentioned at the beginning of the street of shops by accident by one of the ship friends and i heard it the whole way up the street by every market trader in every shop until we left!Kind of wierd and made me realise what a keen sense of hearing they have so we made sure we didn't say anything else that they could use to try and entice us to buy something!!We learned how to barter which i still find difficult but i know Andrew (my brother) would be in his element! I finally settled on some beautiful fabric which has Sierra Leone colors in it and then got told i paid too much! (5 pounds for 4 yards) Not bad i reckon but apparently i could have got it cheaper!You live and learn here!

One of the days (cant remember when) I went to the Hope Centre with some friends from the ship. It is a place set up by Mercy Ship for people waiting for surgery or who have had surgery and will be coming back for their outpatient appointment the following week but it is too far for them to travel from home. Some of my patients were there who were happy to see faces they knew and they were keen to have 'snaps' taken with us. The children were SO excited and i came back with made muddy and sweaty hand prints all over me! They have no boundaries i tell you! No part of you is safe! We met a precious little baby who is severely malnourished due to a facial tumor and was sent to the Hope Centre for a month until she had put weight on before her surgery. We will find out tomorrow if she is fat enough and healthy enough to have her surgery. Pray that she is as her mum is desperate for her to have her face healed.

This week we had a very sad admission of a little girl with a huge facial tumor which was pushing her eye of of its socket and her teeth were all displaced due to the size of the tumor. She had been kept in a chicken coop and treated so badly by her neighbours and family. She was difficult to look after and the nurses involved in her care found it very distressing as she would not calm down or let them take care of her. She has now started calling some of the nurses her friends and has started to respond to our love and attention but she is still convinced that she is a witch and she is evil. Please pray for her healing spiritually and physically. There are many children in her situation, we just haven't met them all. It makes me sad to think that it is true but maybe before the ship leaves Sierra Leone they might come for surgery! We have some fun patients too. We have a little old man who just gets too warm in the ward and cant understand why we don't want him walking around naked! It is a challenge to get him to keep his clothes on but i think we are starting to win! I have also had some cute little kiddies to look after which scared me half to death at the beginning as i have no idea how to look after kids but the nurses on the ward are so supportive and helpful and answer any worries or questions!We have also had the worry of telling someone he may have HIV but the lovely thing is that we can pray with him and offer him so much support. He had been spiking a temp for days with no sign of malaria which most people get a few times a year but the test came back negative! It was such a relief being able to tell him this as such a stigma is attached to having HIV here.

Life is indeed interesting and unique living in this big white bubble and I do miss my friends and normality of having a cup of tea and a biccy while watching a bit of telly but I am content knowing that I am here because God wants me here and I am serving Him in what I do! I am enjoying many other things like icecream on friday nights, hot chocolate from Stabucks,numerous card games, movies and sitting on the deck or dock watching sunsets or lounging by the pool on Deck 8 and making new friends! Life is chilled and relaxing when i'm not at work and i could get used to it :0)!

Love to you all x

D' Bodi fine!

Hi one and all, Very sorry for not blogging sooner but i actually cant believe that a whole week and one day has past since I left London! The journey was grand, slept most of the way and managed to meet two people going to the ship so i didn't travel alone. It took only 12 or so hours which I'm told is very reasonable as some people take double that to get here! Went form London to Brussels, Gambia and then Sierra Leone where we got a car to a ferry and then a jeep to the ship! Very efficiently done with hardly any delays!

I had two days of very detailed orientation which set me up nicely for two days orientation shifts on the ward. Got told that as i work and live on a ship and live under maritime rule, I am technically a sailor or seaman!!! So you can refer to me as Sailor Hannah from now on :0)

This week i am now a fully fledged Mercy Ship ward nurse!!!!I will be working on general surgery which can be anything from facial tumors to hernias, hydroceles or growths in weird places. My surgical nursing skills are proving very useful and I am very happy and comfortable with everything I have had to do so far! Wound care, obs, teaching (don't touch the wound, how to roll out of bed and not pop their stitches and make sure they wash their hands regularly!) I am slowly learning Krio which sounds like English until you try to speak it and then you just sound weird! :0) It will come hopefully...the most common phrase is 'How d bodi?'.....'D bodi fine'! Lots of nodding, smiling and pointing have become my way of communication. We have day volunteers who translate and are from Freetown so they are happy to start teaching me and take great pleasure in teaching us! But over all, working on the ward is an amazing honor and i am so happy i have finally managed to get here to Mercy Ship and do something i have wanted to do for so long. I have met so many amazing peple and people from EVERY nation. Americans, Koreans, Swedes, Dutch, Canadians, English and Germans! I'm sure there are many many more but its only been a week!

I have met some precious patients with some very sad stories and very sad lives but i have been so humbled by the love and generosity shown by the nurses and doctors on the ward. It is so nice to start a shift covered with prayer for the day and I love having the opportunity to sing and praise God with the day volunteers and and patients! They sing and clap very LOUD!! I feel so reserved around them which i didn't think i was! We have very busy days but it is all made less stressful by the fun and loving atmosphere around us! We get the opportunity to sit and talk to patients, pray with them and laugh with them which i have been craving and longing to do for so long before i came here! Once my Krio is better i will be more confident to do it on my own but right now i have a translator with me most of the time.

I managed to get to the beach at the weekend which was amazing! We spent the day playing cards on the beach, laying in hammocks, reading and eating freshly caught fish and freshly cooked cassava chips! They were cooked over a homemade fire right in front of us! It tasted SO good! We were all ready to leave at 3 when we found out our PodaPoda (taxi) wasnt going to come so we had about 2 1/2 hours wait until we got home but while waiting we got to sit and watch a tropical rainstorm and watch the ducks waddling around!Yes, they have ducks and chickens at the beach, think its for when they cant catch any fish ;0) lol! I am hopefully going into the market this weekend but life changes and plans are so flexiable around here so it may well change!

I will hopefully manage to get some photos up soon but my computer is not connected yet!

Thank you all so much for your messages andemails of encouragement! I am very well and safe and there is no need to worry for me! But I do like to hear how you all are and hear all the news from home and England!

Love always
Sailor Hannah and Mercy Nurse :0)!(Never thought this day would come!!!yay!!!)

testing, testing....

I am new to this so forgive me...I will attempt to update this blog regularly and also upload some photos (or maybe just photos) ;) If i start to slack then let me know!I'm not great at writing and keeping a diary but i will try my best just for you!

My next post will be from Freetown, Sierra Leone!How exciting!