Coconuts, Cleft lips and Colouring
When life gives you coconuts.. drink em
Life giving us coconuts really didn’t seem like a bad thing, and they couldn’t have come on a better day. A few of our crew went out coconut harvesting with some of the locals over the weekend and brought some back with them to share. It’s been wildly busy these last weeks and it turns out that a cute coconut with an umbrella can do a lot to improve it!
We had wonderful Christmas and New Year celebrations with matching ‘Jolly Crew’ PJs for Christmas morning, which is a family tradition for many of my friends here and continued on with our big ‘ship family’. We had a few days off and then we were right back into the busiest part of the field service.
January begins the culmination of paediatric orthopaedic, paediatric general and cleft lip and palate surgeries. So our waiting room is chaos and there are children underfoot everywhere you step. Some have learnt where the balloons and candy are kept - in my office - so I get little people poking their noses in asking for balloons and sweets at least a few times a day.
One day, one of these kids ventured further into my office, not for the lollies, but to see what I was doing. He came and leant up against me and watched as I clicked things with the mouse and wrote in charts. Although he wasn’t allowed to play with the mouse, I found him some pens and paper and he stood beside me ‘working’.
On his next appointment, he brought a friend in with him, pointed straight at the paper and asked to draw again. So I got each of them some paper and pens then went back to my work. I heard a little shuffling from behind me and when I turned around there were six or seven little boys standing in my office, expectantly waiting for me. They didn’t just want to draw though, they wanted to colour, so together we chose which colouring pages and printed them off. Not long after, I had every surface in my office covered with children colouring.
For those hours I really didn’t get much work done, and I just couldn’t be upset by it. It filled me with a deep delight having these kids filling my office with concentrated colouring, pulling me over to show me what they’d done, and then proudly hanging their precious art up.
I’ve found myself with a similar hobby recently, learning how to paint through a paint and sip (tea, of course) with our incredible talented friend Becky. I’m not much of a painter, but it turns out that with some good instruction and some ‘happy mistakes’ we all made some lovely ‘Salone’ (Sierra Leone) beaches.
Some of the kids we saw through Preop are just a bit small for joining the colouring in, like our babies with cleft lips and palates. I was particularly excited when some of the babies we saw last year returned! Except they’re not tiny little babies anymore, they’re toddlers and some are even walking!!
It’s one of the lovely parts of returning to a country multiple years in a row that you get to see the patients again and get to know them better. Many of these babies with cleft lips have trouble feeding, so last year we saw some of them for appointments over about 4 months before they were ready for surgery. And now we get to see them and their Mamas again as they prepare for surgery.
And actually, they know us well enough that while they’re admitted in the wards, or coming back to the ship for follow-up appointments they’ll make sure to come and see us!
Above and below capture some of the simple, everyday life things of ship life. Reuniting with friends after they’ve left and then come back again. Making new friends while going out on an adventure with people you’ve only ever seen across the dining room, but never actually met properly. Homemade bagels, and many, many cups of tea!
As the clinical supervisor for the Preoperative Clinic it’s been getting pretty tiring. There are so many moving pieces to juggle all the time and it challenges me in lots of great ways. The role is very intense though, overseeing the journeys of 2000 or so patients coming through our clinic and making sure they’re in the best shape they can be for surgery.
I’m continuously reminded that it’s not with my own strength that I’m able to serve and actually through my tiredness there’s a testimony that it must be God, because it surely cannot be me.
So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Galatians 6:9
This is our team really living up to that verse. Unless you look closely at the clock, can you even tell that this was taken at almost 10pm, our longest day of the field service so far - after around 14 hours of work? There was not one complaint through the rest of the week about having to stay so late and then all be back at 8am the next day for the next patients coming in.
I still have such joy in the work I’m doing, and I’m so thankful for those precious little moments from God on the exhausting days that remind me of His goodness.
In saying this, I’m very much in need of some rest so…
I’ll be coming home in March for a few weeks!
I’m very much looking forward to a time of resting and refreshing, for fresh air and walks outside. I’m very excited to see my family, and I’m hoping to be able to see many of you while I’m home as well.
You are warmly invited to join me for afternoon tea
at 3pm, Sunday 9th March
Hamilton Central Baptist Church
I’ll be sharing a wee presentation at 3.30pm and would love to spend the afternoon talking and catching up with as many of you as I can.
I’m so looking forward to coming home, and being able to see you all again in person after almost a year and a half serving here. I’ll also be at church on the same Sunday 9th March and all are welcome to join for the 10am service there as well.
Your prayers would be appreciated for handing over my role - that I don’t miss anything important, that things would be calm for the person covering me while I’m away, and for safe travels.
God bless, and see you soon!
Charlotte
