Electro Pop Hijab

On a school day after helping with the household chores, Fadila takes a short walk down a beach sand road to school. Down the road palm trees mark where the land meets the ocean though here the beach is home to bandits rather than holiday makers. In the naked cement brick classroom, with Islamic style cut-outs, she sits with two others at an old school wooden desk. She carefully writes on a small black slate – her eleven year old fingers turning grey as she rubs out the chalk to turn the page.

She says her best friends are her family and her favourite thing to do in the holidays is to be with them and do extra studying for school. Her mother, in a bright orange Hijab that reveals only her face, says that her daughter sometimes comes home after a scuffle in the school yard. Though Fadila can most probably outwit her school mates it does not always combat the comments that pass her by. Whether this is for being an alien or looking different is uncertain.

Fadila was born to a family of Niger with a rare birth defect that affected the formation of one nostril and one eye lid. The nostril is purely cosmetic – something that Mercy Ships often cannot help because in the vast numbers of those needing help the functional problems take priority. However, the gap in Fadila’s eyelid has given exposure to a portion of her eye – creating white scar tissue which if left untreated could lead to blindness. Fadila passed two screenings and will have plastic surgery on both her nostril and eyelid.

Fadila’s father has three wives – in matching orange Hijabs. They have been living in Benin near the Nigerian border since Fadila was a toddler. In the afternoons Fadila joins them for Islamic prayer and scripture studies in the women’s prayer hut next to their house. All the women in the area join them and soon there is a pile of plastic slip slops at the edge of the mats. Below Fadila’s purple head veil and her scriptures have been read to pieces.

Though Mercy Ships’ volunteers are motivated by their love for Jesus Christ surgery is given to anyone regardless of their faith. I guess we are inspired by the way Jesus had compassion for suffering people and how he healed them. Fadila will be able to have a more comfortable life after surgery but like the rest of us her time will eventually come to an end. She may have the opportunity to hear the gospel while she is here but ultimately any choice of the heart can only be made genuinely by its owner. I think back to how I was hotly offended by the gospel. It dared to imply I was not the god of my own universe – that maybe I was missing out on an intimate, satisfying, and adventurous relationship. It sounded out right wacko. But I’m glad I risked my ego.

When Fadila is wheeled out of the OR and into the recovery room it isn’t long before her mother is summoned. Her mother’s Hijab is luminous pink today and dominates the hospital ship corridor as she makes her way to her daughter. It is simultaneously conservative and NuWave Electro Pop. A few days before she had told me the condition had brought shame on the family but here she is talking softly to her daughter, taking Fadila’s hand as she swims her way up from the remnants of general anaesthetic.

Days later the bandages are removed. I’m not sure if Fadila was expecting an instant recovery but she is staring silently into a little blue hand mirror. I can’t figure out if she is displeased at the sutures and swelling or if she is curious at seeing her face neatly closed up for the first time.

Back at home Fadila sits by the fire as the neighbours and her family examine her new, recovering face. In her low voice she speaks to her young cousins about her experience – using big hand gestures to demonstrate the size of the ship. Her mother is laughing as she recounts her experiences to the huge crowd crammed into their back yard.

Tomorrow Fadila will go back to school. She says she will have to work extra hard to catch up the work she has missed. Her mother tongue is still incomprehensible to her class mates but hopefully her stay on the Africa Mercy will have rubbed out one reason for feeling different.

Please Pray:

That the the crew not feeling well will get better.

For Yacinthe, Fadila, Bernadette and Ambroise's speedy recovery.

That Yacinthe will be able to go home before I leave.

That all of these patients will come to know the Lord.

For God's grace in translating the Fon interviews in a very short space of time.

Fadila at home before surgey (Photo: Debra Bell)

(Photo: Debra Bell)

Fadila at prayer (Photo: Debra Bell)

Stalin in hiding (Photo: Debra Bell)

Dr Tertius checking Fadila the night before surgery (Photo: Debra Bell)

Dr Tertius at work (Photo: Debra Bell)

Fadila in the OR (Photo: Debra Bell)

Fadila and her mother leaving the Africa Mercy (Photo:Debra Bell)

Fadila a few days after surgery (Photo: Debra Bell)

Fadila's warm welcome from her father at home (Photo: Debra Bell)

Yacinthe

It’s easy to cookie cut a patient’s story into a pretty little formula: 1. The suffering impoverished patient has no hope and tries everything to alleviate his condition. 2. By a miracle he hears of Mercy Ships and comes for free surgery. 3. He has surgery, goes home and lives happily ever after.

For anyone who has actually spent a considerable amount of time in a third world country knows that these cookies (or biscuits we would say) would be the African Marie Antoinette’s tea time treat. And someone’s life, as tempting as it is, cannot be squished into a fairy tale to make us all feel better.

But it is the hope within in the reality that is real. It’s when we see it for what it is that we truly appreciate this hope and that it maintains some meaning.

I first saw Yacinthe when he came to be screened by Dr Tertius (the plastic and reconstructive surgeon I am following for a documentary). Yacinthe consequently became one of his 4 patients I am following. He is ten years old, speaks Fon and lives in a rural red-mud-house village with about 100 of his relatives – primarily with his uncle. When he grows up he wants to be a Semi-Jan taxi driver (although his uncle has bigger dreams for him).

When Yacinthe was about two years old he woke up from an unattended siesta and crawled into a pile of leaves that concealed hot ash. Too young to jump out he sat in the ashes as they severely burned his leg until his older brother, hearing him, pulled him out. He grew up with his lower leg fused to his upper and his foot and toes deformed.

Four of us from the ship (including Franck our brilliant Beninoise translator) drove up North to spend 2 days capturing the life of this child before his surgery. We met his Beninoise social worker who kindly escorted us to the village some 15km from the town of Abomey.

I was not expecting to meet a confident boy. Nor an energetic athlete who could scramble to the top of a tree faster and higher than his classmates. It's hard to believe that a child with a short rusty crutch could manage to strut. We watched him play a soccer game where he would press his contractured limb against his crutch then leap into flight to kick the ball with his good leg. He was not particularly vocal but he moved like the wind and his mischievous face would regularly break out into a broad grin.

By chance his mother came to visit that day. She was 5 other children, one a baby, and has not been able to care for Yacinthe herself these past 4 years. Their reunion seemed awkward compared to his easy conversation with his uncle. I wondered how this boy felt seeing her after so long – and what was going through his mother’s head as I was not completely sure of the circumstances which led to Yacinthe being separated from her.

In a yellow rain coat, Yacinthe, (along with his trusty social worker and his mother) stood under a plastic tent in the early morning rain waiting for the ship to open. He seemed so small next to the huge white ship docked next to him. Once he’d walked up the gangway and had been admitted he walked into the hospital ward shaking all over. I reckoned he was cold from the rain and the unfamiliar air conditioning.

The surgery performed by Dr Tertius was incredible to witness. Though physical healing is restricted to this lifetime it does not take away from the fact that his leg that once was fused into a folded position became straight. Days later I watched him take some steps on his brand new crutches.

This is not to say that Yacinthe is giving us his Colgate smile. He’s quieter than usual, in a lot of pain and probably feeling very vulnerable in a strange environment and away from his uncle. And I cannot imagine the dynamic between him and his mother whose relationship must have changed the day of the accident and the day she had to walk away from the red-mud village. He knows that when he is healed and leaves the ship she will leave again. Furthermore he will have to relearn how to play soccer and climb trees.

When I go and visit him in the ward he is quite cool with me. It is difficult to build a strong relationship when he knows that I’m temporary too. So I make sure to visit him without the camera. To play Lego, attempt to read French children’s stories and give the odd hand massage.

The hope is not restricted to this Western ship. It’s Yacinthe in the treetop. It’s his headmaster’s immaculate chalky handwriting on an old blackboard. It’s the social worker’s genuine care and action to get Yacinthe all the help he can get.

Yesterday when I said goodbye he grabbed my hand and said a quiet “Merci” – our common foreign tongue. That’s not to say that I’ve won him over but to me that word was like the first time his blue bandage brushed the floor of Ward A.

These biscuits are hand made – each one irregular, different and unexpected. Some turn out sweeter than others but this one in all its uncertainty is sweet nonetheless.

Yacinthe playing a popular Beninois game in his village (Photo: Debra Bell)

Schooltime soccer game (Photo: Debra Bell)

Yacinthe in the tree tops (Photo: Debra Bell)

Yacinthe and I at his village school (Photo: Debra Bell)

Some of the team: Franck, Debra and Ryley in Abomey (Photo: Eileen Anderson)

Behind the scenes (Photo: Debra Bell)

Yacinthe recovering in a Mercy Ship hospital ward after surgery by Dr Tertius (Photo: Debra Bell)

Prayer Requests

1. That Yacinthe's leg will heal quickly and that we will be able to move around as soon as possible.

2. For Yacinthe and his mother's relationship.

3. For Ambroise's surgery on Wednesday 22nd (35 yr old man with abnormal blood vessels on neck)

4. For Fadila's surgery on Friday 24th (11 yr old girl's correction of nose and eyelid birth abnormality)

5. For Bernadette's hand surgery on Monday 27th. (Hand immobile since fishbone injury)

6. That all the filming will go smoothly.

7. For increased wisdom, faith and patience.

Thank you for all your prayers. I have been so blessed with so so many answered prayers. God has opened so many doors for the documentary, for special time with patients and crew and providing me with great mentors on board. I am really being inspired with my faith through all the people I am meeting and witnessing so many lives being changed. There have been the odd difficult moments but He has come through faithfully. Thank you to all of you who have been making this possible.

Middleclass Yovo

When I wake up from the belly of this ship, I climb the stairs to a height where there is a window to the outside world. The natural light overwhelms the artificial fluorescents that blur the line between night and day.

This window is a porthole to the dock and the flat blue waters between our air conditioned world and the visible mainland. Beyond the abandoned, broken down pier in the distance the edges of the city shacks prickle the shoreline. Though it is beautiful from my window I know that a trip across this rickety line quickly remedies any romantic notion of poverty.

Children and goats play on the sand which is both a public toilet and rubbish dump. If you are a Yovo (a white person) walking through the shanty streets you become somewhat of a Pied Piper. The small children run after you gleefully chanting,

‘Yovo, Yovo!
Bonjour!
Ca va?
Ca va bien, merci!’

How well is it going, really? And I wonder if Yovo has the same ambiguity of Mlungu in South Africa. To many it means a person who happens to be white. To a few it captures the inhumanity of the colonial oppressor.

I don’t know. But while my bloodline may have been on this continent for over 400 years it does not grant me a real understanding of living in these conditions.

From this window there is a line of people parallel to the ship that, having missed the Screening Day, wait to hear if there is an empty surgery slot for them.

It’s through these same windows, when God has turned the earth enough to fling the sun on the other side of the ship that a line of patients walk down the gangway on their way home. One surgeon alone is removing about 30 cataracts a day. He creates a constant trail of temporary eye patches that trickle down the gangway into remote villages.

This afternoon Marie is leaving to go back up North to her home in the neighbouring Niger. She is a tough lady. She has a ‘I don’t care’ sideways cock of the head reminiscent of Hilary Swank in Boy’s Don’t Cry. She’s going home with her condition greatly improved though her muscles need considerable exersize before she can experience the status the majority of her ward companions enjoy soon after surgery. The first time I took Marie up to a view of the harbour to escape the fluorescents she looked ready to fight. She had not seen a great expanse of water before and did not like it. A few visits later she was casually leading the new lady patients to the balcony edge to point out the harbour activities. Her sideways cock of the head broke into a mischievous grin.

There are sweet moments that I know I would not want to be anywhere else but here: to walk with friends through the streets and enjoy the simple pleasure of eating peeled pineapples ice cream-style. To be filming in the Operating Room witnessing yet another life changed forever. To find a midnight moment alone with Him on a Deck 8. To walk in the darkness of a city street when the light of a semi-jan reveals a dust haloed silhouette of Mother and Child.

While the fluorescents of a windowless cabin hide both reality and fresh light I hope that the everyday dreams of a middleclass Yovo will neither keep me from the window nor the will to stumble across blurry lines.

View of the Africa Mercy from the other side of the pier (Photo: Debra Bell).

House on the beach (Photo: Debra Bell)

The otherside of the window (Photo: Debra Bell)

Way up above my Deck 2 cabin (Photo: John Roland).



'Marie' gave permissin for her Dress Ceremony photo to be shown (Photo: Esther Biney).


A condition that can be remedied in minutes (Photo: Debra Bell).


Post surgery shades (Photo: Debra Bell)



Eye patients descend the dock (Photo: Debra Bell)

B minor

For my 6th birthday my mother made me a piano shaped cake and used milk and white chocolate for the piano keys. Once the horde had dispersed with cake in hand there were no minor keys left for me. I recall a feeling of utter injustice and even a little party tantrum.

Twenty years later I find myself in a hospital ship ward with Marie who knows neither her age nor her birth date. I’m guessing she’s five cakeless birthdays ahead of me. Mercy Ships has an ‘Adopt a Patient’ programme where volunteers are encouraged to visit hospital patients whose families are too far away, have passed on or no longer acknowledge them.

I’m wondering what is getting lost in translation. Marie speaks a language from the neighbouring Niger. I have two translators between us. English to French to the mystery language to French to English. She is sitting up in her bed, head downcast and I pretend to not notice the catheter she has tried to hide with her pretty traditional skirt. When I ask her what her life was like when she was a young girl she tells me through our broken-down-telephone that she used to be beautiful.

Fifteen years before she gave birth to a still born and since then she’s suffered permanent incontinence from a labour-induced tear in the bladder. She lives alone and says she wishes most that she had a child. While she genuinely wants to experience motherhood it seems that in these parts child bearing is perhaps a woman’s sole source of significance.

I begin to feel like a bit of a “nice white lady” who can't possibly understand what it must be like to be her. Horrifying visions of that very annoying character in Beyond Borders come to mind. I’m praying with her via our broken-down-telephone and begin to cross wires with the patient in the next bed who is loudly interjecting the attempted communication to the One person who would know, understand and bring comfort. One of the translators opens his eyes and starts to argue with the crossed wire. In my head I’m thinking that I know what I’m saying is true but it is coming from someone who has (relatively) thrown more tantrums over minor keys than experienced them.

Today Marie’s eyes are swollen red because all the ladies who arrived with her from the North (and the only ones her understand her language) are going home. They’ve just had a Dress Ceremony where they celebrated their healing and were given beautiful new dresses to symbolize a restoration of dignity. Some cases do take longer than others.

I know Marie will have her day though right now that seems hard for her to believe. But watch this space.

(Please note that in order to respect this patient's privacy I have changed her name and not included any photographs of her).

Please Pray:

That this lady will have a successful surgery and be able to go home soon.
That she will experience comfort and strength from a loving God
That she will have a child but that she will know her worth beyond that

Below are some pictures from so far:

View from the Africa Mercy arriving in the Port / Fishing boats and the Africa Mercy

A long line on Screening Day / Ladies at work

Father and son

Semi-jan Siesta

With a violent abundance of rip tides on Cotonou beaches (locally used for fishing and ablutions), Mercy Ships crew take a walk to swim in hotel swimming pools on their off-day. It was on such a walk that I spotted the impressive art of the Semi-jan Siesta.

Siesta in Cotonou is from noon to 3pm and it seems that many don’t go home to enjoy it in comfort. People sleep on the pavement, on the ground near their shops and the yellow clad semi-jan taxi drivers sleep on top of their bikes. They lie flat on their backs with their heads propped up on the petrol-tank-pillow.

Last week an 18 year old girl called Ruth Esther arrived at the Africa Mercy with her mother all the way from the Ivory Coast. Mercy Ships had provided her with a successful bilateral cleft lip repair 17 years ago. She had been a favourite patient of the doctors at the time – and some came to personally finance her school education and a childhood heart surgery. I happened to be on the dock as she arrived and filmed their happy reunion. They had arranged that she return to ship for a heart check up even though it is not part of the services offered on board. The next day she collapsed in a local market and was rushed to the ship via a semi-jan driver, possibly practiced in balancing the unconscious on his bike. That night as I was asleep in my cabin Ruth Esther gave her last breath. It was just strange to be at the dock when her mother walked past me. This time she was leaving the ship without her daughter. There was a hole in her heart.

The following day my great aunt (who has been my marvellous stand in grandmother) passed away back home in South Africa. She died in her favourite chair while watching cricket.

The Africa Mercy has begun its first surgeries of this field service. I’m often working on the dock and people pass me by. Some have their sight restored, others have their cleft palates closed so they may speak and there is a set of twin toddlers in the ward who've just had their bowed legs straightened. They're alive and a lot more comfortable.

Life and death seems to be a balancing act even when we sleep. The end of the act is guaranteed. When that happens is a little uncertain. How we enjoy and spend that time is luckily entirely up to us.



Please Pray:


For Ruth Esther's mother Bernadette.
For word to continue spread to those needing surgery that it is freely available.
For more Operating Room nurses to volunteer.

Hazy View

An alien who rises early to catch the sunrise in West Africa may be up for disappointment – at least this time of year. The dry and dusty Harmattan trade wind blows up from the South bringing with it a haze of Sahara desert dust particles.

The Harmattan Haze blocks out the sun for the first few hours of its day. While there is light one can’t be quite sure where its source is.

It was on such a morning that the Africa Mercy’s crew head out to the Screening Day – one of the most important stages of the field service in Benin. It is the day when any Beninois seeking surgery (that is usually unavailable or unaffordable to them) can try get a surgery appointment with Mercy Ships who will provides the procedure free of charge. When we arrived in the hazy hours of the morning the queue had already swept around the screening building, all the way down the street and around the next block. Some had been lining up since the night before.

I saw one man a bit older than me who had somehow carried his father from who-knows-where to this shuffling line. His disabled father was old and heavy clinging onto his son’s upright back. It appeared he needed reconstructive surgery as there was little flesh covering the entire area below his nose to his bottom lip. I just thought of all the years that old man must have looked after his son and what the dynamics must have been when that role was so cruelly reversed. What situations these men and I were born into suddenly felt very random.

On the first day alone there were 1300 people wanting surgery. They patiently stood in line in the relentless heat for hours till they got their turn to see if they condition could be helped.

Even a ball of fire with the equatorial radius of 109 earths sometimes has to compete with dust particles. And the need on the screening days meant that not every person could be helped in the ten short months the ship will be in Benin. After a long hot day some had to take the journey back home without a surgery appointment card.

That morning I woke up to film the sunrise I had to wait a few hours before it climbed above the heaviest haze. Despite its light diffusion nothing could help but spill into countless tiny reflective explosions onto the harbour waters.

The Harmattan’s nick name is ‘The Doctor’ because with the dust comes the relief of a soothing cool wind. So while this wind of need may seem overwhelming at times, the Son is ultimately stronger. Relief will come to the old man and to hundreds of other Beninois this year.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for:

1. 
   The protection of all the crew working on the ship.





2. 
   That patients with surgery appointments will be able to find transport to the ship on their day of surgery.





3. 
   That I will have the time to manage Ship’s video work, the documentary on Dr Tertius as well as time with God and the ship community – and have peace about it. (I am struggling to achieve all this).





4. 
   For the Holy Spirit to fill every corner of the ship and every person on it.

Thank you all for your prayers and support! Please send me your prayer requests – I will pray for you.

On Our Knees

Cotonou is not what I expected. Yes, it is poor – but I think if I were to take a picture of a running nosed child with token fly it would do the Beninois a great injustice.

Even when without, the locals I have met are dignified. Most are immaculately dressed in beautifully tailored local cloth. It is quite a sight to see women in heels, head wraps and Jackie O style sunglasses riding zemi-johns (scooters) down beach-sand-roads with ballerina poise. And those motorcycles are everywhere. There are thousands that swarm around the roads from every angle without warning (no licence, registration or age is required). But aside from their ‘kamikaze’ driving I have only come across polite, gentle and extremely helpful people who are patient with my poor attempts at speaking French.

Having lived on land for a few days (with a Canadian host family) I got a taste of what is to come in Benin. The cucumbers are obese but their chickens are anorexic. Their pineapples are tall and green and super sweet while their oranges are not so juicy. They sell cheap French chocolate spread – très dangereux! I also was not aware that one who does not perspire could do so at 3am. It is very warm.

When God puts his mind to something it’s surprising what he comes up with. An oil company offered their helicopter (for free) to film the Africa Mercy’s arrival to the port of Cotonou.

The massive ship looked magnificient in the dawn light. The Africa Mercy came into port blasting its horn to a faithful gathering on the dock singing worship songs. This was God’s ship and God’s way.

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