I'm embarrassed. How long has it been? May 12? Yikes. Sorry to leave people hanging there.
Yes, I'm still alive. Yes, I'm still on the ship. Yes, I'm still in Africa. Things have certainly changed since my last update though. Let me start several months ago in Togo...
The Who What Where When
The end of Togo was marked by one word for me: burnout. Only 5 months in and I was having a tough time remembering what it was all about and why God put me here. The constant grind of different cultures colliding, the ever-present group of people, the stress of my job, and the homesickness. Ok, I'm not going to beat myself up too much for being burned out. The truth is that most of the people on the ship were going through the same thing as me. I discovered that towards the end of the outreach my job gets exponentially busier. Mainly because we were packing up the hospital for the long sail to South Africa and when you're the guy responsible for all the supplies, that's a tremendous amount of work. We got through it though. Didn't even have any box avalanches during the sail.
Despite the rough times, Togo was a fantastic outreach, both personally and for the ship. I've been trying and trying to find some stats about how many people were helped, but I've been unsuccessful so far. It's a lot people. There are some great patient stories in the same place where they keep the stats. My next update will contain all that information. Scroll down to the 'deeper' section to read about why Togo was great.
Early in August life was moving at 100mph and then we set sail and brakes came on. Ah, the sail. Nothing is quite as good for decompression than being in the middle of the Atlantic, sky full of stars, waves breaking on the bow, and friends to watch movies with. It was exactly what I needed after a hard two months of work. I didn't sit around the whole time. I worked in the galley (kitchen) every other day chopping vegetables and trying not to slide across the floor and crash into an oven. I think if you haven't been on a ship in the ocean you can't really understand what it feels like to constantly be moving side to side. On a calm day, it's kind of relaxing. On a rough day, it can make life very interesting. We hit the tail end of a storm off the coast on Angola about half way through the journey and at times it felt like we were going to tip over. It was fun as long as you weren't trying to actually do something. Like eating, sleeping, working, or sitting. I fell out of my bed a few times during the rough days.
Eventually we rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed over into the Indian Ocean. We saw lots of whales, dolphins, and seals off the coast of the bottom of South Africa. A few days after that we arrived in Durban. The harbor is quite large, and we had to have a pilot lowered down from a helicopter to steer us into the exact spot where we were to dock. My first impression of Durban was that it looked like a real city, complete with tall buildings, paved roads, and traffic lights (called robots here). Soon after docking, 75% of the crew, not including me moved off the ship to an abandoned college campus up in the mountains 90 minutes away.
I should probably mention the whole reason why we are even in South Africa right now. The ship is undergoing some pretty significant repairs. They are replacing all the generators and updating the engine room controls, among many other smaller projects. The ship is currently in dry dock, which means we are resting on some blocks and completely out of the water. The work will last until early January and then we will set sail again to Sierra Leone, where we will spend a big chunk of 2011. The hospital is not running right now, so my job has changed a little bit. I work full time in the galley, making food for the technical crew that lives on board. I can say that it is not quite as fulfilling as working in the hospital, but the work is necessary and temporary, so I am enjoying it. That's it for the details of what's going on. Read on to the good bits...
The Deeper Stuff
I learned a lot in Togo. Well, more accurately, I learned that I don't really know anything about the world and the poor and especially how to serve the poor. I tried some different methods. I thought if I can just speak to them about the gospel and Jesus, that must be the answer. Nope. Most of the people don't speak English and the ones that did knew the gospel better than I did. Then I tried just loving them. Showing them kindness, being generous, trying to help with their situations. Nope again. They didn't want my help. Another contributer to my burnout. I found myself constantly asking the question "How am I supposed to help these people?"
Before I go any further I want to write a bit about the mindset of poverty. Many of you may not know what I mean when I say that because you don't see it very often in the states, although it is prevalent there too. It seems that when poverty resides in a place for generation after generation, a certain way of thinking is adopted. The bottom line of the mentality is that there is nothing outside of an impoverished life. It is not a situation where young people are dreaming about better things and failing to achieve them. It is a situation of no dreams at all. No hope. No belief in change or anything better. Not even a desire for anything better. This is how the people of Togo lived everyday of their lives. Most of the people I met had enough money to eat, get to work, buy clothing, and recharge their cell phone with overpriced minutes. But they were living in poverty.
This poverty mindset is so destructive. It's like strong armor that everyone wears. They learn not to hope for anything because they've been continually oppressed and let down. They are shielded from human connections for that reason. I have not yet been able to get through that armor with anyone who wears it. I have never seen anyone pierce it. That is how powerful and deeply rooted it is here. When I dwell on all this for too long I sometimes start to despair. It is overwhelming.
The motto of MS is "Bringing hope and healing". I like it, but I think "Bringing hope through healing" would be better. The best thing about this organization is that it provides hope for people trapped in the prison of poverty. I think the whole point of the ship is broadcast the message "You can't see? God wants you to look at this world. You can't go out into public? God wants you to have human relationships. You are close to death? God wants to breath life into you. Look. God still redeems people. There is hope." The message gets through. I've seen the look on patients faces when they see themselves for the first time after surgery. I've seen the reaction of families when the patients go home restored. I've seen the response of hundreds of children when they notice that the kid who legs were backwards are now correct and he's playing football. That is what cuts through the poverty armor. It's the love of Jesus, clearly displayed by simple surgeries. I believe in that. I trust in that. And that's why I work hard to make sure that when a nurse reaches over for a syringe, it is there. I want to pour myself into this hospital because it matters. It actually truly makes a difference.
