We rushed down the gangway just after the President of Liberia entered the ship with her entourage. We only had a 30 minute window. We are not allowed to leave the ship when she is coming or going. It was a bit of a rush, we had to get all 8 of us (who go out to New Matadi Bible Study) into the Land Rovers before the entourage began to move again. As I walked down the gangway I couldn’t help but think that it was royalty that we were going towards and not dashing away from. The nine girls that I have fallen in love with are daughters of the KING OF KINGS and therefore royalty.

I have tried to prepare myself for this fateful day that I would have to say goodbye, but I was not prepared for what actually happened. We decided to play games with the little kids in the orphanage because we predominantly spend time with the older kids. Sarah brought water balloons and we had a balloon toss. It is so funny to see their excitement and joy.

The girls trying Pop Rocks for the first time. Regina started screaming there was energy in her mouth. It was very funny!!

We then split up and we played games with our girls. Which was hilarious. These girls love to laugh and play. Later we split into groups and prayed for each other. And eventually I gave them each one last hug and told them each how much I love  them. We got in the car and drove away.

I wish I could better express how the day went. To be honest I don’t remember all the details. I mostly remember them laughing during the games and tears in their eyes during the goodbyes. I know I have said this before but I truly wish you could know them. They are so lovely.

I want to thank you so much  for  supporting us this year so I could know them, hear their laughs, and be their friends. It has truly been an honor.

On Wednesday my team of faithful Bible Study Leaders piled into Land Rovers and headed out to New Matadi, like we do every Wednesday, and arrived to our usual welcoming crew. Most of the children from the orphanage and neighborhood come out and greet us by name and escort us into the compound. Usually the compound yard is bare except of children playing. This week when we walked down the crazy cement steps and onto the orange dirt yard we were faced with a circle of chairs. Enough for the boys and the girls altogether. Instead of 50 children playing in the yard they were all sitting against the wall. We were confused. We never have the boys and girls together. We had our own plans of what our second to last Bible study would look like, and this was not it.

Eventually we all sat down and Mama Vic stood up and then it started to make sense. One of the boys had a hand written paper of the itinerary and the program began. First they sang some songs about being blessed and choosing to follow the Lord no matter what. I couldn’t handle it. The tears came, plenty, plenty. I started to think about what these 9 girls mean to me, how far they have come, and how much I will miss them. After the singing we were each of us girls were presented with a dress and the boys were given a shirt. As each of us were given our gifts one of the kids said thank you. As my big yellow dress was being put over my head all I could think was, no thank you. Thank you for teaching me what true forgiveness is, thank you for teaching me what a hunger for the God’s Word looks like, thank you for teaching me how to laugh in the face of adversity and trust and believe that God will carry my burdens and help me achieve my dreams.

At the end of the program Mama Vic stood and said ” Tank you for coming out each week and teaching them about God. I have seen them change. They use to give me hard time. They used to fight and be vexed (angry). They have changed and it is cause you people have shown them how to love God. Tank you”

All I could think was, “No, thank you”.

We are so blessed on the wards and in the OR to work with surgeons that really, genuinely care about their patients. It gives me great joy to see Dr. Gary round on his patients. He takes time to answer the patients questions and he shows them that he truly cares. He has been on the ship for over 20 years and knows the cultural implications of West Africa. He thinks about those things when issues come up and he teaches those of us who are not aware of these foreign thoughts, practices and ways of life. He is kind and gentle and is an artist in the way he patches up our patient’s deformities.

Dr. Jose is from Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands. He has been working ashore in West Africa for over 2 decades. I am not sure how he does it but he finds children with problems I have never even seen before. He has brought many of his patients that he has been working with for a long time onto the ship. Many of his patients need their esophagus dilated due to swallowing something like bleach and causing them difficulty or inability to swallow. Dr. Jose can be abrupt but he has the biggest heart, especially for his patients. When he is rounding and the patients are allowed to start eating and drinking he says “You need to drink juice and eat biscuits (cookies).” in his Spanish accent. When his patients see him they give him cuddles and high 5s, even though all of the procedures they have had done.

Last week one of the translators overheard the mama’s talking about Dr’s that she had never heard of. Esther heard them referring to Dr. Patch Patch and Dr. Juice. She asked them who they were talking about and they answered “Dr. Patch Patch is Dr. Gary cuz he patch up faces. Dr juice is Dr. Jose cuz he says “drink  Juice, drink juice.” When I told Dr. Gary and Dr. Jose about their nick names they laughed, actually I think that they really likethem.

When I first met Esau he was not smiling. Actually he was screaming his head off, to be exact. See, Esau started developing a bump on his right eye that made his eye bulge out and within a couple of weeks he lost his vision. His mother and father was killed in the war, his older brother Matthew (age 22) has been raising Esau since he was little. Matthew and Esau live in Bong town which is about 4 hours away by car.

Esau had his eye taken out because it was no longer viable. Dr. Tom also took a biopsy of the tumor and Esau was diagnosed with Burkitt’s Lymphoma. There are 2 types of this lymphoma, endemic and sporadic.

Sporadic Burkitt’s Lymphoma is found in Europe and North America and is very hard to cure. Endemic Burkitt’s Lymphoma is what we see frequently here in equatorial Africa and is what was causing Esau’s right eye to bulge and his left eye to join in the swelling. Last Saturday I gave Esau his first Chemo. My first thought was, “umm since when are we a Oncology Hospital?”. But the reality is Esau was still bleeding and was not ready to transfer to St. Josephs Hospital, the place where we send our patients for chemo for Burkitt’s. Esau really needed to get that first dose so Dr. Wolfgang and I gave it to him and Praise the Lord he did well and the tumor start decreasing within the first 12 hours.

Esau has the most amazing laugh. He tosses his head back and laughs from the depth of his belly. He is a lover. He gives hugs to anyone who will take and he waves with both hands at everyone who passes him. I went in to see him today and he climbed up onto my lap and gave me his trademark gap tooth grin and slobbery kisses. He will be leaving the ship soon and will continue his chemo at St. Joseph’s. Please pray that he will continue getting better.

Let me first start by saying I asked permission from Naill Harbison one of the contributors from the blog over at ifoods.tv to repost this here.  Naill has put together 25 reasons he would never own a restaurant and I would have to say 99% of the reasons are the SAME reason why I struggle with thoughts of owning my own.

Just last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) I emailed a friend (thanks for the info Bobby M. !) about zoning issues and building.  (Bobby’s one of those architectural type genius’s)  But before I get too far off the subject here is Naill Harbison’s post that I can whole heartedly agree with AND this may explain a few things to those people who think us Chefs should always ‘open our own place’ - sometimes its better as a dream in our head, than a reality:

Nov 17

25 Reasons I would never open a restaurant

Funny, Pictures, Uncategorized, food, reviews

Posted by Niall Harbison

Being a chef and having worked for some pretty famous people one of the first things I am always asked when I meet people is why would you not open a restaurant? I have even been made offers by people willing to put up the money to open here in Dublin and although usually politely declined here are the real reasons why I wouldn’t open a restaurant……..

1.  Having worked for Paul Allen I have seen how wealthy technology can make you. I have never seen a restaurateur with a boat like this……

2.  We are entering into a massive recession and there are far better restaurateurs out there than me who will fail.

3.  Over a third of restaurants close within the first year of business

4.  I don’t want to my busy time of work to be Friday and Saturday evenings when my friends are all out having fun.

5.  Having a Monday and Tuesday as days off is not that appealing either!

6.  I don’t want to spend years of my life working in an aggressive and stressful environment.

7.  I don’t want to spend my life in fear of getting slaughtered in a restaurant review

8.  I don’t want to work in a business where staff turnover is so high.

9.  I don’t want to spend 70% of my time in a place that has no natural light.

10.  I don’t want to worry constantly if I am going to go out of business just because business has been slow for 1 week.

11.  The customer is not always right when it comes to food and I don’t want to have to pretend they are just to keep people happy.

12.  I don’t want to smell like fat all the time.

13.  I would rather not injure myself using sharp knife/hot oil/ovens etc

14.  If I invested the couple of hundred thousand needed in AAPL and GOOG stocks instead I would be considerably richer in 3 years time.

15.  I love what I do at the moment too much to sacrifice that for anything.

16.  There are a lot of chancers working in the restaurant business.

17.  I don’t want to stand on my feet for 18 hours a day.

18.  All of friends would be expecting freebies when they came in. It is very hard to say no to friends but this kills a lot of restaurants.

19.  I would drink too much of the amazing wines we would have in the cellars

20.  Unless I sold cookbooks and had a few restaurants (thus losing quality) I would not be very wealthy in 20 years time.

21.  I don’t want to spend 80 hours a week behind a stove.

22.  Cooking can become a chore instead of being something that you love doing when it is mass produced.

23.  I don’t want to have to wear a hat for 70% of my life.

24.  Being in a large freezer first thing in the morning is one of the most horrible experiences in life and one I don’t want to repeat until I am dead.

25.  I would end up washing dishes/cleaning toilets/scrubbing floors when somebody phones in sick at the last moment!

Yep, that about says it! (and sums it up quite nicely) ~

Just a quick word about this - a little over two weeks left to contribute to the Liberia Fund!!!

We will have a great ‘Goodbye’ lunch of African food cooked out of our galley on December the 5th which will officially be the last day local Liberians or Visitors will be able to come aboard before we pack up and make plans to leave.

I want to thank our generous contributors - so far this is the list- (keeping you mostly anonymous so people on the internet will not track you down and hound you for money):

Mike & Judy W. (family)

Justin & Rachael R. (friends from GCC)

Tim B. (former Aussie galley worker)

Ria V. (provided by her home church in Holland)

For now I am leaving the amounts out, Stephanie and I will blog again to post exactly what was given and how we put it to good use for the Orphanage (that Stephanie has been involved with all year) and the Local Dayworkers that will be losing their job when we leave (that have worked with Tyrone all year).

Some amazing things have happened already with the money that was given but I want to leave that for another post.

So Please hurry, or don’t forget if you planned on giving before the deadline…we need the extra time to process getting the funds available.

Thank you so much!

[just a precaution to say this is specificially for the Liberian Fund, not our financial support - Stephanie and I will still be with Mercy Ships and our financial support will still be processed thru February and a little time after that while we are travelling back to the United States to visit our supporters]