Insensible Losses

On this the last day of the year, I started it by running in the dark holding a flashlight.  Red clay dirt and dust clung to my sweat.  And then dawn peeked through, its oozing blush the color you remember from your first born's infant cheek when she had finished crying and fell asleep in your arms.  As the light relieved the darkness (shift change), I caught my breath and gave thanks.  Today was a new day.

The nurses, contract employees of International Medical Corps (IMC), and host country nationals, threatened to go on strike last night over a salary dispute.  Luckily, they still came to work.  Jobs, if scarce before Ebola, would now be on the endangered list were they animals.  Sierra Leone has lost a significant portion of their healthcare workers to Ebola.  Those remaining have signed on with NGO's such as IMC, Doctors without Borders, Partners in Health, GOL, etc and continue their struggle to find work while remaining safe.  Dr. Sensay, one of my Sierra Leonean colleagues, is a tall thin man with high cheek bones and large hands.  He has been working in the Ebola response for one year now and has lost many family members, friends, and colleagues.  He is always smiling on rounds and pumping the patients full of hope, reminding them of their faith and inner strength. Yes.

This evening before I left work we found out that two of the kids tested negative twice for Ebola and could be sent home.  We delivered the news with George, from the "psycho-social" department and the children smiled and looked down at their sandals.  The boy, Momo, has a brother boys who is still in the confirmed ward with Ebola.  The girl, as we were leaving, leaned up against a pole in the yellow and brown printed pattern skirt common to West Africa.  In Krio, a language which sounds a lot like Pidgin English, she called out to George.  I asked George as we continued walking along the chain linked fence what she had said.  "She told me the man in the bed next to her just died."

I will be starting my clinical work soon, having trained now for two days with the personal protective equipment.  We have a large team here now with three other ex-patriate doctors and 4 ex-patriate nurses along with doctors from Sierra Leone and Pakistan.  One of the doctors is a retired surgical oncologist from Freemont, CA and works at Highland Hospital in Oakland.  A brotherhood is forged abruptly in disaster relief I am learning.

I am sitting at my desk listening to Lana Del Rey on my headphones.  The darkness here holds olfactory mysteries and unknown terrain.  You can hear the night bird songs through the window.   I think they are talking about the mystery beyond mystery.  Yes, night birds cut right to the chase.  Was it Emerson who once said that everything that God has made has a crack in it?

Congregants

Our Work Tent

Sign Language

Doffing