February 19th-

Things are really shaping up here in Togo, as we get closer to the start of surgeries. I assisted with the first screening here on Tues. Due to upcoming elections, the Togolese government has requested that we try to not have vary large crowds gathering. So, instead of the mass screening (with 1000’s of patients) that we usually have, there are going to be about 30 small screenings (only accepting 400 – 500 people at each) over the next ten weeks. Tuesday’s screening was a bit disappointing, only about 75-100 people came to be screened, and not very many of them were canidates for what we can do. But, the next two (on Wed and Thurs) had MUCH better turn outs.

Tuesday was ‘Shrove Tues’, never knew that’s what the Tues before Ash Wednesday was called, but obviously it’s quite popular in England. Basically it’s an excuse to get together for pancakes – which are actually more like what I would call crepes, rather than pancakes. They are so delicious, especially with Nutella on them! I was taught the proper way to make them with sugar and lemon juice on them, so I feel quite cultured now.

Went on my first dive, since completing the scuba diving course in Tenerife, today. The water here in the port is kinda nasty, but not nearly as bad as the port water in Benin was! It was a ver y different experience than the Tenerife diving – the water was a lot murkier, and warmer, and we had to go under the ship (I was slightly nervous at first), and there were only three of us on the dive (compared to eight). As we were standing on the edge of the dock preparing to jump in, we noticed a lovely sight of a couple of turds gently floating by. I must say, it was NOT the sort of thing that instills the desire to jump into the water, but I was already committed, so in I went! There were also many pieces of trash and lots of plastic bags. Added twist was that, for the last few weeks we have had the Discovery channel people here because they are doing a segment on Mercy Ships on their show called ‘Mighty Ships’. So they wanted to film us diving – well, jumping in and then getting out. So supposedly I will have my ‘15 minutes of fame’ sometime in the near future. They didn’t get to the dock in time to film us getting out of the water, so we had to traipse back down to the bow of the ship and jump in again, swim down the side of the ship and come out again at the aft end again. Then we each had a brief interview before heading back up to deck eight to get out of our gear.

To spice things up a little bit, and just because cook-outs are fun, we will be having bbq chicken on the grill out on the dock for supper tonight. There will probably be some of our finely talented musicians out there playing a bit of music for our enjoyment too. So it should be quite nice!

Then, after supper, we are having a Ward Open House, so that all the non medical crew can come down and see the hospital and get a little idea of what goes on down there. Hopefully it will make them more comfortable, when we have the Adopt-a-patient program, to come down and visit patients. Some of the other ward/OR nurses have been planning many fun little activities for the crew to enjoy, such as – ‘Take care of a difficult patient’, race to assemble and put on a patient gown, get their blood pressure checked, try their hand at suturing, intubating, and also try out the OR bed with stirrups – if they want! It should be a really fun night!

So that’s a few of the recent AFM activities; and now it is time for chow!