Michele on the Africa Mercy: Saying goodbye and driving

We've started the process of saying goodbye to our patients and families because we will be leaving Liberia soon. Today we said goodbye to our first family because it will be unlikely that we will be able to visit them again.

In this family, I never got to meet the patient, Liaa, because she passed away before I started working in palliative care. Liaa left behind three small children and now her mother Theresa is caring for them (the husband left her when she got sick). Mercy Ships helped Theresa to start a small market business since she now had three more children to feed. She makes 'small small' profit but it isn't really worth all the effort. We've offered her ideas on how to improve her business but she has resisted them. For example, she will buy 10 of something for 100LD and then she will sell the 10 items for 100LD. Obviously that doesn't make sense to spend your time on a market business like that.

Anyways, she is doing what she can and the oldest child at least is in school this semester. Here's a photo of the baby, who will never know her mother. Her name is Chinese Girl (yes, that's her real name) and she cries everytime she sees me. She has TB and she also just spent a week and a half in the hospital for respiratory distress. She is absolutely adorable!

Here's a photo of the entire family. Jerry (our translator), Josephine, Dorcas, Theresa, Chinese Girl, Rebecca and Jean (my partner).

It was a really good visit and it was nice to kind of bless them and then release them back to their normal life. I think as long as we visit them, we keep them from their post-mourning life. It would be different if we were friends. We like to think of our families as friends but I don't know that they see us that way. We're in this awkward position of having things they need and want and they are in the position of always asking us for things. It makes for an unbalanced friendship.

The other exciting thing that happened today is that I took the driving test and passed so I am now officially a Liberian driver. I didn't actually have to get a license here or pass a Liberian test. My drivers license from home is valid here and I had to pass the test by taking out the Mercy Ships head of transportation so that he could evaluate if he wanted to entrust a valuable Land Rover to me:)

So I hopped in the Land Rover and he said we were going to the police station. I'm thinking 'uh oh' that's downtown and there's a really steep hill where I have to stop for traffic (the car is a stick shift). But it went fine...I didn't kill any pedestrians or hit any taxis or stall the car. So I will officially be driving starting Tuesday. (BTW, the reason we were going to the police station is a long story but let me just say it wasn't pleasant and I kept thinking about the guns they were carrying and that we were making them mad!)

You may be thinking that driving isn't a big deal but you've never been here to see how bad the streets are and how crazy the pedestrians are and the fact that you share the streets with taxis, people, cows, goats, wheelbarrows, street vendors, humongous overloaded trucks and tons of broken down vehicles. You don't go fast enough to hurt anyone if you hit a taxi but people (kids and adults) run out into the street all the time without looking.

The other scary part is that we are frequently on roads that are so bad that we have to be in four-wheel drive. Just today, the road to get to Theresa's house was bad and I'm really surprised we didn't get stuck. Here are some photos of the road so you can see what I mean.