Sunday, April 5, 2015

Congo Day 13 - He is Risen

Perhaps one of my favorite days of the year. Easter Sunday. A day to celebrate and remember the day that Jesus rose from the dead, the inspiration for everything I do in my life and the power that gives me the ability to do what I'm doing here in Africa. If Jesus didn't rise, I wouldn't be serving in the Congo, so it's amazing to think about the power that his conquering of death still has today. It also really gives me some hope for everything that I see around here, all the sickness, and all the death. I trust that God's grace and mercy pours over these young children who die in their first few years of life, and I hope to see them again someday, where we can celebrate the resurrection of our bodies into heaven with Christ as well. Without that hope, I don't know really how anyone does it. I would feel defeated if this was it. If this was the end. If we died and nothing happened. Then, to watch a child die at the age of 1, 2, or 3 years old would be defeating beyond belief. But, Jesus has conquered death, and that is an incredibly comforting thought.

I will miss the celebration at home, as Easter Sunday is one of the days in the year I see the extended family, and it's always good to catch up with them. I will hopefully find some time to FaceTime over, if the internet is working as well, kind of depends. But, I'm glad to be here, celebrating Easter Sunday with this wonderful group of people. Tonight for "Sunday Night Live," I'm looking forward to leading them in a time of worship and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. This morning we had a baptism in the Oubangi River. A young woman had come to their church service, heard the news of the gospel, and accepted Christ. She then wanted to be baptized to declare to the people of Impfondo and her family that she was a Christian now. So we met down by the river, sang songs in Lingala, prayed, she shared her testimony, and she was baptized. A great picture of the power of what today represents as well, and proof that God is working in all corners of the earth. I'm glad that I can be a part of it, and serve Him and serve them here.

This is already the longest I've been on a medical mission trip, as most of my trips have been a week long given the time constraints of vacations within the medical field. Typically you have one week and you have to travel and work within that week, so usually it's about 5 days of clinic work and then you fly home. I've had a little over a week here in Impfondo working in the hospital and have been in the Congo for about 2 weeks now. How is it, you may be wondering? I love it so far. I can really see myself doing extended periods of time in countries like this. I've already experienced so many great things, and I'm looking forward to the next two weeks and seeing what happens. Today we have a jungle walk scheduled at 3pm with the Aca people and Sarah. Even just the small things like that are amazing life experiences that I'll be able to share with others forever. "Once in the Congo I went on a jungle walk with the Aca and they showed me...." Pretty cool.

It will be a bit different when Jason leaves, but at least I have a bike now so I can ride up to where the Harveys live, as well as Kara, Stephanie, and Amanda. I think we may try to plan some more nights of playing games and hanging out so that we aren't all just sitting around doing nothing in the evenings. I'm hoping to work a bit in the eye clinic with Henri and watch some of the surgeries he does as well. Hopefully get some training on the slit lamp and eye exams in general. I hate eyes, and I'm terrible with them. It seems like everyone I know in emergency medicine hates eyeballs. Not sure why, they're just of zero interest to me. But, I should learn, especially anything traumatic related to the eyeball, and there seems to be plenty of trauma around here. Machetes go everywhere, and we've had several machete accidents (not sure if to the eye yet). We did have I think it was a glass bottle exploded into someone's eye the other day, and they did a surgery to repair what was torn. Henri does eye surgeries on Mondays, so I'll have to see if Jason wants to do some before he leaves on this Tuesday, and the girls leave the following Monday, so they will likely want to do some this week as well. That'll leave the following Monday open for me to work with Henri.

At 3pm sharp Sarah Spear showed up to take us on our Jungle, or "Forest," walk. I really emphasize the "sharp" because she was actually early, which is insane for the Congo. Everyone seems to be on the Congolese time, which is typically a very -ish culture when it comes to time. So, 3pm-ish could be 3:30, 4, 5....yeah, I guess I know people in America like that ha. I joked to Jason that we should be ready before 3pm in case she was early....and then there she was. We all piled into the truck and she drove us down the road that isn't paved so nicely to get to the Aca, or as you would call them the pygmies. I'm gonna butcher the spelling, but she was telling us about the two pygmy tribes, the Aca and the Butu. The Butu seem to be the more oppressive tribe and make the Aca work for them, and even have enslaved them at times. Pretty crazy. Anyway, we pulled up to the pygmy village and Sarah went to ask permission for them to take us on a forest walk. They were more than happy to oblige. They are short, yes, in case that was your burning question. They are also insanely in shape, which after walking with them through the jungle for two and a half hours, I can see why. They told us beforehand to watch out for Army Ants, which are big and nasty and bite hard and multiple times. They actually cut off the heads and use the mouths for sutures in some places because they clamp down so hard. We sadly didn't see any though, so that was kind of a bummer. They took us into the jungle and pointed out different trees and plants that they used for medicines. Use this bark, boil it in hot water, and sit it in for treating hemorrhoids. Boil this other bark for stomach flu. Use this leaf to make tea for a cough. Some of it was pretty cool and sounded like it maybe actually worked, but who knows how much is the placebo effect and how much really works. I'm sure some of it does. They also had the HIV treatment leaf, so you know. I guess there's a group who wants to come down and do some scientific testing on some of this and see if there's any medical merit to it, which would be cool. Maybe the plant has anti-acidic properties and actually helps stomach ulcers. I doubt they have the magic cure for HIV in the plant, but some of their cures would be cool to test.

They cut down some vines and had us drink from them, which was pretty sweet. The water is almost sweet, and tastes a bit like it came from a plant, but it's clean water and there was actually a lot in there. One woman said she would build a shelter, and before you knew it, there was a shelter made. They showed us a hive up in a tree and they built a fire, smoked out the bees, and took all the honeycomb. Sadly there was no honey yet, so they ate the bee larvae from the honeycomb. I hear the fresh honey from the comb is amazing, so that was a bummer, but cool to see how they did it. I have pictures and videos of that. They also built a swing out of a vine and we each took a turn swinging on the vine and they sang a welcome song for us during the fun. I also have videos of that. It was pretty fun. We were in the jungle for a little over two hours, came back and took some pictures with the pygmies and headed out. Oh, we did get to try some sweet cacao fruit. That's what they called it. The cocoa beans were inside, and the pulp of the actual fruit was amazing. Really really sweet white-ish pulp. They pulled down some papaya and ate it in front of me, but didn't give us any. I guess I didn't do any work for it so I can't complain, but it looked delicious.

A lot of the hand carved stuff made of ebony I got from Becky came from these people, so it was cool to see their village and where they live. I've got some cool statues and stuff for the walls, and some carved animals as well. Again, you'll have to just come by and visit me in Detroit now if you want to see them.

We headed right over to the Harvey's house for Sunday Night Live. We started off with some worship songs, and I led on the guitar and piano, and they were able to project the lyrics for the new songs so everyone was able to sing. Cherissa, Joyce, and Becky played Jesu Joy of Man's Desire on piano, violin, and flute, so that was cool to hear. The team from Hong Kong then shared their testimonies and how they ended up in the Congo to help out with the internet problems. We did an Easter egg hunt for the kids plus a few adults, and as we opened the eggs we told the Easter story with the contents of the 12 eggs. We then closed with a couple songs and Becky made kettle corn again. There were also brownies, oh yeah. I don't know who made them, but they were delicious. Wasn't expecting brownies, so made it even better. Getting treats like that in an area like this is especially nice for them, since they can go long periods of time without having certain food items. It was a really great way to celebrate Easter, and I'm glad I was able to lead worship for them.

We headed over to one of the other missionary's houses, who is out of town now, but they have a TV and we were able to watch the Barcelona futbol game for a bit with the Harvey family. Nice end to the night. Jason and I will ride our bikes back afterwards and I'll try to get on the internet to FaceTime the family back home. No real clinical duties today. I don't think I talked about the church service today either actually now that I think about it. Dr. Wegner ended up not being able to come, so last minute they asked if I would lead the service and play guitar. So I had Joyce jump on the piano and I played guitar instead. Sadly, we had another kid with cerebral malaria who coded and that's why Dr. Wegner couldn't make it to the service. Sounds like maybe there were some other pretty sick kids this morning too, because when I did see Dr. Wegner he said it was a pretty bad morning. I've been here in Impfondo for just over a week and watched several kids die, I can't imagine what it's like for the extended periods of time. In the ER it's pretty different because they come in sick, and if it's a code blue, you do what you can. Even if you have a patient in the hospital say in the ICU, you still aren't the one caring for them constantly, you round and see them and make decisions and leave. Here, you do everything. So watching the girl I spent 8 hours keeping alive then code and die the next morning, that's when it gets a bit harder. You don't want to get too attached, because as I've said, death is common in the Congo. But also you don't want death to completely unaffect you. Death doesn't bother me as much in America when you see it because it's also not as close in the moments after. You don't watch as the families pick up the dead bodies and go bury them. It's also knowing that we could save the kids, if we only had this, that and the other. Jason and I were discussing how you don't hear a whole lot about kids getting sick with infection and dying subsequently in the hospital. Above all, I think what makes it hard in comparison to America, is that it's really simple things that kill them. Malaria just sucks. Aspiration pneumonia. Fevers (we didn't have anyway to give my patient tylenol for instance). Typhoid. Things we could treat in America and keep you alive. We could intubate you, we could give you pressors, we could check your potassium and sodium, and we could keep you alive long enough to survive the infection. In the Congo, we just can't, and I think that's what makes it hard for everyone here, day after day, watching as kids die of malaria because they don't have the necessary equipment.  But, we have a hope in Christ, and today is a reminder that life doesn't end when we die, and I trust God's grace and mercy covers these kids, so it makes it doable.

Thanks for reading! I hope you had a Happy Easter and were able to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

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