Buchanan

So I'm a couple months behind in stories and adventures. We've had Jamie's sister and family visit in December and my parents visited in February. I plan on having a post soon about those visits, but first one about a trip we took last week with my parents. On of our security guards, Morris, has wanted us to visit his village near Buchanan for months. We took the opportunity to visit the surrounding area and show my parents a little of the Liberian countryside.

Before we get to those pictures, a boy came by the house last week with a small sea turtle he wanted to sell. Here's a picture of it in one of the boys hands. Colton went and got some money from the Sacras to buy it, and then went down with the Sacra boys and his brothers to release it on the beach. Cute little guy...

Back to Buchanan. The route to Buchanan takes you past the airport and briefly through the Firestone rubber plantation. After you leave Buchanan you hit some road construction. There are a few miles of beautifully paved roads...then back to reality. About halfway there you get to this bridge...

The heavy road construction and other trucks have taken their toll. Here you see a beam that supports the road decking is loose.

The truss supports on the sides have also taken a beating.

But there was a crew there reattaching the decking. We had to wait 15 minutes while they finished their welding.

Here they are straightening out some of the decking before they weld it.

We made it across the bridge and to the junction to drive to Morris's village. Unfortunately, we found out the bridge was out to his village. We decided to visit his sister's village instead because it was closer to the road. So we turned around and spent a little time at the market along the highway before heading to his sister's village. As usual, Blessing drew a pretty good crowd.

People wanted to know where her parents were and why she was with white people. Here's Jamie explaining about her cleft lip.

The crowd eventually grew until they were blocking the road and we had to move on before someone got run over.

So we headed on down the road towards the village. We had to travel around maybe 6-8 miles of dirt road to reach the trailhead.

We hiked about 20 minutes to get into the village. It was a smallish village with 10+/- houses. As usual they were excited to have visitors. Here's Blessing saying hello.

Kobe and Colton waiting in the village palava hut.

Our host Morris.

Walking through the village checking out the houses.

Like usual, we handed out some glow bracelets. The kids enjoyed them in the daylight, but I'm sure it was more exciting in the village after the sun went down.

A few of the houses in the village.

The village photo...

Many of the houses had some sort of paint decorations. Some were handprints, some footprints. This one looked like they took a chicken and dipped it in paint before smacking it against the wall...just a guess.

The boys and grandpa in front of a termite mound on the way to the village.

After visiting the village we went onto Buchanan and had dinner before heading back home. Around 8pm, after the sun had set, we got a flat tire. Luckily the area we stopped to change the tire was wide and left plenty of room for working while all the dump trucks flew by. By the time the car was ready to go again there were a group of children who had gathered around and were dancing to a small radio they had. Morris asked them what they were listening to and they replied French English. More to come...

One week post op

Before the after pictures, we'll start with a series of pictures from before. Here she is the night she was placed with us. Her impossibly big eyes.

This one is a little graphic. She was very "dry". She also had neonatal breast hypertrophy, a condition that corrects itself over the first couple months of a babies life.
getting fed through an NG tube at Benson Hospital.

Blessing is a HUGE University of Washington fan

2 hours post op

3 days post op, with her hair platted.

1 week post op, with all her stitches and scabbing gone.

She still has lots of drool though.
She still has a few surgeries to go to fix her palate and nose but she's off to a good start.

Surgery Update

So today was the big day for Blessing. We traveled to Firestone Hospital (Duside Hospital) at 7AM to have Blessing there and ready for the team here from Children's Surgery International (CSI) and Smile Train. The team arrived last Friday. Had two days for screening Saturday and Sunday, and have been performing surgeries since Monday. When we originally talked to the doctors back in September they were hoping to perform 60-70 surgeries in 4.5 days. In an unofficial count by one of the staff they are estimated to have performed 130+ surgeries by the time the pack up tomorrow about noon (to catch their flight out tomorrow evening). So many hernias, cleft lips and other problems fixed.

So without further ado...here are a couple final pictures of Blessing while waiting in the pre-op room.

After getting her ankle IV. Does she look nervous?

While waiting during her procedure, I took a few pictures around the hospital. You know you aren't in Washington anymore when the satellite dishes are pointed straight up.

A picture on the wall outside the surgery theaters of the rooms during the civil war...

The first picture post-op. She wasn't real happy, but after being cut on and not eating for over 12 hours we all get a little fussy.

After a bottle and a little time to relax in the pediatric ward. She still has more surgeries in her future for her palate and nose, but an incredible job to fix her lip.

So many other children there. It was such a joy to get to interact and play with them. This little one knocked a large pot of boiling oil onto herself a little over a month ago. Despite the serious burns over much of her body she is slowly healing and had a good time with the CSI nurses and staff.

The Ped ward we were in at Firestone...very nice.

A couple other surgery recipients resting.

Blessing resting.

Couldn't pass up an opportunity to take a picture of an odd construction. It looks like the toilet flange was a little too close to the wall so they sunk the toilet into the wall.

From left to right: Dr. Keith Chapman (assisted with Blessing's surgery), some woman in the hallway who wanted her picture taken, and Dr. Kofi Boahene. Kofi was born in Ghana but currently works with Johns Hopkins and was the surgeon for Blessing's operation. Thank you Kofi and the rest of the CSI/Smile Team.

And one final picture of the scenery on the way to Firestone Hospital on the Firestone rubber plantation. If you kinda squint you might think they are grape vines in Napa.
Thank you for all your prayers.

Friday

I started out thinking I'd make a Facebook post about my trip to town today, but decided it would be far too long. So I decided I'd just rundown my entire day on the blog to give people an idea what I do on any given day.

I woke up about 6AM (not counting getting up with Blessing at 4AM when she decided it was time to eat). Got in the shower and was happy to see we had water pressure. Yesterday I turned on the shower to find a trickle running out. Only one of our 4 well pumps were working. We were able to get two of them fixed though and they held through the night. Ran up to the powerhouse at 6:30 to switch generators before the smaller generator that I left running overnight overloaded.

After our 7:30 devotional I went to the hospital with our plumbers to figure out why there was not water in two of the OB rooms. After crawling through the attic for 10 minutes we came up with a plan to fix the issue. On my way out of the hospital I was stopped by our masons who were trying to figure out how to fix a collapsing septic tank(Really more trying to figure out how to empty the contents so they could fix it). Then it was back to the powerhouse because we were getting low on fuel and the generators were having trouble. The next few hours were spent running between the carpenters, plumbers and masons trying to solve problems and deliver materials. Oh, and a call from out dental clinic that our plumbing fix had flooded the hygenist's room.

After a 30 minute meeting with the executive director and a lunch meeting with a couple other missionaries...our weekly fuel truck showed up. Always the lowlight of my week. 40 minutes +/- of arguing over what 1,000 gallons of diesel looks like. Last week one of the guys asked me to set him up with an American girl and left me his phone number. If anyone out there is looking for a single Mandingo male who works the hose on a diesel truck let me know.

After a quick lunch I went with our plumbers to ELWA Junction to get a proforma for boots, gloves, coveralls, a "nose thing" and safety goggles. With the E.D.'s help I was able to convince them earlier to take on the task of emptying the solids out of the septic tank at the hospital. After a couple more stops I headed to town to buy a few things.

Downtown Monrovia is around 30-60 minutes from ELWA depending on traffic. I tried to stop on the way for some fuel at the Total gas station in Congo Town but they were out of gasoline (and diesel too). There's been a fuel shortage the last couple weeks, so I try to get gas whenever possible. I arrived downtown on Randall Street around 4:00 and was able to exchange some auto parts that I picked up last week for some that will hopefully fit one of the hospital pickups.

The next stop was to a household goods store to pick up an air conditioner. This was my third attempt. The last two times the unit wasn't there and the owner wasn't able to go to his warehouse on Bushrod Island, the second time because he was allegedly in a car accident. This time I arrived and he said the type I wanted were hard to find and he didn't have any right now. But he took me to a neighboring store that was supposed to have one. The owner of the new store told me he had an almost new unit that he'd sell me for about 1/4 the cost of new. I told him to bring it out so I could see it...an HOUR later his driver came back with the unit from their offsite warehouse (maybe caps wasn't really enough, we're talking an hour of waiting in a hot humid store with no AC and not much else to look at). I wish I had my camera. This thing looked at least 3 years old, had graffiti on the outside and was missing the inside panel so you could see the condenser from inside the room. They tried to plug it in but it wouldn't come on. After removing the casing from the top they discovered the fan wouldn't rotate because there were "so so" rat's nests built around the fan. After politely declining to purchase the unit I headed back home...

After delivering some cement to a couple of our masons who were working late I headed home for dinner. We got a call then that the Chapman's were watching Wayne's World with some of the guys from Orphan Relief and Rescue so we headed over for movie night.

So now it's time to get to bed. Blessing has her screening tomorrow with the team from Smile Train/Children's Surgery International that just arrived. I'll leave you with some pictures of her in a classic "Johnny Jump up" that we borrowed from our friends the Ngendas.