Brain drain

I feel like I should be honest here about this blog. I spoke with my sister this afternoon on Facebook as I was trying to figure out a plan of attack for an update. I was really struggling. I'm trying to keep things low key for another week or so, so I'm tucked away in my bunk blogging after having gone out this morning. I get worn out easily, what with the sleep situation and overwhelming nature of this whole transition. As much as I want to relate and share this all with friends and family, I find myself staring dumbly at the empty Blogger box. How do I put all of the color and life into a little white box with black lettering? How do I even try to get just maybe the shades of grey?

It comes out feeling flat and hollow. I can't even make sense of what I see.

In the jeep back from church this morning, another newcomer from England (one of our anesthetists) commented as we drove past a VW dealer. She said, "It's so strange, the big and glossy in the midst of such poverty and filth." She's right. There's no sanitation, and so the streets are littered with rubbish. Trash is thrown out of the windows at home. Sewer runs uncovered down the ditches in the street. Previous Mercy Shippers all chuckle without a smile and say, "but it was so much worse in Liberia." But I wasn't in Liberia.

And yet there are concrete planters lining the roundabouts on the smooth main thoroughfares out of Cotonou. Half of them have greenery while the other half are crumbling, the rebar coming out in a grotesque manner. Bright billboards advertise perfume, soda, and beer- occasionally in English. Even a cellphone sometimes pops up on the ear of somebody shuffling down a grimy alley. The juxtaposition is jarring.

I told my sister I feel unworthy to report much of anything from here. Who am I to comment on life on the Africa Mercy in Benin? It would be easier to just point readers to some blogs of note. Like Meg's. Like Ali's. Like Suzanne's. We share life aboard the ship and have access to most of the same photos after all. But my sister said, "they don't want to read blogs of people they don't know. They want to read through the filter of someone they know and can relate to. And you're not lame, you just feel that way."

So while I'm honored that anybody is reading my ramblings at all, please let me tell you that I'm unqualified for any of this. I apologize for any misinformation or missteps I may make. I'm an American who is seeing poverty and desperation in the eyes and broken bodies of the forgotten poor here in a floating hospital off the coast of West Africa. I am seeing life I don't understand in the bewildering city of Cotonou. I don't get it. I don't understand the politics and culture. I probably won't even scratch the surface. But I see some of it- I smell it, taste it, hear it, and even touch it. Amazingly, I get to be a small part of it all.