Sannu family, friends and church family!

Sannu family, friends and church family,

Well another two weeks have flown by in a flurry of activity…hence the need to take a moment and update the blog before it becomes toooo long. Over the past two weeks we completed our time in general medicine, spent a day in the physiotherapy unit, toured the morgue, visited the hospital’s ProLife centre, spent a day with Spring of Life in ante-natal clinic, got involved in a Brothel ministry, facilitated the hospital admission and surgery of a young boy from Gidan Bege, went on a medical outreach to another rural village and pulled a night shift at the hospital doing nursing duty for a fellow missionary who had surgery (no worries it was elective not emergent). We also cooked up a nice meal for Phil and Stephanie to thank them for all their hard work on behalf of the church and for all of their assistance and kindness to us during our time here.

Now in the interest of trying to be somewhat concise, I will pick only three things from the above list to expand on in this blog…well maybe four…lol.

#1 - Spring of Life/Ante-Natal Clinic

On Thursday we joined Spring of Life for their regular HIV awareness session at ante-natal clinic (AN clinic is where pregnant women are assessed and followed during their pregnancies). During this session Spring of Life teaches expectant mothers about HIV and how HIV can be passed on to their infants either through the birthing process or breastfeeding. Of babies born to women who are not on medication for HIV and do breast feed, 3 in 10 are HIV positive. With medication and formula feeding this decreases to less than 1 in 10 babies. The problem is that although a government program called Pepfar gives women access to free HIV care and drugs, formula feeding remains very expensive. Plus the lack of clean water to make formula, lack of adequate facilities to sterilize the bottles and the cultural stigma against formula feeding makes it very difficult to sustain this practice safely.

After the session we helped do HIV testing for the women. Those who are HIV positive are immediately enrolled into the Pepfar program. Evangel hospital also then pays for all of their ante-natal care. It was good to see these programs in action and experience the difference they make. HIV is devastating…it rips apart families, leaves children orphans, affects people of all ages and backgrounds, and does not spare the innocent (ie: those who get it from unfaithful spouses, their parents or contaminated blood transfusions). This is why these programs are essential and why it is encouraging to see so many people like Stephanie and the women of Spring of Life committed to spreading awareness and helping those who truly need our compassion and help.

• An aside here – a couple of weeks ago we joined Phil and Steph in taking several children from Spring of Life to a wildlife park. This was a special treat for the children so many of them wore their best Sunday clothes. Just incase you were wondering what those pictures were from.

#2 - Brothel Outreach

Speaking of compassion, last week we encountered a new opportunity to be involved in an outreach to women in brothels. We met an American woman named Meredith who works for Urban Frontier Missions: a ministry that goes daily into the brothels to share the love of Jesus and offer women the opportunity to escape from that lifestyle. UFM runs a centre where they house women who have left the brothels and teaches them new skills such as cooking, catering, sewing, batik and computer so they can support themselves in a safer way. This past Thursday, Rachel, myself, our two roommates Ellie and Debbie, Meredith and a Nigerian woman named Mama Love who runs the ministry spent a couple hours during the day visiting the women. We asked them about their interests, hope and dreams, health, history, families and how they came to be in this situation. Although some women were there for want of this lifestyle, many were forced into prostitution by poverty or were tricked by supposed friends who lured them from the villages to the city with promises of ‘good’ jobs. We also spoke to the women about how much God loves them, offered to pray with them and presented them with the opportunity to leave and come directly to the UFM centre. Rachel and I also used our involvement with Spring of Life and the women’s clinic at Gidan Bege to encourage the women to get HIV tested and have their health concerns assessed as both of these services are free.

The outreach had mixed results as Mama Love had warned us. Some of the women were happy to talk to us while others just ignored us. Several were interested in UFM’s program and said they wanted to leave the brothel at some point but none accepted our offer to leave at that moment and move to the centre. Mama Love said these mixed results is what makes this ministry so difficult and often discouraging. She said this is why prayer is so important as clearly there is a spiritual battle going on for these beautiful and yet tragic women.

#3 - Lucky

In addition to the women’s clinic and widow ministry at Gidan Bege, City Ministries also operates a small orphanage for street boys. These boys come from tragic backgrounds and end up on the streets after running away or getting kicked out of horrible situations such as abuse, neglect and even cult involvement. Currently the tiny centre holds 13 boys ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old. Although their resources are limited Gidan Bege tries to provide the boys with a safe and stable environment, regular food, health check ups and vaccinations, education, Bible lessons, activity and most importantly love…something they’ve known very little of in their young lives. Over the past two months they boys have come to expect us every Wed for women’s clinic and as such every time we arrive they race across the compound yelling “Aunty! Aunty!” with giant smiles on their faces. Our involvement with the boys increased dramatically in the past two weeks due to one of the boys, named Lucky, needing abdominal surgery to repair a botched surgery he received last year due to a complication from Typhoid. As we are involved with both Evangel and Gidan Bege the Gidan Bege RN asked us to bring Lucky to the hospital for a surgical review. After that it followed naturally that we became involved in facilitating his admission and discharge and participated in his surgery and hospital care.

He was so brave. Lying on the operating table he told us that all of the boys at Gidan Bege had hugged him and cried when he was taken to the hospital. Holding our hands he tried so hard to control his fear and tears as the medical team began to set up around him. Graciously the anesthesiologist got him to sleep quickly. Overall the surgery went well despite the medical teams’ shocked as to the extent which the past surgery had been botched. The doctor repeated several times that his young lad was indeed a lucky boy. After the surgery Lucky asked, with a hope-filled face and big dark eyes full of pleading, if we would take him home with us. Our hearts broke! And despite every ounce of mothering and nursing instincts and every fiber of compassion and love for this little boy that screamed “YES!!”, we had to say no….for legal reasons since he is under the care and guardianship of Gidan Bege and not us. We did managed however to slightly brighten his crest fallen face by promising to visit him soon and telling his caregivers he could ring our cell if they had any problems or if he simply wanted to talk to us. The precious little soul called us as soon as he got back from the hospital just to let us know he had arrived safely.

#4 - Village Medical Outreach

This last Friday we joined a small team of medical personnel from Evangel to a remote village called Kiffir. When we arrived we all entered in the Chief’s house and sat quietly as greetings and prayers were exchanged…all in Hausa. We arrived at noon, had a quick lunch of Jollof rice and then ran clinic for 4.5 straight hours. Working at a speedy pace….in other words controlled chaos…we processed 150 or so patients through blood pressure screening, doctor consultations, counseling, an introduction to the gospel and pharmacy. I must note here that although our conversational Hausa is still quite basic, Rachel has become quite good at assessing health concerns in Hausa through a combination of key words and lots of actions. And as I often work Pharmacy, I have become good at giving out medication instructions in Hausa….despite the locals frequently laughing at my ever so slight tonal mispronunciations.

On our way back to Jos, we took as different route in an effort to decrease our travel time as the rains had made the dirt roads treacherous and we were an hour late leaving. In the end it was certainly not the shorter route but was by far the more scenic one. It’s hard to describe the beauty of nature and life around us as we travelled along that route. Words cannot accurately express the stunning beauty, quiet serenity or peaceful feeling of total contentment that enveloped us. Nevertheless, I will try to share with you what it was that inspired such joy in our hearts. Imagine with me a pale blue sky in the late afternoon with wispy white clouds strewn about. See the deep lush green of abundant bushes and trees growing up from vibrant red soil. Gaze for miles at land that stretches far into the distance before eventually rising up dramatically into rugged mountains. The colours all around us were that of the deep jungle and yet the view and land like that of the savannah. Behind me casting distinct beams of light upon the earth was the sun, partially hidden by the clouds and creating a warm glow and silver lining. In the fields, where new seedlings poked up their tiny green heads, there were little goats, pigs and children running about as their fathers tended the warm moist soil. Our van slowed as we waited for a herd of cows, sheep and a couple of donkeys to cross, herded expertly by Fulani boys no older than 12. And as we bumped along the winding muddy road, the cool breezes that follow afternoon rains refreshed us and we could feel the smell of pungent rich earth filling our whole beings.

Then all of a sudden, we could feel it. It’s been slowly growing but we did not notice until now. A warm fondness for this place….a swell of affection for its people….a love for its vibrant natural beauty and an appreciation for its rich culture and history. It is growing on us and in us. They said it would. Planting roots in our hearts so that forever we will feel drawn back here. After all, this is Africa.

Ina kwana family, friends and church family,
(Hausa for good morning)

It’s getting into the rainy season here in Jos. This means that in the morning it is hot and humid and in the afternoon the heavens open and it rains. The upside of the late afternoon rains is that they cause the temperature to drop several Celsius and bring about a cool breeze that helps to dry your sweaty damp clothes. The down side is that they also increase the number of creepy crawly critters that come into the house seeking shelter from the storm. This week we found a millipede about 3 inches long, a spider the size of my palm and a cockroach in our room. All sorts of gross!
Now rain comes in two forms here in the Plateau state: hard rain and torrential rain, which is usually accompanied by thunder and lightening. Being people who enjoy storm watching and feeling the deep rumblings of the thunder, we tend to find the experience of these storms relaxing….except for the other night. We were at Phil and Stephanie’s house having dinner when the heavens opened and it began to torrentially down pour. The sound of the rain was so loud that we had to almost yell to hear each other. All off a sudden there was a brilliant flash of light just outside the window as lightening struck the house beside us. This was immediately followed by an ear splitting CRACK!!! Rachel and I screamed in surprise and Phil jumped at least a foot off the ground…in a manly sort of way. All sorts of fun!

This past Wednesday we had our first opportunity to go to Blind town with the Nigerian community health workers and City Missions nurse who run the women’s clinic at Gidan Bege. Blind town is an area of Jos where the lepers and blind live, and entering it was like stepping back into Bible times. Mud brick house standing at most 8 feet tall all squished and built together with tiny narrow passages winding in between them like a maze. No plumbing, no electricity and no clear direction or orientation once you enter. Ducking through a small doorway, we sort of felt our way in the semi-darkness to a second back room. There we meet the chief of the lepers and his wife. Although the room received some light through a small window high in the wall, we used our cell phone lights to see the blood pressure gauges as we measured their blood pressures, assessed their health status and gave them some medications and vitamins. We then did the same for another ½ dozen lepers and a dozen or so locals who came to Blind town specifically to see us for medical attention. We also got mobbed by 10+ excited children all clamoring to touch us, hold our hands and learn our names. We did not enter very far into blind town though as we were told that City Missions has only begun to establish a relationship with the chief and thus has not yet received permission to enter further. Hopefully as the outreach continues to faithfully return and serve each Wednesday, the relationship will be become more established and the volunteers be allowed to venture further in to find and give medical attention to more lepers.
The experience as a whole was a sobering one. The health needs of the people in Blind town were so great, the living conditions so poor and our efforts so seemingly insufficient….like a single drop of rain in the desert. There is just no infrastructure here. No public health clinics, no access to clean water, no social support services. It was an overwhelming and discouraging thought. How does one possibly make a difference with so many obstacles to overcome? But we were gratefully reminded later that night that all of our efforts, no matter how small, are all intricately woven into God’s great redemption plan for humanity. So while we may not be able to bring public health care in Nigeria up to Canadian standards quite yet, we can still touch and change lives through compassion, simple service and love.

Well, lets end this blog with two funny stories.
The first is about taxi cabs in Jos, which are the size of Toyota Corollas but always pack 7 people into them: three in the front and four in the back. This has resulted in some interesting seating positions. Once I had to sit bent over on Rachel’s lap with my head touching my knees, once I sat with half a leg on the bench and half on the door handle and recently I sat on my heels behind the driver’s seat with one 1/8 on my bottom on the seat. This last one happened because a very large man squeezed himself into the back seat with Rachel, myself and this other guy. The driver turned around and told me to “Sit properly”. I stared at him incredulously. “Sit properly?” I said. “Sit where? I cannot fit. There is no room.” He apparently did not believe me cause he got out of the front of the cab to try and physically push me into the 2 inch space that was left between Rachel and the door. Predictably he failed and eventually conceded to my assertion that there was indeed no room to “Sit properly!”

The second funny story occurred at the hospital while we were doing a shadow shift in the ICU. We had been told the name of the head of the medical division that morning so when he came into the ICU that afternoon we thought we would introduce ourselves. Rachel leaned over to me and whispered “That’s Dr. Suya right?” In my head I could not remember his name exactly but that sounded familiar so I confidently answered “Yes!” So Rachel turned to the head of medicine and with confidence and grace said “Good morning Dr. Suya!” which unfortunately to our confusion caused the man to break out in laughter. He then corrected us that his name was actually Sule, not suya. It took us about a ½ hour after that to realize that ‘suya’ is actually the name for a type of BBQ meat they sell on the street here…that’s why it was familiar to us. This meant that we had pretty much called him, “Dr. Drumstick”. Oh we were mortified! But at least he thought it was funny and was not offended.

Anyways that’s all for now. It has begun to rain again and we still need to go grab a cucumber for dinner with Phil and Steph tonight. So we should get going before it really starts to pour…..opps….too late.

Love Lisa and Rachel