Hello and Happy September. It’s
weird that August just didn’t happen this year - or I just didn’t do a blog for
August. Oh well, my bad. August was a busy month on many levels. But especially
with birthdays and anniversaries. It made me miss home but Thank You Jesus for
WhatsApp!! I got to chat with my Gkids; it was my grandson’s 15th birthday!!
How it’s even possible that he’s 15 and learning to drive is so crazy. But I
did get to video chat with him and his sister for over an hour. We talked about
how their lives were going as well as mine. We shared stories and I gave them a
tour of my little house. It was lovely. That was only one of the many birthdays
in August.
I’ve grown to love and be grateful for the little wins here in Salone. Nancy and I, on occasion, have to remind one another to never expect things or people to be the same as in the US so that way when something good or positive transpires as it might in the US, it’s a win!! This is a huge thing when it comes to medicine here. I still struggle a lot with things, but I look for and sometimes search out the little wins.
Here’s a little win that I just realized this last week. Unfortunately, there are a lot of strokes that happen here. There isn’t a lot of education for the public that if they see their family member having symptoms to bring them to the hospital immediately. Like I’ve said in previous blogs, people usually stay at home until the family can’t care for the symptoms/patients and then they bring them to the hospital.😟 It’s sad, but that’s how things are here.
Anyhow, strokes happen even in the younger population, 30s-50s which is hardly heard of in the US. But there’s this one young lady, maybe late 30s, early 40s that comes to do her physical therapy every day. She’s all alone, she’s been coming for months. She would hold onto the wall or the rail as she walked through the passage to get to the PT dept. You could hear her coming because she would drag her foot - one of the deficits from the stroke. I would see her in the hallway, smile and wave to her. Then just last week, I didn’t hear her but I did see her. She wasn’t dragging her foot anymore!! I had to stop and I tried to tell her how great she was doing. I think she sort of understood or just smiled at me because of the excitement in my voice, on my face and my hand gestures.
Even though work has been very busy and physically hard because of my old body and the equipment they don’t have, it made my heart sing!! I praised God immediately and continue to do so just thinking about it. It’s these little wins that God shows me just when I need them. He lets me know that it’s good that I am here, if for nothing else, to show me His glory. I wish I could say there are many success stories like this one, but there’s not. But there is this one and I thank God for it!!
I finally was able to go for a “massage”. Again, no expectations in comparison to the massages I used to get bi-weekly. I was hoping that since I was going to the fancy hotel to their “spa” it might be good? I told my daughters, “Well, it only cost less than $9 so I got what I paid for”. She was a very nice person and I’m sure she did her best but it definitely wasn’t what I was dreaming of! 😆 Keep those expectations low and you will never be disappointed!
The rain is still crazy! One morning I woke up to downed trees, the corn field outside my window was a mess and when I got out onto the roads, there were down powerlines, parts of roofs missing, etc. I sleep with earplugs so I don’t hear anything. Maybe I should rethink that, but I’m not.
People were talking about the “breeze” that happened overnight. The vocabulary and words that they use is so small compared to all the words we have. I asked if they had ever heard of a tornado or a hurricane, they said no. I just had to laugh inside and say, “that was the biggest breeze I’ve ever seen”. I went on to explain the words we use for such a storm and show them pictures of the aftermath of tornadoes and hurricanes. Sierra Leone has neither of these but their tropical storms can certainly cause so much destruction including mudslides, flooding, etc.
I’ve included some pictures of a storm we had last week. Thankfully where I live, we’re not near a waterway or on the street where most of the flooding occurs. They wouldn’t have so much flooding if they were able to keep their waterways clean of trash and debris but there isn’t really any infrastructure that they have for waste management. I will see a truck picking up trash near the clock tower which is the central marketplace about every other week. They pretty much just burn all their trash 🙁 But with all the rain, they just put it out in the streets that then goes into the waterways. I never thought much about the trash disposal that EVERY city, town, village has in the US. We are truly blessed!!
That’s all for now. I want to get this to Janice so that she can get it posted. A big thank you for all of your prayers, keep them coming!! May God bless you all abundantly!! XOXO 💛
