What is TIme?

Another outreach is coming to an end.  It’s hard to believe that 10 months have come & gone.  Looking back at all we’ve done, it’s amazing to see what had been accomplished while we were in Guinea.  In 10 months, we did roughly 2,873 surgical procedures, over 45,000 dental procedures, provided training & education for local professionals, donated numerous items & helped renovate local hospitals, clinics & schools. 

Time on the ship has its own meaning.  Yesterday was 3 months ago & last year was only the other day.  For example- a friend was on the ship & then left, only to return again.  When I saw here, I asked her where she had been I hadn’t seen her all day; her response was that she had been gone for over 5 months & just got back!  We call it the AFM Time Warp, time really has no meaning here J

The Preop bench

Bubbles on the wards

Patients up on deck 7

Crazy scrub day in the OR

Conakry in the distance

While working in the hospital took up most of our time, we also had plenty of opportunities to get out & see what Conakry was like.  Conakry is the capital of Guinea, with about 1,548,500 people living within it’s city limits.  The primary religion is Muslim, with large mosques dotting the skyline.  Heavy traffic clogs the bottleneck that connects the port & embassies trapped on the peninsula to the rest of the city.  The markets are full of traders & business, you can buy just about anything in the markets, from car parts to cloth to food to monkeys & livestock.  I even heard of one of the local surgeons sending his patients out to the market to buy the surgical implants needed for their surgery!  The markets are loud, crowded & dirty, bartering is the key to purchasing items.  Navigating through the market can be fun & exciting & terrifying at the same time.  Shops & stalls are packed tightly together & other merchants weave in & out of the crowd with their wares on their heads.

Did you need a goat, or a cow?

They deliver

Wheelchairs

Children help with the family business

Typical street

The streets are not always clean, with open sewers, 3 feet deep, lining the sides of roads that act as a dumping ground for all sorts of nasty things.  Often times trash is burned in these concrete troughs, smoke rising up & filling the air with a bitter ash.  They are used for trash collection, toilets, drains & in some places, drinking & cleaning water.  When the rains come, the ditches are too full of trash to channel the water away & the streets flood with raw sewage.  People live right next to & sometimes on top of these ditches.

Houses are a communal affair, extended families living together under one roof or in an apartment-type setting.  A small courtyard, shared by many families, acts as the kitchen, laundry room, family room, backyard, barnyard & everything in between.

Burning trash on the side of the road

At the tailors

Soon we’ll be leaving Conakry & West Africa behind.  We’ll sail to the Grand Canaries for shipyard & some will leave for good or for a vacation.  When we do sail again, it won’t be back to the familiar shores of West Africa, but to Congo, in Central Africa.  It’ll be the first time the ship has been there.  

It was hard work, a lot of long hours, but when you look at the numbers, you realize how much it was worth it.  I will miss my dayworkers, my nurses, my friends. The lives we touched & those that touched us will always stay with us.  The old saying of “I need Africa more than Africa needs me” is very true.  

Blessings