Life in Africa

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 Now that I've been here for a little while I finally have a little routine figured out! :) Pretty much every morning I get up at 7:00 and drag myself out of bed and get up to the dining room for breakfast. I love eating with people in the morning. Makes my day a real nice start! Most of the time we have options like: Eggs, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, cereal, oatmeal, toast...Then I can drink orange juice every morning with my breakfast!!! Love it because orange juice is a big treat at home. :D
After breakfast with my friends I run off to do my morning chores.. Usually includes lugging heavy jug of water upstairs or something pleasant like that. The dental team meets at 8:00 most mornings. 7:30 on Wednesdays because we have our team devotions here on the ship. Each week one of us team members will share.
We then leave the ship in two land rovers a little after 8:00am. About 10 or so of us are on the team from the ship.Takes about 15 minutes of driving in CRAZY traffic to get to the clinic. The roads here are very nutty! But I hear from others that have been with Mercy Ships in Sierra Leone, that the roads here are NOTHING compared to there. Pretty much no traffic laws are followed.. Almost anyone can get a license and no drivers-ed required. The traffic circles are backwards here too. The people in the circle have to yield to the people coming in. A lot of motor bikes riding anywhere they can fit. I am very happy to say I don't have to drive here! :D
Once we arrive at the clinic we unload the land rovers and have devotions with the day workers. We start out our day with songs and prayer. It's a great way to start! Then we quickly get the clinic ready for the patients coming in. Monday's and Thursday's we have our screening days. We come to the clinic and see a huge line of people hoping to be seen by us. 

When we first got here we were seeing a lot of swellings and bad infections. We seen a woman on one of our first days that had such a bad infection that her whole face was swollen so bad.. We ended up having to drain the swelling and put her on antibiotics. We saw here a week later and she was doing SO much better! It's hard to imagine the pain a lot of these people go through for so long because they can't get the medical help they need so badly. We extract a load of teeth every day. I think one day last week we removed 130 teeth or so. I'll check on the numbers. It was around that.. Lately we have been able to do quite a few fillings. Nice to be able to save a tooth than to extract one.
So.. we work till about 12:00 take a 30 min break and then work till we are done with our patients for the day. We start out with about 40 something patients.. We also have some followup appointments that don't take too long. Removing sutures or checking to see if an infection has cleared up ok.
Once we have seen all the scheduled patients we clean up and head home!
Supper on the ship starts at 5pm so I usually have a little time to clean up and get upstairs to eat!
Then I will either play games with people after supper or read.. Or go out into town with my friends. We have gotten good at getting around by taxi. It's not too expensive if you argue your price with the taxi drivers. Otherwise they will charge WAY too much. One night we went out for Indian food and it was super good!
 This last Sunday I made it to an African church in the morning. It was very interesting:) Here is a picture of my friends and I after the service.

On Sunday nights we have church here on the ship with all the crew. That's been real nice. Also Thursday nights we have a service here on the ship. Then after service, an ice cream party! :D

 A picture of the nerd herd at the dental office. :D We have a great team here! Work is pretty tiring but so rewarding! Some days we come home exhausted! Today was a day I was almost asleep in the car on the way home. Then other days we hit the grocery store and buy icecream and I feel GREAT!

Some extra pictures of things I've seen around town. :) Mommy's and their babies:)

 Heavy loads:)

 The girls and I heading to a concert at a church on a Sunday afternoon.

 The beautiful beach!

Fufu time!

Got to try the fufu today! And I found out what exactly it is. So, it's a yam, that has been soaked in water to soften. Then it's cooked and  mashed up into a ummmmm blob-like substance.... Yeah! It was not horrible tasting. Really did not have too much flavor actually. The soupy stuff it's served in is quite good(spicy too). But if given the chance to eat it again I think I will pass. :D

 We went to the waterfalls today also! This morning we woke up early and met up at the gas station down the street. One of our day workers arranged for a bus to take us to K'Palme. I think that is spelled right.. The k is silent.  So we crammed 20 people into our bus.. Wow! We were packed tight into that bus. Wish we had a picture to show.. But here is a picture of the bus and you can maybe imagine 20 people inside?

Yep! Supposedly it was 2 1/2 hours to our destination... But yeah crammed in there it was like 2 days. :) Not really.. We had a real fun time...
We finally got to the trail for the falls and climbed down hill to get here.. It was nice and cool on the way down to the falls. We were able to go swimming and really enjoyed our time there. Then we had to climb up the hill in the heat! Ack!

 My African food that I had from the clinic:)

The days are flying by real fast here! Last weekend I was able to visit a beach nearby that was on the safe list(SOOOOO beautiful).
Also I was able to get to another market. It was CRAZY busy. Full of people! So the people were not hassling us so much since we were not the only ones. We went to several shops to look at fabrics. Some of the ladies are having African dresses made to take home.

The woman here in Togo are amazing.. They carry everything on their heads! I am wondering if they often have headaches? We saw a woman in one of the markets walking around with chickens in a large bowl on her head! The chickens were very scrawny.. But anyways.. We were so amazed that we asked if we could take a picture of her with the chickens on her head. She said no, but allowed us to try out how it feels to carry chickens that way. Ok.. Very HEAVY. :) 

 We've been super busy at the dental clinic so far this week! Today we had another dentist join us! So now we have 3 dentists! And for a little while only 2 assistants. Luckily our day workers(translators) also are trained to do some assisting. We were able to do a couple fillings today on some teeth.. That's always a nice change instead of extracting teeth. It's amazing how difficult some of the extractions can be. We can sometimes spend over an hour trying to get one tooth out. Makes the day go a little slower if we get stuck. But our dentists can take out ANY tooth. :) They are quite amazing! The whole room will always know when we remove a difficult tooth because there is a loud chorus of "HALLELUJAH" . :) Sometimes the patient will join us in the singing. :)
Still have not tried the fufu African food. But tomorrow I am having an African dish at the dental clinic. There is a little restaurant right next to us that the day workers get their food at.

This weekend some of our day workers will take us up to Palme to see some Waterfalls! It's a two and half hour ride by bus. Should be loads of fun!

The days have been real nice here this week. Not too hot and you know it's not too cold! Thank goodness! We can stand outside and be very comfortable. The past week was very warm and sticky so  I am hoping the good weather will stick around for a while. I've been trying to get out on deck to watch the sunset here but the skies are very cloudy lately. I'm not sure if it's true but people have been saying it's the winds from the Sahara desert blowing our way and  that is why it's not too hot as well. ??
Today and yesterday were crazy days at the dental clinic. Almost every patient we saw, we sang hallelujah after finishing. So nice to get back to the ship and get clean after work. :)
The food on board the ship is not bad! But I have to say I miss my own cooking.We have a crew galley available to all of us to use. And in the ship shop that we can purchase things for baking/cooking along with many other necessities. I have chocolate kisses with me. And I have friends that have never had peanut butter blossom cookies! So I must introduce them to my favorite cookies!
I went to the marketplace on Saturday with 2 other girls. I have to say I did not enjoy it at all. :( I was expecting a nice experience like in Nicaragua or Guatemala. Nope! The people hounded me everywhere I went. I told them I was just looking but they were extremely pushy people. Come look at my shop.. Looking is free.. on and on.. So.. I won't be doing much shopping if that's the way it is here.:(
One of the day workers shared some African food with me today. Some rice with a tomato paste(with spices) and fish. I liked the tomato stuff a lot! So good!:) There is a little restaurant right next to our clinic that all of our day workers(volunteers) get their lunch. I may have to check it out myself sometime. So far I still have not tried the fufu food. The team leader of our dental group said he could take us out sometime to try it. :) With a name like fufu... I'm rather curious!

My first day at the dental clinic was super good! I met the whole dental team Thursday morning at the reception desk where we gathered up all our supplies for the day. After loading all of our supplies into our two Land Rovers we drove 15 minutes to the Dental Clinic. The scenery here is so familiar to me. I feel like I am in Central America. :) The same flowers and trees that I've seen in Nicaragua or Guatemala. I am wishing the language was the same as in Central America. French is the common language here. And I just have to say my French is non-existent. So,on the ship we have Rosetta Stone! I will be checking that out soon.
Ok, we got to the dental clinic and met the day workers(local volunteers that work as translators and do other volunteer jobs). They are sooo super helpful! They do a pre-screening of  the patients. Then we see the patients after them.
To start out our morning we begin with devotions on the top floor of the clinic. The day workers are very musical so we do some singing as well.The team I am working with is exceptional! I am very impressed. Right now we have one dentist and 4 assistants. More dentists will be coming in soon. I think we are hoping for 5 dentists. We also have one hygienist and a sterilizer. So on Thursday half of us were able to go to a local school nearby for the morning. We taught about 130ish kids how to brush their teeth and floss. The kids were adorable! And quite well behaved!
After teaching at the school we went back to the clinic and started working. Most of the patients we saw needed extractions. And I'm learning that we will be doing mostly extractions. We saw 24 patients and then we were done for the day! We packed up and drove back to the ship.
Life on the ship is very nice! I didn't know how I would like it. But I guessed that I would love the sense of community. And yes, I do! I think I could live in a community like this for a while. :)
Friday at the dental clinic was a little bit of a harder day. But still good! Most of the extractions were very difficult. It seemed like every tooth we went to remove one or two of the  root tips broke and we ended up having to do  surgery to remove the root tips. We removed one UL 3rd molar  that had 4 ROOTS(I've never heard  or seen anything like it!)!! There was a happy hallelujah when it finally came out! :)
Now it's the weekend and I am going out to check out the surroundings with a group of people! I've been offered a chance to eat foofoo? Or is it fufu? No idea.. But that's how you pronounce it anyways. One of the day workers said he would bring me some. It's typical African food I guess.. I'll find out more later! :)

Arrival into Lome:)

I arrived late Monday night into Lome, Togo after crazy flight problems. :) I met up with 2 other dental assistants in the airport and 2 nurses. After a 20 minute drive  we made it to the ship and I was given a quick orientation and a warning about the next mornings fire drill. :) Tuesday  more orientation..I've now been clued in about life on a ship... Two minute showers... At least they are not cold too.. :) I've already met so many amazing people! I keep meeting more at each turn.
Today (Wednesday) we had a screening day for all hospital surgery patients. We traveled in Land Rovers 30 minutes or so to a soccer stadium(we left the ship wicked early.. I got up at 4:30 ugh*). There we split up into groups to pray for the day and patients and then to do the screening. My job was to escort patients from the nurses, in charge of scheduling, to the pharmacy people. It was an awesome but exhausting day. Working close with the nurses,  I was amazed by the amount  of compassion and kindness that radiated out of them to the patients. So many wonderful people here! I'm getting to finally see this organization for myself and it's more amazing that I thought!
Tomorrow I get to see the dental clinic for the first time. I'll have orientation there and see what else happens.:)