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!