Health
I left my second visit with tears scratching at my eyes, my breathing rapid, my vision blurred. It had been more than a week since my previous visit to Grace, the abandoned hydrocephalic baby at Phebe hospital. I’d been distracted. Her bed was shrouded by white and pink sheet, a new addition from the last […]
My sweet little man. That bright-smiled deep-dimpled love of my heart. Elijah. I at once craved and dreaded seeing my little angle. Excited because his smile, his laugh, his breast-fed plumpness and joy brings a smile to my face so easily; dreaded because to see him again means his mother is still sick. And so […]
She didn’t make a sound. Her small eyes looked left and right, not quite fixing on any one thing. But she didn’t cry. She was noiseless. It was larger this time. Ill-fitted to her tiny body. Her soft feet and hands seemed so insubstantial – weightless – against the enormity of her swelling head. Little […]
I’m on a porch in the cool evening. The last orange embers of the cooking coals smolder in the distance – light without illumination – their glow does not penetrate the black. The lightening has subsided. What had been an amazing show of God and nature, flashing streaks of white against purple in the curiously […]
The smell is what got to me. Despite the buffet of assaults to my sight and sensibility of norms and expectations, it is always the smell of antibiotics – thick as smoke –that permeates the hospital. In the past it has stopped me from venturing beyond the admin area, but today I had purpose that […]
We almost didn’t stop. The dust, a cloud of cinnamon caught in a sneeze, billowed before us as we raced down the dirt road, gullies carved on either side in anticipation of future rains. We were racing time and honking as pedestrians wandered into what I imagine is usually a deserted strip of road. We […]
Three liters of water is no small drink. Granted it wasn’t all at once but today I consumed about three liters of water. It was that hot. That dry. I walked that far under that much sun. After all, Saturday’s are my French lessons. And for the second week I went into Gbarnga to sit […]
I’m not starving to death. The bugs have not eaten me alive. My house is quite sturdy and nice. I feel like maybe I’m misrepresenting my time here without intending to. I know I have a running commentary on food and water or the lack thereof, but the severity I’m feeling is really in the […]
Despite waking up at 6:30, I didn’t get out of bed until 10 this morning. I was in the nebulous space between exhaustion and sickness. I blamed my lethargy on the flu shot I was forced to take but it could just as easily have been dehydration – I only had one liter of water […]
remains of the day…
There are times when the generosity and kindness of Liberians makes it easy to forget that the country was ravaged by war – or the crisis, as it is often referred. But little things prick the memory and I am reminded. More than the pin pin boys on flashy motorcycles dodging in and out of […]
Continue reading about remains of the day…