Sterilizing Department

Thank you, everyone, for your prayers for my Central Service Technician certification exam. The test went perfectly, inspite of all our anxiety over the internet not working properly. As many of you may already know, I passed! and I am so relieved that it's all over with.

On that note, here's a quick tour of the sterilizing department here on the Africa Mercy.

Central Sterile Supply (one of our many departmental titles) The hub of the hospital.

Autoclaves! Yes, I've burned myself already. Apparently that was my "initiation" in the sterilizing field.

The assembly table.

Assembling sets on the assembly table.

Decontamination area. Avec PPE

Orphanage Visit

Last Saturday I spent most of the day with some friends at an orphanage that is run by one of the day workers and his wife. We caught a bus from Freetown to Waterloo, and then when we disembarked from that, we were told that we had to get motorcycles to get out to the village where the orphanage was. I was super excited, since I had wanted to ride one for a while now! It was a lot of fun and yet terrifying all at the same time. Just imagine riding a motorcycle or dirt bike back home with someone that you don’t know driving and no helmet. You just try not to think about it too much, and enjoy yourself.

When we got to the orphanage, the children immediately came up and greeted us. They shook our hands and asked our names and told us theirs. They were all very sweet and outgoing! The day worker who works with Mercy Ships took us on a tour of the house where the children stayed, the garden, and the pig pen. As an extra source of income, the children help to raise pigs either for private slaughtering or to sell, and they must have had about eighteen. When asked why he didn’t have goats as well, the man said that pigs were harder to steal.

They insisted on preparing us lunch there, and while we waited for them to cook the meal (outdoors over open fires) we taught the children some American games. We played “red light, green light,” “duck, duck, goose,” and a few others. Then, once we were pretty well worn out from that, we sat on the porch and one member of our group made them all balloon animals. The kids loved it, but they especially had a great time when the balloons began popping. We also teamed up and played a game of soccer before lunch.

At one point, I was just sitting on the porch listening to some of the others talking, and the little boy next to me suddenly started rubbing my arm very lightly. When I looked at him, he began to grin, and he rubbed my arm again and rubbed his own head. He was feeling the difference between the hair on my arm and the hair on his head. Most people around here don’t actually have hair on their arms and legs. It was just really cute to watch him figuring it out.

When it was time for us to leave, we walked on a path through the “bush.” We had to go through a rice field and through a lot of thick undergrowth. At one point, my friends in front of me started shouting for me and the people behind to run as fast as we could through one section of the trail. I wasn’t sure why until I looked down and saw that the entire path was covered in ants; the big kind that really, really hurt when they bite. When we came out into one of the villages, the children would all point or wave and they would all be yelling the same thing. I wasn’t sure if what they were saying was a greeting or something else, so I asked a friend and they told me that the word meant “white people.”

The trip home was fortunately uneventful, and we were able to get a nice big van to ride in back to the ship! It was a great day, and I was only mildly sunburned afterwards which was a blessing.