West Africa-Let's Go!

Headed out today to begin another story. This new chapter will be out of West Africa. Those who know me may recall some foreshadowing leading up to this, based on past tales. I'd like to think of this story as a choose your own adventure type, but more and more I believe that life pulls us along a path, despite ourselves. Sure we make choices at forks in the road, but this story is truly writing itself, and I am an eager page turner.

So, here I am, a girl whose primary home is Portland, Maine, trading fur lined boots and the remaining ski season for sandals and a mosquito net, and departing for another small fishing town, on the west coast of Africa.

The destination is Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia. The plan is to work at St. Timothy's hospital as part of a start up, hospital capacitating project. As a nurse with a love for Africa, for community development through health, and whose happiest moments ever are about seeing something built, by and for groups of people who benefit by getting their basic needs met, this project speaks to me. There are things that sometimes we do because try as we can, we can’t fully justify why not. Deep down I said yes, and so signed on to help.

The how to all of this, as the seasoned and therefore cynical Relief and Development community knows, is what will ultimately define whether or not this project will be successful. Will it capacitate local Liberian health care workers, assist in improving the hospital, contribute to strengthening of the health system, referral process, and ultimately benefit the community? It’s going to take a lot of time to tell.

This project was conceived of by a traveling doctor who found, in Robertsport and this hospital, a place that not only shares his name but that seemed to be the right place to try to launch what had been, until now, a harbored dream. He is a persuasive fellow, recruiting other like minded health provider nomads to get this project off the ground, and keep it running. It’s been over a year in planning for him, connecting with local partners, including the town leaders, hospital administrators, and Ministry of Health. Imagine the feeling, when he returned to Robertsport at the beginning of this month and began the process of putting plans into action, and people in the community began to say, "hey, you came back, just like you said you would".

This will be my first time in this part of Africa. Liberia has a unique history; a slightly different story than the common European colonial, post colonial quagmire. But, just as troubled, and deeply intertwined with US politics, history of race relations and socioeconomic structuring, and most recently, commodity interests during the Liberian civil wars. I remember first reading about the chilling Charles Taylor presidential years, blood diamond geopolitics, rain forest destruction, ruthless rebel factions, horrific violence, use of rape as an act of terror and retaliation along ethnic lines, and abuse of children as forced child soldiers. I remember, vividly, the news footage documenting the masses of Liberian people who made a panicked pilgrimage from the countryside into the capital, Monrovia, as the warring rebel groups raged and violence culminated, the Taylor regime was finally ousted, peace negotiations began in neighboring Accra, and the UN troops descended upon the city. The stadium was where Liberians went, for safety, to be guarded by the UN. The stadium became a refugee camp, with all the inherent challenges that a camp setting creates. Waterborne illness, communicable disease, food distribution tensions, all the safety issues.

Today, Liberia is at peace, and still struggling to cope in everyway with the aftermath of 2 decades of internal conflict. There is a democratically elected president, the first female head of state in Africa. The job of rebuilding, as in any post conflict society, is staggering. For me health, and community development through health, is not an isolated need. Education, job training, income generation, are the other legs of the stool, without any of these the structure cannot stand. But, I do know that poor health makes anyone of these other needs impossible to meet, and can drain resources from a family or community instantly. The death of a mother due to a preventable illness or emergency health need impacts her children and that family in ways that may be quantifiable, but really cannot be fully measured.


So, I guess it’s on. Whether through community based, public health interventions that focus on behavior change and education or curative, clinical nursing, there is a lot of work to be done. West Africa-Let's go!