Surviving is Denying, Denying: Surviving

The key to surviving is denial.

I deny that I'm tired, I deny that I'm scared, I deny how badly I want to succeed, and most importantly, I deny that I am in denial. I only see what I want to see, and believe what I want to believe. And it works.

I lie to myself so much that after awhile, the lies start to seem like the truth.

I deny so much that I can’t recognize the truth-right in front of my face.

Sooner or later, I have to put aside my denial and face the world – head on, guns blazing. When they say, “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt”, they’re right – it’s a freaking ocean!

So, how do I keep from drowning in it?

From Suffering To Joy

“I was eighteen years old when this happened to me,” Rebecca says. She is speaking in her native dialect in front of dozens of people. She is wearing a new dress to denote her new life as she shares her story of anguish. “I was in labor for five days, and finally I went to the hospital. The baby was dead. And I was wounded in such a way that I thought I would never walk again.”

Rebecca, now 35 years old, traveled from neighboring Togo to the Mercy Ship in Benin. She had shouldered the burden of obstetric fistula for 17 years. This childbirth injury often occurs in areas without adequate obstetric care and leaves the mother incontinent. Frequently, the woman is abandoned by her husband, and having more children becomes difficult or impossible. At first Philip, the baby’s father, did abandon her. For the next few months, Rebecca’s family took care of her. Eventually, Philip returned. “It was God who brought him back,” Rebecca says. Otherwise, she feels she might have been alone forever.

Rebecca and Philip were married and now have five children, but she still carried the shame of her condition and tried to hide it from everyone around her. She did not leave the house, and the only person outside her family who knew of her condition was her neighbor, who saw her washing out soiled clothes and hanging them to dry. “I worried for so long,” Rebecca says. “I was very discouraged, and because I didn’t have enough money, I couldn’t go to the hospital for treatment.”

When Rebecca eventually came to the Mercy Ship, a nurse sat with her and asked her the standard questions to establish her medical history – questions that were painful for Rebecca to answer. How many children have you delivered? How many are still alive? How long ago did the injury occur? Did your husband leave you? As the nurse paused in her questions and put her hand on Rebecca’s knee, Rebecca began to cry.

Then, the night before her surgery, Rebecca lay in her hospital bed and tears formed in her eyes as she remembered the long years of suffering that lay behind her. “I just remembered the past,” Rebecca says. “For seventeen years, I have been like this.” Those years were long and hard as she fought to forget her problem so she could be a good mother, trying to find the right answers when her children asked why she needed to layer cloth beneath her before she went to bed at night.

Now, as Rebecca shares her story, there is no sadness, because her surgery was successful. Her smile is constant and sweet. She wants to sing, dance and give thanks. Rebecca goes home with her shame replaced by hope for the future. She is happy to be with her children, her husband, her family, and her neighbors. She is healed, in both her body and spirit. “I was so thirsty and I came here to the Mercy Ship and was given a drink. You have taken care of me better than a mother. You have done everything – even clothed me,” she joyfully says as she smiles and motions to her beautiful new dress.

Through The Eyes Of A Child

One Friday afternoon, an elderly woman showed up at the Mercy Ship in Benin with her newborn grandson in her arms. The baby was a mere three hours old and did not yet have a name, but his need for immediate medical attention was obvious.

Conjunctivitis that began in the womb had caused the lining of the baby’s eyelids to swell. Two globular red sacs protruded from his eyes, blocking his vision and flipping his eyelids inside-out. This condition left his tiny eyes unprotected and exposed. Left untended, they would be damaged beyond repair. His mother, Janette, didn’t know what was wrong with her baby and was horrified by his appearance.



“When I saw him, I was suffering,” Janette said. “I thought my baby did not have eyelids.”

At the maternity clinic in Porto-Novo, they told Janette the baby needed to go to Cotonou, Benin’s capital, where more advanced medical care is available. So, the baby’s grandmother bundled up the yet-unnamed child and climbed onto the back of a motorcycle taxi, the primary mode of transportation in Benin.

“When the motorcycle taxi driver saw the baby’s eyes, he was afraid,” Janette said. Still, he agreed to carry them to Cotonou. The doctors at the hospital in Cotonou told the grandmother to take the baby to the Mercy Ship. Fortunately, it was a Friday – the only day of the week the ship’s operating rooms for eye surgeries are not booked full with cataract patients – so the baby was able to be seen immediately.

Dr. Jim performed a simple operation to drain the infection and turned the eyelids in the correct direction.

The baby was given antibiotics and was kept overnight. The next day, Janette was able to leave the hospital and travel to Cotonou herself to see her baby. They were released to go home soon after.

Even in such a short time, the visual transformation was dramatic. The baby, now named Desiré, returned for a post-operative appointment a week later. On the way back to the ship, Janette happened upon the same motorcycle taxi driver who had brought Desiré and his grandmother to the ship the first time. He could not believe the difference and told Janette how happy it made him to see the baby was healed. Janette certainly agreed with him. “The goodness that Mercy Ships has done makes me so happy,” Janette said. “If Mercy Ships was not around, where would I have gone?”

The Problem With All This Is....

I know the sadness.

I know the empty ring finger.

I know the obsessive nature.

Regardless, I don’t waste my time and money to save somebody who doesn’t want to be saved unless I've got something, anything, that ONE thing.

The reason normal people have husbands, kids, hobbies, that’s because they don’t have that ONE thing that hits them THAT HARD and THAT TRUE.

I’ve got Africa.

Its the thing I think about all the time, its the thing that keeps me just south of normal.

Its the thing that makes me great, makes me the best at what I do.



All I miss out on... is everything else.

No husband waiting at home after work with a drink and a kiss... that isn’t going to happen for me.

(That’s why God made microwaves.)

Problem with all this?

When its over....

its over.

"I'm Not The One Who's So Far Away...."

(As requested - A blog doorway to an immense amount of information pertaining to Voodoo.)

All we, in the Christian world, know about voodoo is what Hollywood has sensationalized. While exploring the roots and current practice of this ancient belief, one can find some surprising truths behind the hype. Vodun is an primeval religion practiced by some 30 million people in the West African nations of Benin, Togo and Ghana. With its countless deities, animal sacrifice and spirit possession, voodoo (as it's known to the rest of the world) is one of the most misunderstood religions on the globe. Voodoo comes from the word in the Fon language for spirit, and focuses on spirits which exist in all things. These spirits can be used for good or bad purposes by the Voodoo priests. Voodoo followers worship spirits, or fetishes, to guide them in their lives. The religion started about 400 years ago and was brought to the Caribbean, particularly Haiti, during the slave trade. Approximately 60 percent of this West African nation's people follow voodoo, which originated in the region, but the Marxist regime that came to power in 1972 discouraged its practice.

Benin has declared Jan. 10 a National, paid holiday to celebrate voodoo and the country's other traditional faiths, saying they deserved the same recognition as Christian and Muslim events. Ouidah, a town 25 miles to the west of Cotonou, is considered the center of Benin's voodoo culture. With pounding drums and pulsating rhythms, Benin celebrates the rebirth of voodoo as an officially recognized religion since 1996.

West Africa was once known as the Slave Coast, because it was at the center of the transatlantic slave trade for centuries. African slaves brought voodoo with them to plantations in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba and Louisiana. But 400 years later, the religion still remains a central part of spiritual life for millions living in West Africa. "Voodoo is older than the world," says Janvier, a tour guide in Benin and a lifelong voodoo practitioner. "They say that voodoo is like the marks or the lines which are in our hands -- we born with them. Voodoo are in the leaves, in the earth. Voodoo is everywhere."



The individual deities of voodoo have all the character of the gods of ancient Greece; some whimsical, some seductive, some full of rage. In Cotonou, the voodoo followers gather to dance and thank the god Sakpata, a powerful divinity of the Earth, for recent rains. Women dancers sway in bright dresses with a mottled pattern imitating the scars of smallpox. Sakpata can bring life-giving rain, but the god is responsible for the dreaded disease, too. Adherents to Voodoo are called upon to follow a strict set of rules. A person who breaks the rules of Voodoo annoys the spirits and the person who breaks their laws might become very ill or even end up dead.



The rituals of voodoo are as elaborate as those for any Western church -- learning secret, sacred languages, dances and diets are part of the initiation for voodoo priests. Central to the belief is offerings to the gods, in the form of animal sacrifices. (Human sacrifices in West Africa ended more than a century ago.) Another key element of the religion is veneration of the spirits of ancestors. Among voodoo worshippers, the dead are thought to walk among the living during the dance of hooded Egunguns, who spin through the village in elaborate costumes. Touching the dancer during the trance, it is believed, could kill you, such is the power of the dead brought to life again.

In the open-air markets, merchants sell the basics of life, and that includes voodoo talismans known as "fetishes." They could be elaborate statues representing voodoo gods, or even dried animal heads and other animal parts, sold for medicine and their spiritual power. There is a dark side to voodoo. Sorcerers called botono can be summoned to put a hex on an adversary using the malevolent power of a voodoo spirit. The "dark side" of voodoo is similar to the concept of heaven and hell in Western religious tradition. The whole point is to make manifest the darkness, so that the goodness can overwhelm it.



In one sense, voodoo is no different from other religions – followers appeal to divine powers to assure their success in life. Many followers of voodoo convert to Christianity and leave the cult. But over time, they return to the animal sacrifices, the veneration of fetishes, the dances with the spirits. The pull of voodoo is so powerful, it seems embedded in the earth of West Africa. The most powerful person in a district is the minister of the local king and is referred to as the “Chief De Terre.” The Chief De Terre knows the secrets of the fetishes which gives him power that state administrators might find hard to compete with.



Voodoo rituals have long been inaccessible to anyone except disciples and priests. Even though certain practices like scarification carry a high risk of HIV infection, outsiders to the voodoo community have largely been unable to penetrate the secrecy that health officials say can be deadly to its followers. More than half of Benin’s 7.5 million population identifies itself as practitioners of voodoo. We are talking about a high risk group that carries out unsafe practices, there is scarification [skin cuts], female cutting and male circumcision, and several people are using the same instruments. Another voodoo rite that leaves followers open to HIV infection is when a follower comes into contact with blood during public ceremonies, either through touch or drinking it. Benin’s national HIV infection rate is two percent as of 2007, but in high-risk groups like sex workers for which the government has data, the rate goes up to 25 percent, according to the government’s National HIV and AIDS Control Program.

(This blog was composed to cover the exterior of many Voodoo related topics. If you have unambiguous questions about certain topics, please feel free to email me and I will do my best to answer your specific questions in more depth.)

If At First You Don't Succeed.....

In 2005, the Mercy Ship Anastasis docked in the port of Cotonou, Benin, to provide free operations. For 14-year-old Alfred, it was just in time. For four years, a rare facial tumor had been growing, disfiguring his face. The five-pound-tumor enveloped his lower jaw and teeth and hung down like a large melon. The pink mass protruded from his mouth, preventing him from eating. Alfred’s weight dropped to 44 pounds – five of which were the tumor. His eyes revealed the agonizing suffering.





Alfred’s father, Bessan, was a fisherman in their small village and had little money for medical treatments – but he tried to find help for his son. According to their traditional voodoo religion, Alfred's tumor was the result of witchcraft, so they visited over a dozen traditional healers. They poked holes in Alfred’s skin, applied pastes, and prescribed animal sacrifices and prayers to their ancestors. A medical doctor also examined Alfred but said he could do nothing. After all the time and money wasted on unsuccessful treatments, Alfred’s family despaired.

People in the community avoided Alfred, thinking his “sickness” was contagious or that he was cursed. Some people avoided him because seeing his condition and being unable to help was too much to stomach. Because of humiliation, the family hid Alfred away in the innermost room of their small house. Then a Christian pastor told the family about Mercy Ships, where Alfred could receive free medical treatment. Bessan, disillusioned by failure after failure, reluctantly agreed to take his son to the ship. Alfred’s tumor was removed, and doctors inserted a titanium plate and pieces of his rib to fashion a new jaw to replace the one destroyed by the tumor.



Then in January of 2009, Alfred – now 19 years old – began noticing a swelling in his upper jaw, just beside his nose. Alfred and his family knew that the new Mercy Ship, the Africa Mercy, had returned to Cotonou. They journeyed to the ship and saw Dr. Gary Parker and other long-term crew members who had treated Alfred in 2005.



This time, Alfred had no apprehension about the outcome of his visit. X-rays showed the metal plate in his mouth, the structure that had held firm over the years – allowing Alfred to eat, smile, and grow into a healthy young man with a quiet disposition and a love of mathematics.



However, the x-ray also showed a small tumor forming where Alfred had noticed swelling, and Dr. Parker scheduled surgery for the next day. The tumor was removed quickly, and Alfred’s recovery required only a few days. Now he is home again, going back to school and playing football with his friends.



In spite of the passage of time and the happy outcome, Bessan and Alfred both still feel the past acutely. Alfred can’t bear to see the pictures of how he looked before – “It makes me want to cry,” he says. Bessan just shakes his head, saying, “People would stare and think it’s horrible. All he had was a cloth around his neck to cover it so people wouldn’t see it. Now I can go out with him proudly. ‘Let’s go out fishing,’ I’ll say. And he will do it with all joy.”