Greetings from Shisong and my apologies for being so delinquent about posting to this blog!
I
arrived in Shisong on October 8 after leaving Rochester on the 5th.
There have been some delays in performing surgery, so I have been
catching up on other work and projects. Sr. Jethro was in the US over
the summer making connections with Cameroonians here and with Americans
interested in the work of the Cardiac Centre. We were talking by phone
and she laughed when she accidentally referred to me coming “home” to
Shisong. In many ways, though, it is another home for me.
I
arrived near the end of the rainy season. It is lovely to see
everything so green. There are some students from the north of Italy
and I went with them to the waterfall which I show below with much
water! In the picture are Gonas Mayr and Alicia Adajar-Duante. Alicia
is a Lay Mission Helper; she is a critical care nurse from California
who will be here at the Cardiac Centre for three years. Her blog is
here: http://aliciaincameroon.blogspot.com/
While I was preparing to return to Cameroon, I was working on preparing several responsibilities that I have in Rochester for me to be able to manage long-distance or for others to be able to manage. In the midst of this, I came across this story describing a tremendous act of generosity. So many of the stories about troubled areas describe acts of unspeakable cruelty or at best stories of indifference to suffering. Yet among the poor and struggling, generous acts like this occur daily. It is good for us to be inspired (and humbled) by stories like this. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/young-nurse-adopts-newborn-he-had-no-one-else/) This man encountered a dying woman and her newborn son. He only owed them medical care, and for that they were rapidly transferred elsewhere, yet responded by offering the baby a family. Nurses who are employed in Sierra Leone might be financially better off than some others, but they are hardly wealthy. Anyone in a community such as his that has any money is instantly tapped to support many others. It is acts such as this that remind me that I have much more to give.
