Some things to Ponder...

It's been a good week of work,
many smiles and families encouraged,
new children assessed and well known ones progressed.
Our best tilt-in-space chair ever fitted to the son of a tailor,
and coconuts given as gifts from a thankful child in the most desperate situation.
I have a new trainee at the MercyShips clinic learning how to treat the fistula ladies with drop foot, so Fatmata (current assistant), Helen (new one) and I also had many a giggle pretending to be patients and practicing on one another.

But this week also brought some sad news......
unfortuanately sad news that happens often here.

There is a carpenter, Peter, who lives on our road who I'd got to know a little. On Tuesday I drove down to our house and had to drive through a big crowd of people who had gathered around Peters house, then I heard the wailing.....someone had died.
I found out that it was Peter's wife who had died. She had had a cut on her hand that had got infected, then it was discovered that she was diabetic and had gone into a coma and not recovered.
Funerals in Africa are a very different expereince. Mourning is very public and the house where the deceased person lived becomes a hive of activity. People come to show their sympathies, to pray with, to comfort and support the grieveing. Then they hang around all day and eat food and just 'be' with the family. This happens daily for about a week. When I returned on Thursday, Peter's fellow workers were busily making a coffin, and I was informed the funeral will be next week.
Today, I visited Peter and his 4 children. To me it felt very awkward. Few words were passed, most staring at the ground. Silence all around. What does one say? You'd never think that your workplace would be your business one day, and making your wifes coffin the next. Peters family are Christian believers, so some comfort is in that. God gives and He takes away. One day in heaven we will all be reunited with our loved ones. But now, in this grieving time I felt inadequate. I saw some working out of needs for the funeral....it came to over 3 million Leones (£700), maybe a years earnings for Peter. So sat in a corrugated iron house, with sticks making a veranda, I do wonder where that kind of money is found. There will also have been the medical bills, and of course all the food that had needed to be provided for the people who come every day for the week or so of mourning.
We prayed with them as we left, still thinking much and saying little.

Life passes quickly and unexpectedly here in Africa,

every day counts and every oppertunity needs to be taken.

Questions can be asked, but should not be a stumbling block to allow hope to push on through.

Be thankful for every day God gives,

mourn with those who mourn and smile with those who are joyful.