Grief and Waiting

They say grief comes in waves; you can be coping well and out of nowhere a song, a phrase, a smell hits you and the reminder triggers a wave of grief that slams into you full-force. Seems homesickness is the same. I haven't been homesick at all--we stay fairly busy at the ETC and see some graphic, terrible things that it has kept homesickness at bay. Grief has been a constant companion--but not homesickness.

After leaving work Sunday morning, I went to a Pentecostal church in town. The main church is in Nigeria, this one is a smaller branch. The service was quite different to what I am used to, and the Sierra Leonean I went with translated some of it for me. I can understand pieces of Krio (the name of the pidgin English here) but when people talk quite fast I get lost quickly.
The service was about 3 hours, and was quite joy-filled. Towards the end they asked the first time visitors to stand. Thanks to my skin color, i couldn't pretend I had been there before! Pretty sure I was the only "opoto" there (word for white man).

After the service, as we were walking out, I heard someone call my name. One of my co-workers, her nickname is Queen Esther, was there this morning! She works nightshift Sunday.

In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, I played football with some of the guys on the compound. At first I didn't know if I should play with them-do African women play soccer? Then I decided being the only girl hasn't ever stopped me in the past, and anyways, I can use the "I'm foreign and didn't know it wasn't acceptable" excuse.

Back to homesickness. It's Super Bowl Sunday, and while I do not avidly follow football, I do watch the Super Bowl every year, usually with family or friends. The fact that I am in Sierra Leone and not watching the Super Bowl with family & friends hit me hard--and suddenly, out of almost nowhere, a tidal wave of homesickness hit me.

After dinner we tried to find a channel that had it--and we found a feed out of South Africa that will play it--kickoff is at 11:30 pm Sierra Leone time. So glad I am off tomorrow!! It isn't quite the same experience--but I didn't think we would be able to watch it at all!

I talked to the nurses who worked today--that whole family of 4 came back positive:-( They are currently all still alive, but the twin ten-year-old girls are quite ill :'( We also had two others turn positive, one who is a one-year-old who we had for several days; she tested negative twice and we sent her to another facility where she subsequently became febrile and was returned to us. We drew labs again on her and she turned positive for BOTH malaria and Ebola. Scary, because she met our discharge criteria and one of our staff members held her (with gloves on but not in full PPE)  on the way to the facility. So, now we wait.