"Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him"

Diving into the Psalms today. A friend and I have been talking about the psalms recently--the ones in the 40s: "Why are you downcast, oh my soul? ...put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him..." And Psalm 88, the ending, "Darkness is my closest friend." The Psalms carry the whole spectrum of human emotion-and the Psalmists weren't afraid to be honest. Watching suffering sucks.
Watching children sicken and die is awful. We lost two last night alone, both quite young. We also lost one of the ten-year-olds the night before. One from last night was the one year old that we has discharged a week ago Ebola and malaria negative that came back to us with high fever and with BOTH malaria and Ebola. We all knew deep down we would lose her...but you have to hold on to the hope that you are wrong.

Hope. Such an important emotion. Most of the laments in Psalms have elements of hope in them (Ps 88 aside). Psalm 89 returns to hope. Hope is vital--hope is why we didn't tell the gentleman his wife is dead. He is holding on to the hope that she is coming--and until his health improves, we aren't going to deprive him of that hope.

Someone asked me what happens when our patients get discharged. When they are discharged from confirmed they are "cured," and we celebrate with singing, dancing, and djembe drumming. The cured person or persons get(s) loaded up in our ambulance and delivered back to his/her village. Psychosocial goes with them, and sometimes a nurse or doctor does as well. Yesterday two of our nurses went--but they didn't actually get the girl back to her village because the vehicle got stuck in a swamp on the way out! Two vehicles did initially...followed by the rescue vehicle...followed by the second rescue vehicle! So four total vehicles got stuck in mud (4-wheel drive, standard transmissions) and it isn't even rainy season yet!! Oh boy!

The reactions of a homecoming vary. Sometimes, the cured person has lost everyone in his to her family and comes back to an empty house. Sometimes the villagers don't want to associate with them because they are afraid the individual still has Ebola. Or they are afraid the person is cursed. Some homecomings are happier than that, but many are quite somber affairs. Every time psychosocial visits a village (I learned yesterday that anything under 50 houses is a village, anything over 50 is a town) they try to do impromptu education seminars about Ebola. It does exist, this person is cured & safe, continue to report the sick in the village so they can be treated...

Momoh (mu-mu) for praying for us. Momoh is thank you in Temne. Please continue to uplift the peoples of West Africa.