Epiblog
on Shona in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone), 11/Jan/2012 22:33, 34 days ago
I’ve struggled to know how to finish my blog. I guess I don’t like to think of it as being “finished”, because even though I have left Sierra Leone, I know that life and work carry on, both for my colleagues and patients in Freetown and for me in Oxford. I’ve been home for five months now.I’m back working in the neonatal unit in Oxford. What has changed for me? What words can I use to sum up my time in Sierra Leone and the effect it had on me?There is a lot I miss about Sierra Leone: the fantastic fresh fruit (especially mangoes!), the Atlantic barracuda and lobster, the Bounty Beaches, the heat, Krio, the crazy public transport system, my friends and colleagues.There’s a lot I’m very grateful for back at home. I’m thankful for the things I’m privileged to have and to be able to do. I’m extremely happy to be back with my husband. To turn on the tap and have water come out. To have a hot shower in the morning. To know the lights will always turn on. I’m also getting very used to having these creature comforts again! I’m also privileged to have had the time I did in Sierra Leone, to have done something, however small for Salone and its children, and to learn so much from them.I’ve had some hard and very busy shifts in the neonatal unit since I’ve been back. But nothing on the scale of a bad day in Freetown. It seems that I do still measure my day by whether any babies have died.I sometimes look around the neonatal intensive care unit and think,“Not one of these babies would survive in Sierra Leone”. I have at times found it ethically challenging – in much the same way I did in SL – thinking, how long should we keep going, keep trying to save these extremely preterm babies, and to what kind of life? Mostly however I feel extremelypleased we are able to offer the care we can, and hope that the families have some idea of how lucky they are.I’ve apparently become something of a VSO cover girl! I haven’t seen myself on TV yet although people do keep telling me they’ve seen the advert. I have however, seen it on YouTube. It’s nice being an advocate for SL and is a lovely reminder for me of the good things that I did.I have done a few talks for colleagues here about my experiences. I have found it wonderfully therapeutic to have uninterrupted time to talk about it, to a captive audience. Once I start, it’s hard to shut me up! Sometimes it’s hard to explain how I felt at times – to attempt to do this I’ve read out some of the more harrowing of my blogs. Seeing children dying every day was the most difficult thing for me in Sierra Leone and I sorted out some of that in my head through those blogs. Still, it’s something I always found it difficult to come to terms with.My auntie, a minister, sent me this poem. It has helped me make some sense of the suffering I witnessed, and continues to encourage me day by day.Into the freedom of wind and sunshine we let you go;Into the dance of the stars and planets we let you go;Into the wind’s breath and the hands of the starmaker, we let you go.We love you, we will always miss you, we want you to be happy and feel you want us to be happy again.The EndPS. To the amazing people I met and worked with in SL, some of the most inspiring people I have met in my life: I miss you all and I hope to visit you again someday soon. Thank you for all your support in SL. Tenki yah.