Barbara’s reflections during the last week in Nigeria

We are leaving Nigeria in tomorrow, and I’ve told you a lot about what I’ve been doing, but it’s hard to express how I’ve been impacted by things here. I myself can’t even really make sense of all my experiences, or understand fully what God is trying to teach me, but I am grateful for them all. Today, I was asked what my positive and negative experiences have been here. I’ve loved my time here. I never expected to love Nigeria. When I first came, everything was so different, it all seemed so dirty and disorganized and I didn’t think I could ever get used to it. But the human spirit is so adaptable, and now things I once thought were so foreign seem commonplace. For a while, even treating HIV patients became ho-hum, and I began to be de-sensitized to it. Partly because I had to be, in order to continue working among them and not become depressed, but also partly because there are so many life-threatening problems here, HIV became just another one of them. But getting familiar with Nigeria allowed me to see what I’ve really loved here. I love their generous and loving spirit, their easy laughter. I loved that here, co-workers are friends too, and everyone values community and family over work. I’ve enjoyed the fact that I can stop by the residents’ homes without asking and know I am welcomed, and they in turn know that if they are sick, I’m going to stop by to visit them. I’ve loved my work in the hospital. Everyday, I ask God to help me to love my patients, and I am so grateful for the opportunities He’s given to me, to encourage and pray for my patients, to help them understand medical issues, to counsel them and help them to be healthier and safer. I’m thankful for the opportunities I had to go on village outreaches, to work with HIV patients, to help those on the streets. I came to Africa because I didn’t want to be one of those people who saw starving people on TV and said, “oh, how terrible”, and then promptly change the channel and forgot they existed. I wanted to come and face poverty face on and, even though I know I can do so little, I wanted to at least try. I am so grateful that I could do it. There were times, when I was faced with a dirty, smelly, starving villager, who had a nasty rash and nasty teeth and looked so sick, that I asked myself, “what are you doing here?” You don’t want to touch them, you don’t know what they’ve got, and how can you help them anyway? Maybe you can give them some short-term medications, but you’ll only help them for one week. Who’s going to help them for the next month, the next year? But thank God He gave me the compassion to want to touch them and help them anyway, because something is better than nothing, and they get so little love in their lives. Personally, I’ve loved that here, we have time. We have time to spend time with God, time to reflect on our everyday experiences, time to be refreshed and rejuvenated. And most importantly, I’ve loved living everyday, feeling as if the Lord was in everything I was doing.

There are, of course, things about Nigeria I will not miss, things I did not enjoy. I won’t miss the inefficiency, the corruption, the absolute waste of time and money. It is so sad to me that even at Evangel, which is a Christian mission hospital, there are workers who steal money, who give jobs to their family members who are completely unqualified for it, and who are lazy and irresponsible. And this happens all over Nigeria! I won’t miss the fact that accountability and consequences are often nonexistent here, that if you make a commitment and then break it without telling anyone, it’s not a big deal, and if you somehow “misplace” the money, nothing will be done to you. I won’t miss that everyone tries to convince us to help them get visas to the US, even some of our supposed “friends”, or tries to marry me to their son until they find out I’m already married. I won’t miss the unpredictable electricity, water, internet, phone service, etc. I will always be sad that the residents here are bitter because they took ten years to get through medical school, not because they failed but because of strikes and corruption, and it will always make them feel cheated.

It is hard to explain how God has changed us, yet I know He has. I will never be able to walk past poverty again without desperately wanting to do something about it. I will not be able to look at all the things we have in the US, all the wealth, without some sense of waste. Here, where death is an everyday, common occurrence, life is celebrated even more so, and joy is to be found wherever you can. I hope I will take that back to the US with me. I am afraid that in the US, the sense of living life intensely, as if every day mattered, will get lost in all the THINGS we do. In the US, we like to fill our time with “important” things---meetings, extra-curriculars, exercising, shopping, church, sports, music, etc---don’t get me wrong, they’re all good things, and we mean well, yet, we’re so busy, we lose track of the most important commandment ---to love God, and to love each other as God loves us. We just need to slow down!

Over these past few months, I’ve been so encouraged by all the comments you, my friends and family, have given to us. I don’t feel I’ve done anything brave, special, or exciting, yet it seems many people have felt encouraged and/or challenged by our experiences. I am so glad that our work here could be making some impact back home too. We have had so much support and love from you and are just so glad you could share this time with us. Please pray for us as we prepare to come home, and pray for a safe journey and a good reunion with you all. We will be home on May 5th, and will continue this blog until we run out of experiences we want to share.