Laura's Driving Memories from Benin 2009- Playing Frogger in Africa Videos

 

Memories playing Frogger in Africa and a Reason for this Season

Many of you are old enough to remember the 1980's classic arcade game, Frogger. That is what driving in Africa often feels like. I was privileged to be a Mercy Ship's driver in Liberia 2008, Benin 2009, Sierra Leone 2011, Togo 2012, Guinea 2012, and Congo Brazzaville in 2013. I am approved to take my driving test here any day when I feel well enough. Prayers would be greatly appreciated as I have basically been down for the count for the last 8-10 days. I have wanted to write, but just not had the energy, or mental stamina. I am praying I am turning a corner. There have been many tears from my bed lately and I am doing my best to thank God every time I start complaining and whining. I start with being thankful that despite extreme fatigue and brain fog, I have a bed to lie in. I am thankful I know what it feels like to have full energy and no brain fog. I am thankful that although my stomach has hurt every time I eat for 7 days, I have access to food. I am thankful I have heartburn medicine. I am thankful when the nausea passes. I am thankful for ginger ale for my upset stomach. I have air-conditioning. I am thankful I did not get the full experience of the gastric intestinal bug that has been running rampant through the ship. We had so many crew ill we ran out of isolation cabins, had to move nurses to 12 hour shifts to cover the ward needs, the dining hall started serving food, we weren’t allowed to touch the serving utensils, and visits to the ward, Hope center, and a number of other events were cancelled. Never in any of my previous 5 years aboard did we have a bug spread like that. I am thankful I did not run off the ward like my dear friend and vomit in the hall. I am thankful for Dustin and his servant's heart. He has been providing room service for our friends. He took meal orders for two of my friends who were very ill as well and would deliver ramen noodles, diluted juice, ginger ale, you name it. He provides great room service. I am even thankful for parasite medicine, which I took a dose of and am praying it helps. I am thankful for internet connections to have some people at home praying for me. 

I am thankful we currently have water to flush a toilet, hot water to wash my hands, and laundry machines to wash soiled linen. I say, currently have water, as we are now on water restrictions. The Farafaty Dam, the main source of water in Toamasina, my town, collapsed on Thursday. The breakage caused the complete drainage of the sewage connecting the dam to the pumping station, causing widespread water outages in town. Our ship has 600 tons of water aboard, but we use around 50 tons per day when we are running surgeries. You can do the math; we will need a supply of water soon. We are looking for different sources to supply us with water at this time. I am thankful this water situation hit now instead of last week when even more crew were very unwell. Anyway, if my writing flow is off, please know I am trying. In between tears, I am trying. 

I recently came across 9 sub-par videos that my dear friend Jane from Northern Ireland and Nina from Norway, video recorded of our adventures driving around town in Cotonou, Benin 2009. See the post above for these videos. If you listen closely in the videos, you can hear Jane’s lovely Irish accent amidst my American yammering. I definitely felt like the little frog in Frogger trying to make it across the road alive in a number of those countries. I thought it was a thrill. Please note these videos were from an old school camera. My time on the ship years ago was in the “olden days” before everyone had a cell phone with a built in camera and video recorder. I am not an “influencer” and did not do 9 takes of the video to make it perfect for society to watch. We did not have the luxury (or dare I say it, burden) of internet access everywhere. We never knew entirely where we would end up. We didn’t have a GPS or Google Maps to reference. We made mental landmarks around town and the rest was an adventure. These videos sure bring up good memories of our adventures in Benin. The motorcycles in Benin were called zémidjans (pronounced Zimmie Johns, not to be confused with Jimmie Johns). I actually had no idea how to spell that word until looking it up today to write this blog. Zémidjan means “get me there fast” in Fon, one of Benin’s 55-68 languages (different sources report different numbers). Mercy Ships crew were actually discouraged from riding the zémidjans for safety, but some still did anyway. They could not hide that they had been riding as many often came back to the ship with a burn mark on their inner calves from the exhaust pipe on the zémidjan. I never rode one because I was a ship driver. The videos were to help me capture memories of what life was like in the streets. I never wanted to be seen as a tourist and wanted to respect the cultural view many held in West Africa, that if we took their picture, we took part of their soul. Therefore these videos were not shot with our camera hanging out of the Land Rover to get a better view. We also dropped the camera suddenly when the “mobile market,” people selling in the streets, came to the car window. 

The Lord’s guiding hand protected me in all my driving adventures. There were a number of moments I was sure sweating in the driver’s seat but thankfully, safe. I recall driving up the steepest hill in Liberia on our way to the Sisters of Charity Orphanage where we went to love and play with some of my favorite children. That hill sure made me pray my way through the entire drive, hoping I would not stall the stick shift Land Rover on the hill and roll back down into all the other taxis, people, and wheelbarrows on the road (see my previous blog from Wednesday, September 17, 2008 called Loving My Babies and Friday, May 9, 2008 titled Sisters of Charity Mission). If you were a ship driver, you were also required to do “airport runs” , dropping off crew at the airport and picking up incoming crew members. I loved to welcome the weary travelers upon their arrival to Africa. I had some friends that selected airport runs because they wanted to be the first to meet incoming crew, potential spouses. Hah! Yes, sometimes this place has been called the “love boat.” There used to be an ongoing count of what number, Mercy Ship’s couple you were, if you were in a relationship headed toward marriage. I know of one friend who was successful in his airport run pick-up and met his now wife that way. Hahaha. 

One of my less than favorite driving memories took place in Pointe Noire, Republic of the Congo in 2013 but with it are some incredible memories as well. I never wrote this driving memory because it shook me up a lot when it happened. Nor did I spend time writing about my driving when there were so many other stories of hope and healing that I wanted to share. In fact, I was not currently intending to write about driving in Africa now, but apparently, I am. I was going to post some old videos that I stumbled across because I have been feeling quite unwell and I wanted to at least post something. Well, here I am now writing about driving. In November 2013, I was the driver in the Land Rover in an extremely long line of traffic that was stopped. It was a very normal flow of traffic, just cars, no extra wheelbarrows, hand carts, semi trucks, taxis, tuk tuks, mainly cars. Pointe Noire was not known for zémidjans or a lot of motorcycle traffic at all. I was on a two lane road and there were open sewage ditches on either side of the road. The traffic appeared to be going nowhere, but was very orderly. We were only allowed to use the ship Land Rovers for personal use, occasionally, and in 4 hour time slots, so we did not want to spend all day stopped in traffic. I was on a critical mission with a friend from the ship and a local Pastor’s wife from the amazing church I attended in Pointe Noire. My friend and I loved the Pastor’s wife’s style, we befriended her, and she was going to show us where she shopped for fabric. After years in West Africa, I learned fabric is a very serious mission. But back to the church where we met this Pastor’s wife. It was the Assembly of God Airport Church- Eglise des Assemblees de Dieu Congo-Assemble Locale De L’Aeroport. The services were in French, the church had a lot of shade, fans, and the sound system was more attuned to my Western ears. I was up for almost every cultural experience when I was in Africa, but was not the biggest fan of sweating in church for around 3 hours, being ushered to the front row, seats of honor, because we were white and with Mercy Ships, and I did not care for the feedback and what seemed to my ears as full on yelling into the microphones when being used. I felt the lesson was missed for a number of local churches that the purpose of the sound system is that one no longer needs to yell. I’m certain it was passion and not yelling, in a negative connotation, but to my ears it was yelling. Anyway, I found a church family and home in this church. There was a warmth and presence of God there. I met some fantastic missionary friends there, Mama Janice and Pastor Gary Dickinson. They “adopted” my dear friends Ana Glover/Biney, Melinda Kaney/McCray, and me into their family. They had daughters our age back in the USA. We shared many laughs together, some tears, a number of meals, a “family” picture, I helped sell their merchandise from their local women’s center called That Congo Thing that trained women with sewing skills who were at risk for prostitution and AIDS, we shared a lovely Thanksgiving meal together, and they threw me a surprise good-bye party when I left the ship in 2013. I was NOT going to have a good-bye party; it was not my introverted thing. I was impressed how Mama Janice and Pastor Gary had been in Africa for years and years, but yet had room in their hearts for more friends. Something some people struggle with doing if they know their new “friends” would only be in their lives for a season. I am working on going with it’s okay to have friends for a “season” and there’s always a “reason” so do not miss that “season.” Thanks Mama Janice and Pastor Gary for demonstrating this. 

I digressed, or maybe I didn’t, this is my story. I pray I have many years ahead on earth, if God wills and want someone to read these stories to me when I am older and need to see God’s hand of faithfulness and remember the adventures. Well, all three of us in the car decided we should turn around and get out of the traffic and take another route. I did about 1,000 side view, rear view mirror, and head turn checks to make sure no one was coming and I slowly crept out of the row of traffic. I put on my turn signal and was going to turn around in a driveway to my left. I was inching the Land Rover into the lane of oncoming traffic, where there was actually no traffic at all, there was not even a chicken or rooster running across the road. I pulled a little further out of the stopped traffic and out of nowhere, a motor cycle came zooming up behind me attempting to pass all the 30 plus cars stopped. I have no idea how fast he was going, but he hit the left, front, side of the Land Rover at full speed and went flying into the air. I lost my breath, I started shaking, and I thought I had just killed a man. I saw him flying in the air and by miraculous intervention, as if an angel from heaven grabbed his body as soon as he hit the Land Rover and held him in slow motion to turn him right side up, he landed standing up, on his two feet, looking directly at me, in the open sewage ditch, which miraculously did not have any sewage in it either. I could not believe it. I was panicking and certain he would have fractures, abrasions, a head injury, you name it. I immediately radioed the ship to tell them what had happened. No one answered. We were taught to never take the locals in our vehicle with us, just wait for help from the ship, if an incident like this happened. We also knew not to take the people with us to the ship for help. We are a hospital, but not an ER. We have to send our supplies that are carefully, mathematically figured out; down to the amount of gauze we need months ahead to get to our service countries to have supplies for the operations planned. I was frozen and did not know what to do. Although the street had been very calm before and it appeared no one was around, now people started to fill the street. They were starting to swarm around my Land Rover. I was so thankful the local Pastor’s wife was with me, I therefore had an interpreter. I knew the gentleman I hit would demand money because there’s a perception that all white people have money, and yes, in comparison, we are millionaires. I was shocked; his motorcycle appeared to be undamaged as well. I still wanted to make sure he was medically okay, so without thinking much and as the crowd around me was growing in size, I asked the local Pastor’s wife to have him and another bystander get in the Land Rover with us. I still had no radio response from the ship. For better or worse, I asked the Pastor’s wife where the closest local hospital was and she asked who I am going to call, Miracle Motorcycle Man (MMM), if he was okay if we took him to the hospital. Miracle Motorcycle Man agreed. We arrived at the hospital compound and took MMM to the ER. By God’s providence, there was a Mercy Ships interpreter working at the ER. He worked there on his off days. I was SO thankful. I explained everything that happened and explained I would cover the bill for MMM. By this time, my friend from the ship managed to make contact with our ship’s security officer and he was en route to the hospital to help us. Thankfully, MMM was okay. I took the initiative to pay the entire hospital bill. Although I adapted to many local customs and wore African dresses and headscarves, I still glowed in the dark and couldn’t hide my marshmallow colored skin. I stuck out everywhere I went. The hospital police started to gather around and assess the situation. Demands started to be made for large amounts of money from me. A lot of the situation is now a blur, but through my French, I learned MMM did not even have a driver’s license and he should have never been driving the motorcycle anyway. Our ship security officer arrived with another crew member. I was very thankful to see him. I paid a taxi fare for the local Pastor’s wife to get home. Our “critical” fabric mission was not going to be completed. 

Everything else happened very quickly, all I knew is that the giant metal gates that secured the hospital compound were shut and the local security team/police were not going to let us leave the compound. We were not going to pay large amounts of money I was not responsible for. I was in the Land Rover that had hit MMM and the ship’s security officer was in another Land Rover. We were radioing between our two Land Rovers and the next thing I heard was the ship security officer said something over the radio like, “follow me, if they do not open the gates, I am going to ram through them and you just follow me.” My heart sank, oh, my goodness. I started praying instead right then. We asked God to intervene in the situation right away. I cannot even remember if we closed our eyes during the prayer, but the next thing I knew when I looked up, the hospital compound doors were open and we drove through without incident. We made it back to the ship. I was shaking. I went to my cabin and cried and cried. That was a driving adventure I could have lived without. But, I am beyond thankful for God’s intervention and keeping me safe in all the adventures. I am thankful that Motorcycle Miracle Man was safe. I am thankful in all my years of playing Frogger in Africa, God has kept me safe. I am thankful in every “season” there is a “reason.” “God’s plans are to prosper me and not harm me, plans to give me hope and a future…”Jeremiah 29:11. Lord, in this “season” of sickness, help me to hang on tight to you, even though I don’t understand the reason.