Christmas Day in Liberia starts the same as Christmas Day in
Hawaii Nei – sunrise, peace and palm trees. It changes quickly though. A
pleasant sunrise turns to a blast furnace and the morning peace becomes chaos
as the workday begins. Organized chaos yes but chaos nonetheless. I spent all
morning at Spriggs airfield getting a contingent of our docs and nurses on to
helicopters bound for the ETUs in Bopolu and Gbediah Town. I love saying
Bopolu. I’m not sure whether I’m imitating Fats Domino or Ricky Ricardo when I
sing it. Aerial pictures of both sites are attached. The livin’ ain’t easy on
either site but will get better over time as the sites develop. Over the next
week I send teams out to even more remote sites that make these two look like
the Four Seasons.
It’s just after lunch and our next pow-wow isn’t until 3. Time
to get this out. I thought a Christmas playlist delivered in a low tech setting
in high tech fashion (via Bluetooth and JamBox) would be just the ticket.
Wrong. I start off with Nat King Cole. I can remember my dad playing it through
enormous speakers in the impossibly small living room where I grew up. Within
seconds the tears well up. I switch to Frank Sinatra (Jessie’s favorite
Christmas album) – mistake. A fast-forward to Windham Hill selections should
dry me up. Nope. How about Hapa? Arrgh. Only makes me miss Hawaii more. I give
up, switch it off, blow my nose and resume typing. Jeez. Keep it together. Stop
slobbering. Any minute I expect to have someone open the attic access on me and
I fall through the roof like Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation. Where are the
Moose Cups when you need them? I am fahklmept.
Finally, a special Merry Christmas to Jessie, Haley and
Piper. You three are the greatest gifts I could have ever hoped for. To the
rest of you a very Merry Christmas as well. Treasure your time with each other
today. Treasure your family. Treasure your health. They are all gifts. And
speaking of gifts, I am gob-smacked at the level of generosity displayed here
by the responding community, the local Liberians and a very special group of
locals – the Ebola survivors. There is no harder working group here. They teach
us how to take better care of the current victims. They work in the hot zone
caring for the infants whose mothers are too ill to do so. They play with the
older children in the same situation. They take home the orphans who’ve lost
everyone and everything. They even give of their own blood. It’s called
convalescent serum and does appear to help improve survival when transfused
into infected patients. Now that’s a gift. They are defining examples of what
Christmas was, is and should always be about. And on earth peace, goodwill
towards men…
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