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I rolled my eyes a little bit when I heard we were going to have a tour guide take us along a hike in the woods. Don’t get me wrong, I love hiking; it’s the tour guide part that I’m not particularly fond of. My knowledge of the woods and experience with hiking make me think I don’t need a guide. I’d rather go at my own pace, look at the things I want to look at, linger where I want to linger, and not be seen with a tourist group while I’m at it. It sounds pretty fiercely independent and arrogant, because it is.  As our African tour guide headed down the trail at the front, I took the tail end of the pack, moseying along and keeping a small distance between me and the others. The trail was breathtakingly beautiful and lusciously green. What a contrast compared to the dry northern region where I live! Instead of looking around, I found myself looking up towards the tops of the trees in this coastal forest. My head tilted back to soak in the beauty, which actually seemed to grow ...

If you look at west Africa on google earth, you will see a very distinct natural line that runs east-west and separates the land into two regions - the barren, dusty Sahara desert and the lush tropical coastal region. Everything north of this line is brown, everything south is green, and it’s so distinct that you can see it from space. And if you are driving in Togo, you can cross over it in a distance of about twenty kilometers. This past week, we did just that.  We live in the northern region of Togo, also known as (in google earth terms)...the brown part. It’s flat, it’s hot, it’s dry. For me and four other nurses, we haven’t left this region in about seven months. We needed a change of scenery and a little R&R, so we loaded up and headed south.  We oohed and aahed at the hills rising in the distance, and as the truck winded up through them and then passed over to the other side, we started singing “A Whole New World.” We had just crossed over the brown-to-gree...

There are some days of living in west Africa that I just want to remember. Not because anything extraordinary happened, but rather because what ordinarily happens is just so unordinary. Sometimes I can’t believe what happens in a “regular” day. And it’s funny: I used to think the western world I grew up in was the norm and that Africa was the exception because of poverty. In reality, it’s exactly the opposite. In most things - wealth, social structure, access to jobs and health care, literacy, even the size of your house and the amount of clothes you own - the United States is the exception; the majority world is the norm.  Today was one of those days - just a totally “normal” day - but I write about it because it doesn’t just represent a day, it represents an entire lifetime.  It was a pretty crazy day, but I’ve gotten somewhat used to crazy being the new normal. Our four bed labor and delivery unit was constantly full. As soon as one bed opened, another person came ...