scott harrison - mercy.

ethiopia. water.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:20:00 +0000

charity: water. ETHIOPIA
November, 2006

- Bulgeta, Ethiopia.

About 5 hours south of Addis Ababa, Bulgeta sits at 6000 feet, and boasts almost that many inhabitants. To get there, your sturdy 4x4 would snake south through Ethiopia's mountains, then turn right at a town called Shone. Thirty minutes later, navigating an impossibly rocky road full of children, cows and donkeys - of push carts loaded with wood and water - you'd pass a primary school where hundreds pack in to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.

Moments later, you'd find the water source that served Bulgeta for generations and stole many of its children's lives.

For years, men, women and children drank from the village's large pond. So did their livestock. To the left, trees cover a path that circles it, behind lies a field where the cattle graze. The sloping grass is littered with cow dung and carries waste down its slope to the pond during the rains. The water is filled with green algae and muck, making many sick in Bulgeta.

But like many poor communities in Africa, healthcare is out of reach for most there. Those who could afford treatment at the nearby Shone clinic would be carried on the shoulders of others for antibiotics that cost between 40 and 80 cents. Those that couldn't stayed at home and suffered. Many died with parasitic diseases, some of typhoid, others from dehydration or plain old diarrhea.

The people of Bulgeta knew the water was killing them.

"It is not clean at all," Marcos, one of the village elders told me through a translator in Amharic. "But we have no other solution. We have to drink it." He told me some people used to walk two hours a day to fetch water from the source, and then grabbed his wife and colorful 20 liter jerry cans and jumped in the pond to show me how they used to gather the water.

But not anymore.

Thanks to humanitarian efforts, clean water arrived a month ago in the form of a freshwater well. It cost about $3500 to drill and cast, and now sits on a hill above the pond. It has changed Bulgeta. Able to pump about a million gallons of clean and safe drinking water a year, it has brought hope and health into town. You see, clean water changes everything in Africa. The precious children of Bulgeta are proof of that, crowding the well, eager to show me how clean their water now was. (click here for video)

Dinkanich drinks from Bulgeta's freshwater well spout

I spent 11 days in Ethiopia, and visited many villages like Bulgeta. One of the organizations charity: supports on the ground has drilled more than 150 wells in Ethiopia in the past few years, providing clean water to over 750,000 people.

They are a remarkable team of expatriates and locals. The oldest, John Ed Clark, is a slim 69-year-old man with bushy eyebrows and furrowed brow. He told me that I accompanied him on his 60th trip to the country. He has three more trips planned next year, and says plainly he'll keep coming until he can't.

I learned all about the drilling process and even operated the controls of the 30-year-old rig with expert driller Curt King. We looked for water on the grounds of a deaf school, and I was surprised to learn how involved the process was. A Seattle resident, Curt's been at clean water for almost three decades and reckons he's drilled more than 2000 water wells in his lifetime. He's tall and kind and speaks shyly and softly about his work.

Emotionally, Curt talks of the women and children whom he perhaps best serves, the women he sees often weeping as he finishes a well. Those "without a voice." Curt wants the work to go on when he's unable to continue, and has been training three locals - Solomon, Nigusse, and Demoze, to take his place when he retires.

With our help and funding, Curt and his team seek to transform another 60 communities like Bulgeta in 2007. Curt hopes for 100 wells.

Curt & Solomon laugh at my drilling skills and improper attire.

After leaving our drill team, I traveled more than 1000 miles over the next days to remote, water-stressed parts of the country and saw firsthand Ethiopia's great need for water. I photographed children digging in sand for the precious liquid. I saw hunched women walk torturous miles in the heat with jugs of dirty fluid tied to their backs. I put faces to the country's 45 million+ without access to clean and safe drinking water. The stories I'd like to tell would fill ten newsletters.

Touring a health clinic that served 103,000 people and had no doctors, I watched the administrator flip through the book, seemingly shocked himself at the incidence of waterborne disease. Not quite as high as the often quoted UN number of 80 percent, his clinic still saw about 50 percent. The administrator jumped in our truck and drove us to the local source he said was responsible for the illness. We stared as ponds with cattle and children shared the same drink. Women washed clothes, bathed and drank in the same place. We stood over a small stagnant hole, and I incredulously watched as a young boy in a ragged gray sweatshirt and swollen feet gathered 10 liters. Water is desperately needed here, water is desperately needed in so many places.

You can help.

Support charity: with your gifts over the coming holiday season as we team with those transforming lives of those in need. Your support allows charity: to continue our work to spark greater global awareness about issues surrounding poverty and to connect people with ways they can make a difference. Through our water campaign, our educational exhibitions, special events and $20 charity: water bottle sales, we are committed to bringing clean water into African communities like Bulgeta while building a community of compassion and concern here at home.

Please get involved.

VIEW MORE OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ETHIOPIA HERE

SEE VIDEO FROM BULGETA HERE

donate to charity

buy a $20 bottle of charity: water. build wells.

view our needs list

postscript.

Sulfiso & Tariku

The most special moment for me in Ethiopia wasn't water related, but may have meaning to those of you who served with me on the Mercy Ship, or followed the last two years of patient stories in West Africa. Early one morning last week, I took a walk in the dim morning light just before 6 a.m. and prayed quietly for the day. Moments after I finished, a man strolled out of the bush and joined me on my walk. As I looked into his face, I saw that he had a prominent cleft lip and must have been about 30 years old. I jumped inside, knowing from experience I'd be able to help him, as the nearby Christian hospital in Soddo boasted a world-class surgeon.

We walked for about a kilometer together in the growing dawn, unsuccesfully communicating in language but sharing smiles. He left me finally with a wave, and I took note of where he walked into the bush. Later that afternoon, I tracked him down with a translator and showed him a copy I had of Need Magazine where I'd recently published before and after photos of cleft surgeries done on the Mercy Ship. I learned the man's name was Sulfiso, and he agreed to accept the surgery I'd arranged for. We discussed transport.

Then, a few hours, later, I learned God wasn't happy with just one patient. Two years of experience, and, well I'd better use it I guess. A 9-year-old boy, Tariku, turned up where I was staying and showed me his face. He was shy, bearing the stigma I'd so often seen of the common birth defect. Happily, I was able to schedule Tariku for surgery as well.

But two wasn't enough. On my way back through town a week later, I learned that another three patients had surfaced at the house. Their treatments were arranged as well.

Five lives and faces changed forever by simple 45-minute surgeries that will cost me only about $200 each. It's incredibly humbling.

-scott harrison

embracing ethiopia

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 15:51:00 +0000

As I prepare for a 12-day trip to Ethiopia on Wednesday, I am shocked to learn just how bad the water situation is there.

The country has more than 76 million people, and 76 percent of the population has no access to clean and safe drinking water.

I go to meet with the organizations we work with on the ground there, Healing Hands and Living Water. The charity: water initiative seeks to fully fund 60 wells in the south of Ethiopia, yet I know already so very many more are needed.

Please watch this space for images and videos from the field.

-scott

"he scratch the eye" - a study of burkitt's lymphoma

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:26:00 +0000

april 06, 2005

At least 100 patients surround us in the dimly lit hospital waiting room. Sitting on hard wooden benches probably once used as church pews, the two young boys in our care are certainly something to see. Waiting Africans look at them with disgust and horror. Shudders mix with a few compassionate looks. Across from me, a woman with sad eyes tries to make eye contact, and finally does. "What happened?" she asks simply. Before I can speak, the boy's mother replies, "He scratch the eye."

The gross misunderstanding makes me sigh audibly. Those four words so telling, so representative of the many things gone wrong in this place.

The boys, Clinton and Korle, have only two good eyes between them. The other two ooze red and pink with pus - almost as large as tennis balls. Looking around to meet some of the gazes the boys attract, I realize how much perspective I've lost. These points and stares are now an important litmus test for me at how grotesque these two children seem to most. Yet their bad eyes do truly look ready to burst at any moment.

Clinton's mother looks away so I answer the woman's question softly. "The boys have Burkitt's lymphoma. It's a very fast growing cancer. They will get chemotherapy here and either get better or die."

Clinton's mom says he's six years old although I'd swear he's at least nine or ten. It's not uncommon here that age is a thing subjective and often unknown - given less importance in a culture that doesn't have a meaning for the word future.

I met Clinton last month at our patient screening in Ganta - a one-hour helicopter ride north of Liberia's capital, Monrovia. I photographed him as our pathologist stuck a needle in his eye not once but twice, thus determining he had Burkitt's. When I learned he was scheduled to visit the ship, I happily titled the picture of him wecanhelp.jpg and saved it on my desktop. Whether that title proves true remains to be seen.

Clinton first got sick some time last year. His mother thinks July, but it would be extraordinary if he'd survived the cancer that long. She's very thin and pretty and says she's only 18. She looks 22 or 23 and must be or else the math doesn't work.

Clinton looks perpetually sad, he is understandably morose. His whole face seems to droop with his left eye yet when he saw me this morning the right eye lit up briefly and an exclamation reached his lips. Barely a second later though, that light was gone. His mother is too rough with him. Both in the way she handles him and verbally. I'm not sure if she blames him for this trek across the country - or for scratching his eye - or for the unwanted looks of wonderment and questions asked. She is pleasant with me though, smiling often, speaking a version of English difficult for me to understand.

Korle is smaller than Clinton and frail. I'm told he is six and I believe it. He's had Burkitt's since August of last year, and it's in a late stage. I first saw him at our Monrovia patient screening - he was processed in the long line of eye patients until he was directed to our oncologist who diagnosed him.

Korle looks hopeful, yet seems always on the brink of tears. His face shows a curious mix of emotions. He looks at me with a soft expectance, yet I can't tell what it is he expects, or what's going through his mind. He screws his face together as if ready to sob, then composes himself and throws quizzical looks. His hands and arms are always busy. Grabbing the bench. Grabbing and picking at his hair - flicking his fingers together with brisk restless energy. The eye wound drips, I think he hasn't noticed and then an active hand catches the drop before moving on to scratch his head.

When I picked him up at his house, a ramshackle hut not far from the hospital, I met his uncle Prince who would accompany us. In the car I learned his name was pronounced KWAY-LO. Prince is a jovial man, about 35. He is gentle with Korle. He tells me that when the boy's eye first started swelling, he carried him to the Mamba Point clinic. Then to St. Joseph's, where doctors initially wanted to surgically remove the eye. Then to an eye clinic in Sinkor.

After yet another dead end, Korle’s family decided to try traditional medicine - hot water presses. They made no difference, and as the eye continued to swell and ooze, a final hospital, JFK, was consulted. Doctors there properly diagnosed the cancer but were unable to treat him. Prince says, "There was nothing else we could do."

Yet soon after, Prince heard in town, on the radio and in the papers, that a ship was coming. A ship that provided free surgeries. Free healthcare. Prince took Korle to the Mercy Ships patient screening and waited.

* * *

Burkitt's Lymphoma, truly one of the fastest growing cancers known, bears the name of its discoverer, Denis Burkitt, who stumbled across it in 1964. It seems a strange irony that Mr. Burkitt had only one good eye, losing the other as a child in a fight. Yet he desperately aspired to be a surgeon.

Not finding a great demand for one-eyed surgeons, his applications to the medical field were systematically rejected until Adolf Hitler's assault on the world opened the door. Even monocular Army physicians were desperately needed now, and in 1935 Burkitt was posted to Kenya and Somalia, achieving the rank of major. In 1946, having proved his cyclopic ability, he stood ready for colonial service and began his work in Uganda.

In 1957, Burkitt examined a five-year-old boy there with tumors of the head and neck. A few weeks later he saw the same tumors manifested in a small girl. The tumors grew quickly, and both children died within a few weeks. Burkitt realized what he was seeing could be far-reaching, so he began contacting African hospitals and gathering data. The study took him on the road with two associates, traveling an astonishing 10,000 miles across the vast continent. Visiting more than 60 hospitals in both the east and south, he found himself often in the footsteps of the great explorer David Livingstone.

With geographical data assembled, Burkitt was able to deduce that the disease related directly to the mosquito-ridden equatorial region where malaria and yellow fever abound. Immune systems weakened by the bug-carried diseases opened the door to the lymphoma that would bear his name.

A later collaboration with Michael Anthony Epstein in 1961 found that the syndrome was also associated with the Epstein-Barr virus. Burkitt began to work on treatments, and was instrumental in devising the treatment the boys will receive.

There are two ways to treat Clinton and Korle. A toxic cocktail of drugs used in the West costing upward of $3,000 a child, or the cheaper drug cyclophosphomide - an intravenously administered chemotherapy - the drug Burkitt had success with - about $300 for treatment.

As Mercy Ships specializes in providing life-changing surgeries, primarily maxillo-facial surgery, there was simply no official protocol to respond to the Burkitt's cases observed at patient screenings. However, Mercy Ships oncologist John Jensen, well studied in the epidemiology of the lymphoma, improvised, and decided to take the patients' cause to the crew of the Anastasis.

Through an offering, the ship’s crew raised $1977.23 for the purchase of cyclophosphomide. Dr. Jensen liaised with the local hospital, St. Joseph's to treat the cases we discovered and administer the drugs.

* * *

I'd been told more than once by reliable sources on the ship that I wouldn't believe how civilized St. Joseph's hospital is. A Catholic-run operation in the heart of Monrovia, "It's the nicest hospital I've seen in West Africa," Dr. Jensen told me.

Driving a white Land Rover through guarded gates, I see that it boasts a tranquil courtyard and well maintained tennis court. To the side, an enormous tree shades a statue of St. Joseph cradling a child.

Once inside however, it is only when held up to West African standards that the hospital retains its dignity. Wires without fixtures pop from walls with cracked paint. Doctor's names have been printed hastily on cards, laminated and temporarily taped outside consulting room doors. A wall of numbered milk carton faces stare at us. "We are missing our children," the wall reads.

Two women from the Anastasis sit in the waiting room with me. Debbie Joensen is the wife of the ship's first officer, Jonhard Joensen. She is from Maine and has a lovely smile. She is a counsellor on the ship’s ward and works wonderfully with the patients - always touching them playfully, always flashing a winning smile around them. Usually a bundle of nervous energy, today in the hospital she is still and tense, holding back tears, gripping Clinton's small leg, eyes closed in prayer.

The other woman, Ann Giles, is an experienced nurse from Britain. She began working with Mercy Ships palliative care in 1997 in Guinea. For healthy young types like me who might not know what that word means, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines palliative care as "the active total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Control of pain, of other symptoms, and of psychological, social and spiritual problems is paramount."

Basically a response to certain, unavoidable death. Death accepted by the doctors, the nurses, the patient and his family. Yet kindness, compassion and pain relief are summoned to meet this harsh reality. As Cicily Saunders, founder of the Hospice movement said eloquently:

"You matter because you are
You matter to the last moment of your life
We will do all that we can,
Not only to let you die peacefully
But to live until you die."

This is what Ann's work is all about. She and her husband, Tony, a maxillo-facial surgeon, are Mercy Ships "regulars" - flying in from England for 6 - 8 weeks each outreach. She has seen many things over the years and is able to diagnose a variety of West African maladies. As she says, "You just don't realize how much you know until you realize you know things other people don't."

Ann has had experience with Burkitt's before, although it's a sad story. In 2003, working with palliative care, it was discovered that the patient, Shaku, a young boy with a bulging eye rivaling Clinton's or Korle's, had treatable Burkitt's. She and Tony found the drugs to treat him, and the eye began to respond to treatment. They admitted him to a local hospital where he suddenly developed tuberculosis. They returned with medicine to treat the TB, only to find he had contracted malaria and died.

Ann tells me they had been giving Shaku's mother money to feed him, to keep him strong. The day after he died, the boy’s mother approached Tony and confessed instead to having spent it on herself. Ann said she learned a valuable lesson that day about how things work in this difficult land. She says plainly, "In Africa you use the resources for the living, not the dying."

The lesson learned is an age-old one. If you want something done right, you do it yourself. And so we sit in the waiting room with the two boys, making sure they see the doctor. Making sure they are admitted. Making sure they receive the chemotherapy. Making sure they get their chance to live.

* * *

Dr. Sherif Seguiny's door opens, the last at the end of the corridor attached to the waiting room. We step past 15 or so children waiting to see him, many crying. Dr. Sherif is a pediatrician from Egypt. "On loan" from his ministry of foreign affairs, as he puts it. He has been here 9 months and seen 10 Burkitt's cases in that time. "If we get it early, they improve with treatment" he says.

We find out during his questioning that Clinton had been to see him before. His mother brought him in for one session of chemotherapy and when the eye began to respond to the drugs, didn't bother bringing him back for the essential five remaining treatments.

Perhaps not dissimilar to a bout of bronchitis I once had that cleared up a day or two after I began taking antibiotics. Perhaps not dissimilar to me seeing no point in finishing the extended round of antibiotics until the mucous came raging back worse than when it began. Yet this cancer will kill him and he is but a child who cannot make decisions himself. As Clinton’s mother looks to the doctor with earnest hope, I check my anger towards her.

Clinton is now here with us, safe with us. Dr. Sherif says he'll "over" hydrate both boys today, and then drain a bag of liquid cyclophosphomide into their arms tomorrow. We'll pick them up and drive them home on Wednesday, and then as Ann's off to the U.K. it will be my job to make sure they both return in exactly 21 days for a repeat performance. Six repeat performances at the end of which they will either be cured or dead.

I quickly try to establish a rapport with Dr. Sherif, discussing a patient of his I photographed at screening and believe we're operating on. We exchange email addresses. We'll arrange for a tour of the ship next weekend in exchange for his special attention to these children. He is upbeat and hopeful. He tells me simply and firmly that if I don't bring them back, they will not come back. Even though we are paying for their potentially life-saving treatment, they will not return. I promise to make sure they do, and we head down the hallway to admit them.

* * *

General consensus gives Clinton and Korle a 50/50 shot at life. If the cancer has not already developed too far, their small bodies will respond to six rounds of completed chemotherapy, and they will look as normal as the next child. Their eyes will shrink and become symmetrical, and they will bear no scars. They will draw no more looks; they will join the ranks of the healthy.

We pay the $6 to admit the boys to the hospital, the eighty cents for their hydration IV packs, and tell them we'll be back on Wednesday, shrinking into the African heat.

Get the PDF version of story here

Northern Uganda - Gulu Province I went loo...

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:08:00 +0000

Northern Uganda - Gulu Province

I went looking for dirty drinking water this morning.

Stuffed in the back of a blue Toyota land cruiser with a human rights activist and two local Ugandan humanitarians, I hurtled north towards the Sudanese border. A military truck carrying five camouflauged army fighters with AK-47's followed closely behind, the soldiers choking in our red dust.

We passed several army roadblocks and convoys, necessary measures in Uganda's wild wild northwest to defend travelers and Acholi villagers from Joseph Koney's dangerous LRA rebel soldiers recently seen in the area. I took in a Ugandan sky with a bigness hard to describe. It's a sky that seems to press too close to the ground as stacks of cumulous layer then rupture to reveal patches of deep blue.

Blue feels out of place here.

16 miles shy of the Sudan border, we reached our destination. the Atiak IDP camp, home to 23,638 Internally Displaced Persons in crude circular mud huts with thatched straw roofs. They abandoned their villages 10 years ago when their children were snatched from their homes by Koney's troops and forced to bear arms, to kill. 150 of them were massacred in town center in 1995. Now, there is safety in numbers, safety in the camp.

"Take me to the water source" I asked Alex, one of the camp's leaders, who cheerfully led me outside the camp through tall grass and down a slope to a water hole. A few acholi women were gathered there, drawing water from a source that some time ago would have shocked me.

The water was murky, stagnant, unsafe. Through Alex, I asked them why they were gathering water here, when there were 10 bore wells scattered throughout the vast camp. I listened and learned that the lines to take water from the cement wells were between 6 - 8 hours long. That the wells served more than 2300 people each and didn't produce enough water. The women couldn't wait in line today and like many others, had come to gather water from this fetid mud hole.

Many here in East Africa don't even have their choice.

During my extensive tour of Rwanda last week, a little more than an hour south of its broken and busy capital, I took the following pictures of a local source of drinking water. I then choked back anger and tears as viscous, brown water was gathered from a swampy pit and poured into filthy $3 jerry cans, then strapped to bikes and hauled miles uphill to be used for drinking, cooking and washing.

"Why don't they just boil the water?" I've been asked more than a few times.

Rwanda's and Uganda's poor live on less than $1 dollar a day, so the answer is simple. They don't have the money to buy the charcoal that would sanitize their water.

So they die of thirst - literally. Their children die of diarrhea, as they drink contaminated water that dehydrates them and makes them thirst for more of the same. A vicious cycle of dirty fluid and death. They contract worms and parasites, and even nastier diseases with long clinical names and too many consonants.

charity:

Those of you who've been in contact with me for the past few months or have heard me lecture, know I've poured all my time and energy into setting up a non-profit entity in New York City I called simply, charity:

In may, when I toured 10 European cities in three weeks speaking about the incredible work of mercy ships, I was taken aback at a general disenchantment with giving - a lack of confidence in charity's effectiveness.

"Only 20 cents of my dollar reaches the poor" I would hear or "What about all the money wasted during the Tsunami? Or Katrina?" "Some guy's driving a lexus in South Africa with my pledge."

Charity for me is different than that. From the latin word "caritas" it simply means love. Webster defines it as the voluntary giving to those in need. To those that need our help. Because we can. The King James Bible reads, "If i have not charity, I am nothing." It says that those without charity make noises like banging cymbals, like gongs. Empty noises.

I knew that well, living for more than a decade in New York making those empty sounds.

The vision for charity first came to me in Liberia as I realized the disconnect of so many I knew from the actual issues of poverty, and of the incredible work being done on the ground. The idea was simple, and something I'd done before with the mercy show in New York. Produce global exhibitions that educated the public about crucial issues, then connected them to the "little guys" - the small, over-performing non-profits i'd seen struggle for awareness and funding. I wanted to allow the public to be part of a tangible solution, then close the loop with photographs and video and show them what those solutions looked like.

charity: will do three things.

1. Education and Awareness. We'll teach the public about important global concerns like water & sanitation, hunger, child trafficking, genocide, preventable diseases, education and more. we'll do this initially through high profile exhibitions in the indoor galleries and outdoor parks of major world cities. We'll use multimedia and webcams to really show what's going on in the developing world, connect you to the need.

The exhibitions will capture imaginations, transporting viewers to the developing world and then offer glimpes of hope. Imagine stepping into an IDP camp, or loading a giant famine relief plane with $16 bags of rice in a city park. Imagine the opportunity to buy vaccines, Anti-Retroviral drugs or malaria bed nets for pennies and dollars that actually reach those in desperate need of them. Or $20 bottles of spring water where 100 percent of the money translates directly into freshwater wells for those without access to clean water.

2. Non-Profit Support. We'll provide financial and promotional support to highly efficient and effective non-profits. we've partnered with america's largest non-profit watchdog, charitynavigator.com. Trent and his crew will make sure we select only the most fiscally responsible and productive non-profits. we'll connect you with the underdogs, the underfunded non-profits who aren't advertising on billboards or on television, the unsung heros out there every day - digging wells, running health clinics - educating, feeding, adopting, caring.

3. Donor Support. We'll allow donors put a face to their giving and actively engage in the process of giving. Imagine logging onto a webpage every morning to see the foundation dug of your primary school in india, or the bricks stack higher on your health clinic in West Africa. The pump churning water atop your company's freshwater well in Central America.

>>>>

I need your help now. We need money.

The first issue we're tackling with a show is water. We've done extensive research for two months to learn as much as we can about the issue, and the facts are startling.

- More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean water.

- More than 1 billion walk more than 3 hours a day for their water.

- And when I flush the toilet in my Soho apartment, I use more water than someone in the developing world does all day to drink, wash, cook and clean. That's unacceptable to us because something can be done about it. I've conceptualized and begun to build an outdoor water exhibition that will begin in New York and then move to other cities.

We now need your financial support to realize the show.

The charity: water show looks like four 12 foot by 8 foot walls with aquariums containing "dirty" water that face off against a 16 foot plexiglass cylinder containing a thousand bottles of $20 custom labeled water. The inner walls educate the public about water and highlight the work of four organizations diggin freshwater water wells in the world's poorest countries. We'll sell the water during the hot summer days and use 100 percent of the money away build wells in impoverished nations. It's that simple.

Get the project proposal PDF by clicking here.

If you're in a position to financially support charity: or the water project with a one-time or monthly gift, please just reply to this email. I fly back to NY next week to fundraise and build the show in time for its September NYC launch.

A big thanks to the hundreds of you that have offered to volunteer in NY for the project. You'll hear from us soon. And crack NYC-based web designers Code & Theory have graciously begun helping us develop our beta website, so stay tuned for the launch of www.charityis.com

Scott Harrison
from Uganda

August 4, 2006
scott@charityis.com

------------------------------------
To see all water images from local sources in Rwanda & Uganda, open the gallery here

To see images of the Rwandan genocide from the mass graves and memorials, open the gallery here
(WARNING - STRONG CONTENT)

NYC Event - Scott's Birthday / Launch of charity: water.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 23:13:00 +0000

mariama. part 2. human

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:56:00 +0000

mercy.
2.10.06

"You left with a pig and brought back a human."

The man was partly right. They'd brought Mariama back to Guinea. And of course, she was human.

But she was never a pig, or a "parasite" as she was often referred to by those in her village. An abused and lonely woman, yes. One not touched in almost 20 years, starved for love and kindness, certainly. But always human.

Mariama was despised because of a benign tumor about the size of a grapefruit that grew from her mouth. A familiar sad story in West Africa, a body had gone wrong in a land without access to healthcare. For more than two decades, the mass grew slowly and slightly larger, attracting flies and repelling people. It smelled of rot and infection. She'd cover it whenever she came out of her small mud hut to forage for food. People thought she was cursed and avoided her.

You would think maybe she'd find kindness from some of the other women her age. You'd think just once in a while, they'd let her eat with them, cook with them, wash clothes with them. Dance with them. But she wasn't one of them. She would never be.

- - -

A year ago, a Christian missionary woman who had befriended her brought news of a hospital ship. Jamie heard about the Mercy Ship in Liberia and emailed pictures to us. We said we thought we could operate on Mariama. Thus began the long process to get her here.

Papers and visas had to be obtained, but more importantly, both Mariama and her village leaders had to be convinced that the three-day journey to Liberia even made sense. Why should she go anywhere? But Jamie and her husband Cal were patient and persistant. I emailed before and after photos of Beatrice, another woman Mariama's age with a large tumor. I hoped the images might make something tip, and I think they did. Soon, Jamie's husband called from a satellite phone deep in the bush. They were coming. The village leaders had finally given their blessing and even bought Mariama a new outfit.

Then a series of firsts for Mariama.

Outside the ship, I explained we'd be using cameras to tell her remarkable story. I snapped photos and showed them to her on the digital back. She smiled and laughed, bowing her head shyly at the attention. I'd get to know this gesture well. A mixture of gentle shame and martyrdom. But also one familiar to me from other patients. I knew like so many others, Mariama would leave the ship transformed.

Walking up the gangway was easy, but her first flight of stairs down to the hospital turned into a three-hour negotiation. Her first ship, first ocean, first doctors. Florescent lights and narrow corridors. I could only imagine what the ship looked like through her eyes. Yet every step was finally bravely taken, each new fear eventually overcome.

Mariama's surgery was relatively simple for Dr. Gary Parker. He'd started removing tumors for free just a year after hers began growing. And this one didn't even make the top 100. Mariama was in the recovery room by lunchtime.

A few days later, I saw Mariama off in the early morning. She was glowing, dressed in a beautiful turquoise dress fashion designers would covet. Then after tearful goodbyes, she was gone. Two ship crewmembers went with her and the missionaries to officially "present" her back to her village.

Three days later, they did.

They told me it couldn't have gone any better. Mariama had changed so much many simply didn't recognize her. She was a celebrity at the border crossings. And back home, mobbed in the market Mariama was generous to all, offering smiles and handshakes. The woman for years rejected, kind to those who had despised her, living a selflessness I hope put them all to shame.

And then she danced with the women.

An awkward dance practiced only in her mind for 20 years, as they sang, "Mariama's back today. She's well today, today, today."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STORY IN IMAGES

4 minute video. surgery and homecoming
all mariama images
words. part one
more patient stories/photos
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mercy. coming home.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:01:00 +0000

I write this 35,000 feet above the North Sea, somewhere between London and Berlin. The sun sets behind our Airbus, highlighting an endless blanket of cumulous in pink and gold and blue. It will change color and fade to gray and black before I finish.

After only a week and a half in London, I already miss West Africa.

Speaking engagements and forward planning have kept me too busy to reflect and process, to write. Yet here, on a tray table high above the clouds I'll try. A place closer to heaven than not, disconnected from both both developed and developing worlds.

London's never been cheap for Americans - even New Yorkers, but in contrast to Liberia, it seems profane. Dinner last night with two friends at a bustling but ordinary brasserie in Notting Hill cost $336 - the bill graciously grabbed with a wink as I smiled and offered the tip. To a bar afterwards for $14 cocktails.

Comparisons.

Are they helpful? Can they somehow bridge the growing gap between rich and poor?

Just weeks ago in Monrovia I stopped in on Beatrice, a forty-something woman who almost suffocated to death after almost 20 years with a benign tumor before receiving free surgery on the Mercy Ship. I'd previously been able to help her with "small money" that got her off a concrete floor onto a simple mattress and put mosquito netting around said mattress.

Beatrice asked me about her roof. The rainy season was quickly approaching, the recent torrential downpours leaving us with no doubt about the well-known fact that Liberia gets more rain than anywhere else on the planet.

Beatrice's roof was leaking, and she asked me in simple, broken English to help. I have to admit, I'm ashamed of my first reaction. Having little money myself, I wasn't sure I'd be able to help her more. And then she told me how much.

$20 US.

I bought four long sheets of zinc to cover the large room and stopped the rain from coming in.

Perhaps that's what I'll miss the most these coming days as I try to preach the poor at home with my pictures and stories. It's selfish, maybe, but the stakes are so high in the developing world. Simple acts of personal intervention, little sacrifices can so drastically and visibly change lives.

I'll miss buying the $22 bag of rice that feeds a family of 4 for more than a month. I'll miss paying a landlord $120 for a year to move a mother and her two previously blind children out of a refugee camp and into a home.

I'll miss taking a patient to the dentist where $60 replaces 8 teeth stolen by a tumor and creates a brilliant smile. I'll miss so easily spending $55 to put a boy through school. A boy burned by rebel soldiers, healed by doctors who took a break from their lives and released an arm fused to his side so that he could write.

It's intoxicating, addicting. And I think we need to be doing more of it

I'm 30 years old now, and if you'd asked me a few years ago over a plate of cocaine what I'd be doing today, the answer definitely wouldn't have been "trying to save the world."

Charles Bukowski, a writer who would certainly have appreciated the previous reference, said: "You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

Granted, certainly not an original idea. In fact, terribly cliché even.

Mother Teresa said "if you can't feed a hundred, feed one." And what about the proverbial kid walking on a beach next to thousands of starfish dying in the sun, confronted with the enormity, the futility of his task. As he tossed them into the surf one by one, he said, "well it made a difference to that one."

I think if I've learned anything in this past year and a half in Africa, it's the power of that idea.

And I think what I'm after in the coming years as I try to walk between both worlds - developing and the developed - to bring Beatrice and Alfred and Marthaline and Harris closer to South Kensington and the Meatpacking District. It's really a strong notion - that of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son. That they matter, that they can be found, saved. That they can speak to larger change.

That individual acts of mercy, of compassion can change countries, continents. Peoples.

I'm sold.

More from New York City in the coming weeks about where I hope to take mercy. over the next decade.

I'll need your help.

dry.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Tue, 31 May 2005 13:31:00 +0000

notes from west africa - may 31.2005

Yamah gave birth at the wrong time. The place wasn't ideal either, a West African nation tangled in a brutal civil war, but the timing, late 1994, was just plain awful. Just after Yamah went into labor, rebels stormed into the village of Gbarnga, Liberia, sending the town's inhabitants scurrying to safety in the bush. Among them were the midwives, and Yamah spent four days in intense pain searching for someone to help deliver her baby. Finally, old lady Kpeh was located, and a delivery that began at six a.m. finished twelve hours later.

She gave birth to a stillborn child and Yamah began leaking urine through her birth canal. She developed a condition called vesicovaginal fistula or "VVF" as it's known among doctors. During delivery, the extended pressure of the baby's head against her pelvis left a hole in the tissue between the bladder and the birth canal.

Although unheard of in developed nations for almost a century (the last fistula hospital in the US closed near the end of the 19th century), because of where she was born, Yamah is not alone with this condition. The United Nations estimates two million women in Africa and Asia suffer from this condition, many of them constantly leaking feces as well.

So Yamah did what most would do. She sought a doctor. During war this wasn't easy, and she was told simply by the ones she found that her problem was "too heavy." It's hard to imagine, but because of her incontinence, Yamah smelled of urine. All the time. She would avoid people, staying mainly inside her house, but when she did come in contact with them, she said they would give her dirty looks and "talk bad about her."

In 1998, during a lull in the war, she met Sam. Sam had returned to Liberia from Guinea where he had fled to escape the fighting, and sought treatment for his leprosy at the Ganta Rehab Center. He came with a badly ulcerated leg that was later to be amputated and replaced with a crutch. Although cured now, Sam has dark, sorrowful eyes and bears the scars of leprosy in his face.

He tells me he met Yamah when she ventured out to buy something.

"I asked her to be my friend," Sam says. "She told me her problem. I said okay, we will see about it."

The next few years were difficult but Sam says he stayed with her. "I used to sometimes comfort her that God one day might make her better. I made up my mind for she and myself to be together."

A fine pair of misfits they were, Sam, hobbling along on one leg, making and selling straw baskets for about $8 each, saving money. Yamah, hiding in the house, unable to shake a constant stench of urine.

Hope came in the form of a visiting surgeon at local hospital, a sleepy facility founded by an American missionary in the 1920's. It is one of only three places in the country where it is possible to have a fistula surgery - when a qualified surgeon is present. But most women can only dream of obtaining the $150 it costs for the procedure.

Luckily for Yamah, Sam the leper had somehow saved enough money for the operation. She was admitted to hospital in November of 2000 and scheduled for surgery. Six years after she began leaking.

The operation is a tricky one, and requires great skill on the part of the surgeon. Many patients are determined unfixable after an initial examination yet fortunately, this wasn't the case for Yamah. Her operation seemed a success at its completion, Sam tells me, until a nurse, while removing the catheter, just "pull it."

It's gruesome to hear him describe it, "The blood started coming," he says. Hope yanked away and replaced with fear, more urine, and this time intense pain.

As the surgeon was leaving the next day to accept a scholarship in the United States, Sam and Yamah were told sorry, nothing can be done.

Another three years of suffering passed before Sam heard on the radio that a ship was coming to Liberia that provided free surgery - fistula fixes among the procedures performed.

At the screening date in early March, Mercy Ships doctors examined Yamah, and Sam says he just sat outside praying. "This is the last chance," he says he thought. "If people come from another country and they fail, how are we gonna manage now." Sam says while waiting, he saw another woman with a VVF rejected for surgery, her tear deemed irreparable. "I said, oh... what if this happen to my wife too."

Yamah was examined by Scottish surgeon Dr. Fiona Burslem and scheduled for surgery. Although it is uncommon that surgeons will attempt to "fix" other surgeons failed operations, Dr. Burslem thought she could repair Yamah. She scheduled her for surgery on March 30.

Sam says they left early and traveled across the country to Monrovia, where the ship is docked. They arrived on March 28.

"I was so excited, I met security. They said not to enter yet. I started appealing. Economic reasons first. I said please find somebody to talk to. I saw Betty (a nurse on the ship). When she came, I explain I want to be on time. She went and checked, she found an empty bed."

Yamah said when she saw the ship, she felt peace. It was her first time to Monrovia, her first time seeing a ship. "I was not scared," she said. "I knew my problem would be solved. I was praying, every morning, every evening."

Late in the afternoon of March 30th, after the surgical procedure, Yamah woke up in the ship's hospital ward, dry for the first time in 11 years.

* * *

Yamah has a lovely smile and shy, girlish giggle that now seem ever present. She thinks she's about 30 years old now, but looks younger. We talked as she scrubbed clothes on the doorstep of the small stone house where she lives with Sam on the fringe of the Rehab leprosy compound. Chickens and small dogs sometimes interrupted and were chased away by a brandished broomstick.

She has been transformed. She has made new friends, she can go out among people without fearing their looks of scorn and disgust. She can go to church without spoiling her clothes.

"My heart is all right. I feel free," she says simply.

----------------------------------------------
GET THE PDF OF THIS STORY HERE.

To watch a five minute video of Mercy Ships's work and learn more about VVF surgery, please visit http://www.onamercyship.com/video.html

If you're interested in sponsoring a surgery or supporting the work of mercy ships, write me here: scott@onamercyship.com
please visit www.onamercyship.com

for more images and words, including the latest pics from five days in the leper colony here.

mercy. london

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 01:08:00 +0000

more than 150 came to see scott talk about mercy. in the apple store on regent street in London. Scott heads to Berlin Sunday, then back to New York City to fundraise and plan 10 global mercy. shows.

mercy europe

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:16:00 +0000

mercy on the move. surgery takes a break in africa, and i fly to europe today for 3 weeks of speaking presentations, location scouting and fundraising for future mercy shows. geneva, lausanne, zurich, prague, berlin, london.

the morning with marthaline

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 21:09:00 +0000

I left the ship early this morning to look up
marthaline with a friend.

Some of you may remember her story. A monstrous
benign tumor grew out of her mouth for years, and she
was abandoned by her husband - left to care for three
kids. MSF brought her to the ship last year where the
offensive mass was removed by Mercy Ship surgeons in a
simple hour and a half procedure.

We found her on the outskirts of Monrovia. She lives
with 12 people in a house about half the size of my
last Manhattan apartment. And with her six-year-old
son, Newton.

Our plan quickly developed, we'd get her a larger room
of her own where she can finish going to school. Pay
rent for 2 years in advance at a whopping $10 a month
so she could learn and not have to worry about
the roof over her head. And her son, who for the life
of me I couldn't coax a smile out of, should be enrolled as well

"No money" Marthaline says.

Right.

Far too easily, all is arranged. His uniform, books,
pencils and year's tuition will set us back about $50.

Then in the Land Rover to the dental clinic. The tumor
took out almost all of her bottom teeth. The volunteer
dentist from America took wax molds and chose 8 false
teeth. He asked Marthaline how she liked the spacing,
and then made adjustments. She practiced smiling in a
mirror. We paid $60 for her new smile.

She is truly beautiful now, unrecognizable through the
lens. I so clearly remember taking her "before" - but it
wasn't the tumor that so disturbed me. It was her eyes.

Now, Marthaline's a masterpiece in process, in forward
motion. A few small steps closer to wholeness with a
little money and a little love.

We stood under a palm tree by the ocean and she told
me how people treated her. "Not a human being," she
said.

Her head shook as she remembered almost committing
suicide.

Today, I'm quite sure she was glad she didn't.

- - - -
donate

marthaline's full story

mariama. part 2. human

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:56:00 +0000

welcome to liberia. now get in the chopper.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 22:12:00 +0000

There are choppers from the city to the Hamptons, choppers to Atlantic City. Madonna has one parked atop her CPW penthouse. There are also, as I learned Monday, choppers to Moscow via West Africa. Or at least so went the joke.

Our 550-foot 12,000 ton Mercy Ship only three days into her first ever visit to war-torn Monrovia's Freeport, and here I am, up before dawn, ready to fly across the country. The United Nations has been kind enough to offer the services of three Russian pilots and a MI-8 helicopter to shuttle our medical staff to a small town on the Guinea border called Ganta. Fifteen of them are decked out in white uniforms - I think I look the part too with aviator glasses and a khaki shirt right off James Woods in Salvador.

I'll digress for some first yet cautious impressions of Liberia. After four months in Benin, although my French was finally becoming intelligible, the switch back to English is a welcome one. However, Benin's infrastructure will be missed. The 8:30 a.m. train north might wait until 4 p.m. to cough to life, but at least there was a train.

Those of you not living under rocks have probably heard something about Liberia's devastating 14-year-old civil war that made consistent front page news and claimed the lives of 200,000 - displacing almost a million. That's a third of the country's population, but thankfully, a recent yet tenuous ceasefire and peace brought in the UN blue hats with the largest peacekeeping force anywhere in the world. They are 16,000 strong and like locusts. They drive white SUV's with shiny chrome spare tire covers that would make Jay-Z proud. Armed tank convoys are a common sight, and if I had a dollar for every UNMIL checkpoint I've passed already, well....

Liberia was founded in the 1800's by freed American slaves. One double-takes after a look at their flag. It mirrors our American flag, yet features one lone white star instead of 50. The constitution was drafted at Harvard University and Liberia means "Land of freedom". Their currency, the Liberian dollar, used to run one to one with ours. Now it's fifty five to one.

It's a desperate place. The life expectancy here is 41 - just a little more than half a life. More than 90 percent of Liberians live on less than a US $1 a day. The Economist magazine gave Liberia its esteemed "worst place to live in the world" award in 2003. There's no public running water, sewage, or electricity. If you see a light, there's a generator chugging away nearby. Bulletholes decorate streetlights, bridges, buildings. What used to be a luxury highrise hotel, the Ducor Intercontinental - at the highest point of town - is now a shell. It houses more than 1500 squatters living with a view but also with the constant stench of urine and feces.

The Lonely Planet saved some money last year and just wrote the following:

"WARNING. The mess that is Liberia's civil war seems to be on the mend but the country is still no place to go for a beach holiday. There is sporadic looting as well as bursts of shooting in pockets of the country, including Monrovia, where a curfew is in place from 7am to 4pm. The future for the troubled West African country is uncertain, and its security situation remains volatile."

But as Mother Teresa said, if you can't feed a hundred people, feed just one. So what is certainly a daunting task, has brought our NGO and our hospital ship to Monrovia at the request of the transitional government and the UN. In our case it's free medical treatment we're offering, not food. Highly specialized life-transforming maxillo-facial operations - cleft lip and palate operations. VVF operations to relieve incontinent women who can't afford the $150 surgery that can mend them.

In the muggy morning air over Liberia, through the open window of this white russian chopper, I see a giant forest - a jungle of endless green and then suddenly rows and rows of mud huts - IDP camps (internally displaced persons). More than 10,000 hungry Liberians make their homes there - waiting for rations from the World Food Programme. Waiting to be relocated. Soon the huts and lives quickly vanish into more endless green and less than an hour and a half later, we land at the UN airstrip in Ganta. The pilots joked that we were headed to Moscow and cooler weather. We joked that this didn't look like Moscow but it's too hot for any of it to be funny.

A short distance from the airstrip is our destination, the Ganta United Methodist Hospital. I'm thrilled to follow in the footsteps of Graham Green, who stumbled through the same hospital grounds in 1940, and recounted meeting the founder, Dr. Harley in his book Journey without Maps.

"Dr. Harley, the Methodist medical missionary, is unique in Africa: a man with a body and nerves worn threadbare by ten years' unselfish work, cutting away the pus from the huge swollen genitals, injecting for yaws, anointing for craw-craw, injecting two hundred natives a week for veneral disease. He had made his home in the corner of Liberia with his wife and two children, curious little elderly yellow-faced boys; he had lost one child, who was buried at the mission."

Mr Harley's life work lives on here, and the hospital feels a place of great survival, hope and competence. It serves a nearby 450,000 - a staggering number, and the administrator, Mr. Tyre, tells me he's glad we've come to help. "We just don't have the sophistication" he says. The hospital made it through 13 years of the war, before a surprise visit from the LURD army in 2003. Sadly, it was looted and all but destroyed sending patients and staff scurrying into the bush. $300K from the faithful Methodists got it back in action last March.

The local staff accommodate our small team, and are courteous and professional. I find out later, that the hospital often doesn't receive money for treatment, They recently performed several surgeries on a 34-year-old for typhoid perforation of the bowels, and instead of full payment of his bill of $478, they settled for $26, some chickens and a goat.

We spend the next eight hours screening the patients that have arrived. They come bearing the load of the many usual West African maladies shocking to Westerners. Noma or flesh-eating disease, massive cleft lips and palates, large facial tumors. As the hospital has no white sheet to give me to shoot patient photos, I improvise and tape 15 eight and a half by elevens together and to the wall as a backdrop. My makeshift photo studio in the bush.

Little Brutus, a small boy brought by his father, is the first patient I photograph. He leaves my photo station, and lingers. I'm beaming, as I know we'll do wonders on his gaping cleft lip and he smiles back unwilling to leave this place of hope. This place of healing. An hour later he returns and presents me with some bananas and a pineapple. I melt.

The day finishes and will survive I'm sure as one of the better ones I've had since joining the ship. The helplessness and pain so indelibly etched in the patient's faces reminds me again why we're here. Why we've chosen to use our affluence, medical knowledge and resources to reach into this wilderness and rescue those we can.
If you can't operate on a hundred people, operate on one. We schedule 57 for free surgery before heading back to Monrovia.

click here to view pictures from Ganta Hospital and of the patients.

harris goes home. (and throws a party)

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:22:00 +0000

mercy.
1.28.06
party.

Harris threw a party on Wednesday night.

It was his first in at least 13 years, and with a little help from an old New-York-City-party-promoter, he killed it. Dinner for 50. Loud music. Two doormen and a crowd outside.

The man who lived for more than a decade on the fringe of society, the man once monstrously deformed and rejected was now the instant and unlikely celebrity. It was truly something to see.

Harris had come home. And everything was different now.

A few hours earlier we stopped for lunch in Buchanan after the long drive from Monrovia. Mercy Ship colleagues Todd and Matt were with me, as was Sam, our Bassa translator. The meal was almost torture for Harris, now only minutes from his home, his father, his neighbors and his canoe. It was the calm before the storm. And looking at Harris across the table, I thought of how in the Bible, a prodigal son came home to a jubilant father who made everyone drop everything and party. He killed the best calf and prepared a feast with dancing and music.

As Harris's father is a fisherman, and lives well below the poverty line, I knew this wouldn't be possible for him.

"Harris, pick any place in town. We're going to throw a party for you," I said, barely able to contain my excitement at the idea. Harris did a double-take, then knowing me well enough by now to know I was serious, grinned and we high fived.

Since the sandwiches we'd ordered hadn't come yet, Harris and I drove off to arrange the evening's festivities at the place he picked, Jah Glory. Outside, I spotted a radio tower and decided we'd crash the United Nations FM station. With Harris in tow. I flashed my press pass at the guards manning the entrance with AK-47's, and we bounded up the steps. I told the station manager Harris's incredible story, and he immediately taped an interview. He had often heard of the man with a tumor by the sea, but had never met him. Harris thrust forward a picture I took of him before surgery, reveling at the man's astonishment.

And then it was time for the homecoming. Back to the restaurant to pick up the sandwiches and the others, we headed towards Harris' shack by the sea. Harris grinned and thrust a hand out of the window as we approached. A throng of about a hundred waited. They greeted us with screams. They cried and praised God. Some simply could not believe that here stood the same man they had known. It was chaos. Harris spent about an hour, greeting them, shaking hands, shyly enjoying the attention.

He told me he wanted to see his canoe, and a shout went up from the crowd. The fisherman was back to fish. We walked the same path to the beach that we had a month earlier, this time trailed by a throng, dancing and shouting.

It was just over a month ago that our worlds collided. After an eavesdropped conversation led me to find Harris by the ocean. A month since the 34-year-old man with a seven-pound tumor in his mouth walked with me up the gangway of a hospital ship towards new life.

It was a magical time for both of us.

* * *
His last days on board the ship were anything but dull. After a dramatic seven-hour surgery, his tumor was thrown with medical waste into the ship's incinerator. And then I watched as Harris began a painful recovery process. Unlike so many others, who tread tentatively with baby steps, Harris leapt foward towards health with a strong will and forced grins.

Food by tube and then to soft diet. Ensure. A blue handheld mirror, the now constant prop, replaced the dirty brown towel that used to catch the steady drain of pus from his mouth. He was learning to put his lips back together. Learning to speak again. And most importantly, learning to laugh.

He was full of zest now, full of fire and always getting in trouble. Urinating into the sea off the back of our 522-foot floating hospital when he thought nobody was watching. Sneaking a cigarette in the bathroom of the ward. Playing practical jokes on patients in nearby beds. But the jester was also a gentleman. I'd catch him cradling a baby in his arms, softly encouraging a patient who'd just had surgery.

And finally, it was time to go home. He'll need to wait two months before his second surgery, a bone graft slated for April 2. Anxious at first, he was bursting at the seams the morning we left.

If anyone deserved a good party, it was Harris.

* * *

We joined the party at Jah Glory around 8:30 p.m - fashionably late. Two policemen worked the door, and I pushed us through a large crowd to reach the door. People from the town's other radio station were there to interview Harris. He had changed into the black Banana Republic mercy shirt I'd given him on the ship, and was moving easily between the room where they would eat and the door.

I got the guys from the radio station past the doormen, and because Harris was so busy, spoke to them first. I talked into an old tape recorder about Harris, about his courage and remarkable faith in a God he truly trusted to deliver him one day. Harris took over a few minutes later and told them himself.

While he was occupied, I spoke about his surgery to a table of about twenty I was later told were ex-combatants. So interesting to me that Harris had invited some of the people that had treated him cruelly for a decade. I explained that Harris's tumor hadn't grown as a result of a curse. I told them the extra skin on his face would shrink over the next few months as his face remembered its pre-tumor shape. I explained about the bone graft he would have on April 2.

It was after midnight when Todd, Matt, Sam and I left for a tent at the nearby UN army compound, and the party showed no sign of slowing. It cost me $180. White rice and cassava and fish for about 50 at $1 a head. The rest in drinks. And $5 each for our bouncers, the Liberian National police.

It was the best money I've spent in years.

epilogue:

The next morning, word had spread of Harris's healing throughout Buchanan. When we arrived at his shack, a crowd of sick waited for us outside. Some had clubbed feet and were lame, some had goiters. Some came in wheelchairs. Simeon showed me a swollen pouch of flesh in his side where he thinks the bullet that shot him still is. Little Nyanyan had a huge swollen head - water had leaked into her brain. I examined a boy with epilepsy, and another that shakes violently in the night. A little baby with a neck that wouldn't move and eyes rolled back in her head. I donned rubber gloves from the first aid kid to avoid infection from open wounds, took pictures of all of them and contact information, referring many who were not candidates for surgery to Monrovia clinics and doctors.

Perhaps it was the desperation of the situation, seeing so many with conditions we couldn't operate on, so many we couldn't fix, that prompted us to pray. After the mini-screening was over, we invited them one by one to enter Harris's dingy, broken room and sit with us. The four of us huddled around in wooden and straw chairs, and spent the next few hours with them.

We prayed to the same God Harris had for years. A God we believe has the power to save. A God we believe is in the business of finding the lost sheep.

Towards the end of our time with them, Phillip walked into the room. Phillip had a large tumor on his face that had been growing for 9 years. It took me only a second to know we'd bring him back with us to the ship.

He had surgery 24 hours later.

----------------------------------------------------
THE STORY IN IMAGES

3 minute video of homecoming
homecoming. images.
more words. harris parts one & two
phillip
more patient stories/photos
donate
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tell a friend

meet mariama.

scott@onamercyship.com (scott harrison) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:44:00 +0000

meet mariama.
january 17, 2006.

12:25 p.m.
"Scott Harrison, please dial 151. Scott Harrison, please dial 151."

I was eating lunch when the call came over the ship's overhead paging system. I ran to a phone and dialed the extension, which connects us to calls from the outside.

It was Jamie and Cheryl. They had just crossed the border and entered Liberia. Mariama was with them.

I ran down the gangway and let the ship's security guards know to expect a woman in four hours or so with a large tumor. I asked them to page me when she arrived.

Today would be a great day.

I first heard about Mariama in November. I was forwarded an email with her pictures - images of a woman with a huge tumor growing out of her mouth. I knew she lived in a remote part of Guinea - a three days journey from our ship's berth in Monrovia, Liberia. Jamie and Cheryl were two Christian missionaries who had found her and knew her condition might be treatable on our hospital ship.

Mariama's tumor had grown for 20 years, but she had never left her village before. I initially offered to drive into Guinea to pick her up, but the missionaries said they'd try to convince her to travel with them to the ship. Mariama had no papers, so that would take some time to arrange. We told them to come whenever they could.

Over the past few months, I spoke off and on to Jamie, who would call to give updates from a satellite phone deep in the Guinean bush. They said it was difficult to convince Mariama to come. Her brother was against it. Her village was against it. Hoping it would help, I sent before and after surgery pictures of Beatrice, a patient from whose mouth we had removed a 8 pound tumor. The pictures eventually made the difference.

A few weeks, ago, Cheryl called and said they were coming. Mariama had agreed to make the journey. The leaders of her village had finally agreed to let her go, and finally given their blessing.

And today they would arrive.

5:45 p.m.

"She's here!"

A ship security guard gave me the news by reception, and I bounded down the gangway and greeted the threesome. Todd, a friend and cameraman, joined me and explained to Mariama through Jamie that we'd like to film and photograph her, to tell her story. Mariama speaks Fula, and not English. She was shy and hesistant, but agreed and as I photographed her; laughing as I showed her the images on my digital camera back.

Enter Sonja Frischknecht, who heads up Healthcare Services. Sonja is kind and always smiling, as we walked up the gangway together and entered the ship. Everything was fine well past reception and down the first corridor until we reached a staircase leading down to the ship's ward.

Mariama had never seen stairs before.

And she wouldn't budge. The missionaries spoke to her in Fula, and told us she was worried she'd never come back up. And that we would operate immediately. She kept peering over the edge, terror in her eyes. I ran down to the ward to enlist Harris's help. Even though he didn't speak her language, I thought maybe he could convince her to come. Harris eagerly bounced up the stairs with me, armed with his before photo and did his best. "Smile, Harris. Just smile!" I said as we crowded the stairwell. We tried everything.

"Harris! Go down and come back up! Then she'll know it's okay."

Harris complied, disappearing and then reappearing. But Mariama still wouldn't budge. Harris extended a hand. I offered to take pictures of what's "downstairs." Nothing worked. Ship staff and visitors bustled by the busy staircase as we negotiated. People greeted Mariama with smiles and handshakes.

Mariama was terribly frightened. And who could blame her. She was at one time reportedly told by her villagers, adament against her leaving, that the white people would eat her. And he we were, gathered in a crowd, speaking in strange tongues, trying to coax her down a narrow staircase with florescent lighting. We decide to go back outside and slow things down.

6:55 p.m.

I'm back on the ward, asking patients, translators, nurses: "Anyone speak Fula?" Nobody did, but Harris grabbed me. "Scott, go to Waterside and find some Fula people. Bring them back to her." Now Waterside is among the more dangerous areas of Monrovia, and not a place to travel after dark. I laughed at Harris.

And then, from across the ward, Alphonso waved me over.

Alphonso is Beatrice's son. I haven't seen him for six months, since Beatrice's surgery. And guess who was still in the Operating Room at seven p.m. Beatrice. She'd come back this morning for reconstructive surgery. Alphonso said he knew some Fula people that lived next to him. They were originally from Guinea, and spoke Mariama's language.

7:40 p.m.
I grabbed Todd and we jumped in a Land Rover for Clara Town. We found the Fula couple we were looking for next to Beatrice's house, and I explained our situation. Mohammed and his wife agreed to come with us and said they would talk to Mariama. They had witnessed first hand their neighbor's transformation after surgery, and could vouch for our intentions and results. After first visiting their amputee friend who had reinjured his bad leg, and promising to send back ibuprofen for the pain, we headed back to the ship.

8:20 p.m.
Dockside again under the post-operative care tent. Mohammed and his wife spoke to Mariama in words we were unsure of. But their tone was stern. Something along the lines of, "You've traveled three days to get an free operation. You're crazy if you don't get back on the ship." Jamie told us a few minutes later, "They gave her a guilt trip."

8:45 p.m.
Mariama walked up the gangway again, and down the corridor to the ward. To the staircase.

And this time she descended. She entered the ship's ward, a ward bustling with patients and visitors, and settled in the Intensive Care room, where she will enjoy some privacy tonight, some time to adjust. Jamie will sleep in the bed next to her.

9:05 p.m.
Harris stood in the ICU doorway as I held Mariama's and said go odnight reassuringly.

And then Mariama spoke to me through Jamie. She said that where she came from, people were afraid of her, they were afraid to touch her, afraid to look at her. She said this place was different.

Yes, this place is different.

see a 10 minute video of mariama entering the ship

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