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I spent this morning setting up fake medical emergencies. It was a riot. We needed to take some good shots of our people in action, especially relating to the medical side of the work, for some publications. We got a team together and headed out to the nearby clinic. We gave fake injections and set up drip IV's for fake patients, and bandaged totally healthy people, and made a stretcher in a minute and put a girl inside and ran around...all the while taking photos. The result was better then I expected. See below.
The funny thing is whenever we got someone to pretend to be the victim, they always started smiling and laughing, instead of displaying the face of pain that someone who had just broken their legs might have. Liberians have so much joy!

Speaking of joy, I had a distinct lack of it earlier this afternoon. I had finished the photo shoot and didn't really have anything left to do for the rest of the day so I just drifted around the office, bored. I was feeling really discouraged and restless. I wanted to get out of Ganta, get out of the country, not talk to another Liberian for a while. I wanted a nice hot shower in a world where things run on a reasonable schedule. I read my bible a bit and then decided that I was going to lie down on my bed and pout at God until he talked to me.

He did. The minute I lay down I felt him tell me to just get up and go outside. I wrestled with my soul for a few minutes and then summoned the willpower to get off the bed and out the door.

I went at sat down on the porch railing that oversees the back area of the property. There is a little cookhouse there where a number of mothers always prepare food for their families, and there are always children running around. I just sat there for a few minutes watching the kids, and felt my frustration slowly dissipate, the way it always does when I stop thinking about myself and just start enjoying the life that God's given me.

I started talking with some of the women and joked around with this one kid, Sam, who has the chubbiest belly and the healthiest smile. I borrowed one of their small pots and heated up a can of Campbell's Cream of Potato Soup on their little coal fire. I felt so content, so satisfied with where I was, surrounded by the most beautiful children, at home in this foreign land, with ducks and chickens scrambling all over the place.

My terrible smile and Sam.