When people would ask me what I was doing after High School I would tell them that I was spending five months volunteering in Africa. Most people’s response was that I was crazy, but others said that it was really cool. The funny thing is that I kind of believe that I am crazy. It was a pretty dauntless task just to even get to Po.
We left for the airport Tuesday, August 7th, said goodbye to my family and headed for security. Newark airport is crazy busy and after an hour in security we finally get on our plane. Our flight was supposed to leave around 6:30pm but as we were boarding a huge storm was moving over the airport. Between the storm and the runway being backed up we ended up being delayed four hours! Ten hours later I told myself, if this is only the first leg of the trip what’s next?
Because of the delay we got off of our plane around 11:30am which meant we had only thirty minutes to get to our connecting flight to Monrovia… in another terminal. When we get out into the main corridor Steve motions me to an open service elevator with a “T” above it. I smile because that is where we need to go. When we get on the worker looks at us with a strange face. Well we weren’t supposed to be on that elevator anyway. Still he directs us to the correct floor. Amazingly where we got off the elevator is exactly where we needed to go and we made our connecting flight. Shhhh… don’t tell anyone that we somehow bypassed going through another security checkpoint. And on top of all that every single one of our bags made it too.
The next ten days go by like a blur, mostly because I was still trying to take everything in. I have never been to another country before. It was all very new and scary.
We leave for Po on Sunday, August 11tharound 9am. It takes about two hours to get to Buchanan where the paved road ends. After that it’s about another three hours on mud roads. Imagine riding a wooden roller coaster, but 10x worse. Once we reach the river we park the truck and get on a canoe. When we reach across the river there is only one motorbike waiting. Yeah you read that right, motorbikes. On my motorbike there were two other people plus luggage. As we are whizzing past the trees I realize that they were right… I am crazy. It was scary and fun all at the same time.
We reach the mission site and I am welcomed with cheering and hugs from people I have never met. They lead me to the house all while singing. They were quite the welcoming party. I felt like a celebrity. It was awesome.
That was our crazy lucky extraordinary story of getting here. I am so excited to see what this place has in store for me. I’m ready for all of the new adventures I’m going to have. When I go home I will definitely have plenty of crazy stories to tell.
Kasey (the intern)
Note by Steve: What Kasey calls luck, I know to be God. That’s just like him to piece together a seemingly impossible situation with an unbelievable solution. Got to love it!!!
Po River Medical Clinic 