It was 9:30am and we were waiting for the van to come pick us to go to the hospital. We waited for a while because it’s Africa and then headed out around 10:30am.
The district hospital has around 8-9 wards. We (team of seven and around four Kenyans from Deliverance Church) headed to Ward 1, the psych ward. I like the psych ward, but sometimes I forget that most people have not experienced psych behaviors. I randomly remember my psychology teacher saying that less than 5% of Americans encounter someone with legit psychological disorders.
We walk in through a door and are just mobbed by the patients. I see a lady trying to leave through the door and a sigh almost passes my lips. I know this environment. It’s normal…I know what to do. It feels like home, feels like comfort.
The thing about the race is that you are uncomfortable a lot. It becomes common and when you encounter something you know or somewhere you are comfortable, somewhere where you don’t feel awkward, it’s like home. I know the statements sounds weird. But here’s some background on me…my mom and I use to work at a nursing home/rehab center that had about 50% psych patients. Paranoid schizophrenic, yup dealt with that. Delusional, bipolar, manic depressive, ahuh, been there too. It takes a bit to faze me in this area. Please don’t read this as arrogant, but when you’ve been in a building with people with psych issues for years you know the stories behind the weird noises and the crazy words and body movements. You realize that there are people behind the strange, there are reasons.
As I write this my heart breaks a little for the people I left behind. I haven’t thought of them for so long and once I would have called them family. Shame on me, God forgive me. You brought those people into my life and I walked away from them all and never looked back. You put me in a place where people needed to see your light, to see hope and have deliverance spoken over them and I didn’t…
