Summer in Liberia: A Volunteer Story

We have a team of students from Wheaton College serving at ELWA Hospital in Liberia this summer. When HOH staff traveled to Liberia a couple of weeks ago, we interviewed them about their experiences. Here are some excerpts from one of the interviews:

My name is Peter Wickwire, and I’m part of a group of three that has come to ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia for 6 weeks. We’ve had a blast so far. It’s been about 4 weeks, and each week has given us something entirely different than the one before it.

I went to the OR to start with. I’m so thankful I went to the OR. It was a really good landing for me in the clinic. The OR is pretty much like the functioning ER, the functioning operating room. The first couple days were difficult to get settled into. I don’t think they were used to premed students coming in. They didn’t understand back then that we were really here to be taught, and then, using what we’re taught, serve. It was really just watching people, shadowing from the corner, silently watching people.

Really my in was that I watched a nurse folding gauze for surgery and wound dressings, and the next day, without them asking, I just got up and started doing it, and he’s just like, “Oh, where’d you learn how to do that?” They kind of realized that we can learn, and so time went on and day after day I started doing more things, learning new things.

I saw a c-section one day. It was the first c-section I had ever seen in my life. The next surgery after that was another c-section, and they’re like, “Okay, Peter, you’re scrubbing on this one.” I was like “What are you talking about?” but I ended up scrubbing on the surgery, and it was a really neat experience.

After the first week or so, I think they really picked up on the fact that really we’re here to be taught and really here to just serve them, and they really started understanding that and utilizing that. Also, I think what helped was founding relationships with them and spending time just talking, and learning, and exchanging personal stories and life stories of how the war has shattered this country. It’s good to hear their stories of what they had to go through. It kind of opens doors for you to be part of their lives.

I think one of the difficult things for me being in Liberia is this place is really so torn. The buildings you see when you’re driving by are a living history of the war that happened so recently. It’s hard to be in a country so full of pain and just coming out of that. It’s a beautiful time, and yet it’s a difficult time.

I think my favorite thing of being in the clinic has not been delivering a baby or stitching up patients but getting to know the Liberians and speaking Liberian English to them and joking around with them and them loving to see that I’m trying to learn their culture. People are really grateful.

This trip has been so beneficial to me as a premed student looking in the future to going into medicine internationally, to use it for furthering Christ and his kingdom, and I couldn’t have thought of a better experience for me. They’re kind of teaching me what it looks like to use the resources that you have, which here are very limited, to give the best health care possible. There is just such a pressing need for help in this country, and it was good to visualize that. It’s a renewed fuel to the passion and fire I had to become an international physician. I really hope to someday come back and serve in a country like this, if not maybe here.