Just taking a walk on the beach

A group of us had gone out to dinner one evening to say "goodbye" to one of our nurses who was returning home the next day. We had gone to one of the restaurants situated on the beach and was having a fun time playing around, taking pictures, and buying beaded necklaces from one of the local citizens when we spotted a young guy strolling the beach alone with one crutch. Ummm...I wonder if we know this person...it turned out to be none other than one of our favorite former patients, Gaye! I'm still joyfully surprised when I'm out in town and come across one of our patients...and it's always a joy to greet them and see them doing well!

Anyway, Gaye is a young man of 17 who had spent quite a lot of time on the ship waiting for his broken leg and ulcer on his foot to heal. During that time we were able to get to know somethings about him. Like how smart he is...he was reading Shakespeare and having no difficulty understanding the Old English...and how he is trying to finish high school so that he can go on to college to become a Lawyer....and once when he came back to the ship for a dressing change, he stopped by the ward to give scripture verses he had written out on colored paper to all of the patients to encourage them.

It was a great time to catch up with him...to see that yes, he is still walking with some aid of a crutch (it's hard enough for anyone to walk on sand)but that his ulcer is completely healed...and when asked what he was doing here on the beach he replied casually "I'm just taking a walk on the beach."

Below is some of Gaye's story that our Communication Dept. wrote.

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Gaye Waylee was just a 4-year old boy in 1996 when he and his pregnant mother escaped Monrovia during the long-term Liberian civil war. The fighting became too dangerous to stay put. Gaye's father, at the time, was a soldier who was killed in the fighting. His older brother and sister were sent to another village while he and his mother escaped to the town of Ganta in the province of Nimba.

'It was a very difficult time,' he explained. It would take 9 years for Gaye to finally see his siblings again.

Once reunited, his brother bore the responsibility of taking care of the family. He guided Gaye through school so that they could share in caring for their mother and sisters.

So it was a tragic day one year ago, when a teenage Gaye at age 14 was in a horrible road traffic accident. The motorcycle he was riding became trapped under a truck as he tried to manoeuvre around on a bridge. His left, upper leg was broken and buckled in on itself. His leg became 4 inches shorter.

Gaye was in a bad physical state and forced to quit school. No one was able to set the bones in his leg properly, and the skin on his left foot which had been badly damaged refused to heal despite trips to nearby clinics. There was a large ulcer spreading over the top of the foot.

Gaye was unable to walk or even bend his left leg. His older brother, a nurse, managed to keep the infection from getting any worse, but still needed help. It was at one of the hospitals in Zao that they were told about Mercy Ships. Gaye, along with his brother, made the journey down to Monrovia, where the large white ship was docked. He was accepted as a patient for free treatment.

His month long stay on the ship began with skin grafts taken from his upper leg and placed over the open wound on his foot. His skin slowly began the miraculous process of healing.

by Michal Tkachenko