Author: ashiawehbe

Well folks it’s been quite some time since my last blog post, five months to be exact. Oh em GEE🙊🙉🙈! In that time-span, lots has happened: I completed my travel nursing assignment in New Mexico, finished up what I call my “Big Move” to Florida, got my condo all set up, took a little trip to India and started a brand new nursing job here in Florida. So it’s not that I don’t want to be writing or don’t have a lot to say lol, but basically time just got away from me. Such is the busy-ness of life.

I want to talk a little bit more about my Big Move with you lovely readers. For those who don’t know by now, I basically decided to pick up my life, uproot it from a very small Northeastern Montana town where I had been living and working for a good five years, and transplant it all the way across country to a Central Florida town via U-haul. It sounds simple in theory, but for me like for most others, moving is a big thing. Like a really big deal. A big ‘ol ball of stress. A big starting over that is accompanied by all the anxieties that come with the utter unknown. To show you just how much of a jump across the pond it was for me, here is a screenshot from Google Maps:

So REWIND to September 2018, many months ago. I had finished my travel nursing assignment in North Carolina and was expected in New Mexico in October to start my next travel nursing assignment. I had a few weeks to get myself moved from Montana to Florida so I returned to my hometown (Wolf Point, MT) to pack up my things and get the heck outta dodge.

One thing I believe we as human beings have a bad habit of doing is actually believing that we could ever be 100% ready and prepared for this wild ride we call Life 🎢. I mean, it’s a little hubristic if you think about it, isn’t it lol? To believe we can actually feel ready enough for what may or may not happen in the future… and that’s just the problem: what may or may not happen lol! Now, feeling like you’re ready to do something and making preparations for it to the best of your ability are two very different things, as far as I’m concerned. One of my nurse mentors used to say, “proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance” (thank you Tacy Strand for that one lol 😆). The Six P’s. I just love this saying. It emphasizes preparedness vs. readiness in work and in life. It allows me a little room to breathe while still holding me accountable. In other words, I can be very prepared to the best of my ability and to my utmost capabilities for most things in life, even though I may not ever feel 100% “ready” for them. And that is perfectly okay.

I believe that in order to make any kind of movement in life, to pursue changes in the hopes of accomplishing our dreams and goals, we must let go of this paralyzing notion that we ought to feel “100% ready” in order to take the first steps. We must accept that in order to really gain anything, it requires losing and giving up some amount of control. It means understanding that though you have prepared for a change as much as possible, that you will still face it while feeling vulnerable. With that said, it may not be the worst thing in the world to lose some of this so-called control. Things may not work out quite as bad as we are often accustomed to thinking. We may, in fact, be pleasantly surprised at what befalls us. For instance, yes, I had an exhausting drive to get from Montana to Florida. I had the bejesus scared out of me the first night at the hotel. I very nearly hit a vehicle because the drivers boxed me in. I drove through Texas during a rainstorm. If you’ve done that before, you will understand. It was like Armageddon all around me: so many cars around me getting into wrecks. I drove through rush-hour traffic in Atlanta. But you know what? I met a Good Samaritan along the way (so faith in humanity momentarily restored), I got to see miles of stunning Fall foliage during the drive, I got to jam out to the best radio stations, and I got a very nice random surprise with the Zebra-print bathroom lol 🦓😄.

So let’s talk about selfies. They’re either for you or they’re not. You love ’em or you hate ’em. Or maybe it’s even true that you are that rare person who falls somewhere in the middle and doesn’t have much of an opinion on them. You could take ’em or leave ’em.

Well, me personally, I quite enjoy taking and posting selfies for a few different reasons. Often I do a lot of traveling. I take little trips, go on random adventures, explore, go sightseeing, etc. More often than not, I travel alone. It’s just a bit easier not having to coordinate schedules or different tastes with others, and to just pick up and go somewhere on one of my random days off. Of course, it’s fun to take pictures when traveling and it’s fun to take selfies just for the plain fact of documenting that I visited, saw and experienced something cool :). Fair enough.

Golly gee you guys, this ‘ol Montana gal lived through her first hurricane! Hurricane Florence hit here HARD (many parts of North Carolina and South Carolina are completely devastated) and all the locals I spoke to said that this storm was far worse than Hurricane Matthew that hit a couple of years ago. I bunkered down in my apartment during the worst few days of it, and I was lucky to have remained safe. My car was pretty lucky too.

As someone who has never experienced a hurricane before, what really got to me mentally, were all the days of prolonged flooding everywhere *after* the hurricane. Sooo many roads were closed for quite some time!! And it is STILL going on, nearly 2+ weeks after the hurricane! Rivers are still cresting, people are still evacuating, properties are still being destroyed and some roads are still closed with new ones closing every day. It’s a nightmare, honestly. I have been cooped up inside my apartment so have gotten some extra time to do a little writing. Expect a few more blog posts from me in the next few days/weeks (usually I barely get one per month written lol🙊🙉🙈)

After quite awhile, a few of the roads I had my eye on reopened and I used the opportunity to finally get out of the house and go to the beach. Specifically, I went to a very special area called Bull’s Island near Awendaw, South Carolina. It’s a federally protected coastal reserve, and as a result, is absolutely teeming with plant and animal life of all kinds! Our guide said it likely looks very much the same as it did 3,000 years ago. Wow! You don’t hear that too often these days. There is also a VERY cool area of the beach with miles of driftwood trees strewn about that look like “bones”, hence the name “Boneyard Beach“.

Because this area is so incredible and I had such a special time there, I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking. I wanted to show off some of the true beauty of this area despite all the ugliness and destruction the hurricane caused this state.

Gifts from the Ocean include (but are not limited to):

The promise of a beautiful day ahead.

Shells in all their splendor, and a reminder that there are Universes within. There were actually HUGE shells further down the beach. Like foot-long shells of all different kinds !!!

Good picnic spot. Beer and boiled peanuts. I gotta say, as a Northerner I think I prefer the dry, crunchy kind lol. And the first time I had them, I ate the shells too. Whaaat?? Nobody told me how to eat them 🙈🙉🙊

Good picture taking spots 😆

Transformation. Mystery.

Awe and the gentle reminder that one should feel small and humble while walking along the sand and looking out at the ocean.

And, to me, the best part of all of today: DOLPHINS!!! Of course I couldn’t get a good picture of them, but I have never seen dolphins sooo up close and personal. They were breaching like crazy! Two of them did so in unison 😍. Honestly, they were almost putting on a show for us and it was like soul-medicine to see them like this, so happy in their natural world. The guide said they are really in their element in the reserve because they are the top predator and on top of the food chain. The dolphins were the best gift of all today, and the cherry on top was seeing two huge bald eagles perching majestically atop of trees as we were heading back to the mainland.

I recently read a blog post by a writer named Carla Powell. In it she writes about traveling to many other countries by herself and sort of how it came to be and why she does it. She ended her piece with this, “life is too precious to wait for someone else to join *your* adventure.Just go.”

And I think that is some damn good advice to follow 😎.

A few weeks ago, I was helping serve at a catering event (long story). It was a very big family reunion being held in a large hotel ballroom. We are talking maybe around 150 to 200 people in the room. Though there was a good handful of children, there were many more adults of all ages. After everyone had finished their dinner and were nibbling on dessert and sipping on coffee, that’s when the after-dinner show began.

For their Family Reunion entertainment that evening, somebody had hired a magician to perform a show. Picture the classic type: black top hat, black cape with red velvet inset, crisp white shirt, wand, that sort of thing. As I was walking around the room filling coffees, it got more and more quiet as the magician went through his show. And quieting a room of 150 family members is not easy when everyone is catching up and visiting after a long time not seeing each other.

I couldn’t help but watch the show myself and I must say, it was absolutely wonderful. The magician did all the “classics”: card tricks (shuffling the cards and somehow choosing the correct one that a volunteer had drawn prior), coin tricks (pulling a quarter from a young boy’s ear), pulling a never-ending scarf from his hat, etc. etc. The grand finale of the show was when he pulled a beautiful snowy white dove out of his top hat when seconds before he had shown us that the hat was completely empty. It was wonderful, honestly. Before he did the big reveal, the room was absolutely silent and you could feel that electric, suspenseful anticipation in the crowd, the kind that gives you goosebumps. There was a whole room full of “ooohs and aahs” and giddy laughs at the trick’s finale as the dove flew from the hat around the room then landed back on the magician’s arm.

Most of us have been to a magic show of some type or at least seen one on TV. I can’t say for certain, but I believe that nearly every adult in that room knew what was going to happen in most, if not all of the tricks or at least had some sense of the progression of them. And yet, here we all were, a room plum full of adults all over the age spectrum sharing a moment that felt so light and joyful as we watched a dove “magically appear” from a hat and fly about the room.

This got me thinking about our deep, yet often hidden need for things like this. For magic. Because let’s be real: sometimes adult life can seem really big, so serious, *stressful*, heavy and often monotonous. Yet, here was a room full of adults truly enjoying a children’s magic show and being in the moment of it all. I read a quote awhile back though I’m not sure of its original source: “great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart”. This is something I believe in for sure. To add my own personal spin on it: “great is the adult who seeks their childlike heart”. I am a big subscriber to this principle as there is a big difference between being “childish” and being “child-like”.

I always try to allow myself to be the latter. It comes very natural to me so more specifically, I allow myself the space to be child-like. How, you might ask? I simply let myself get excited about silly little things: eating cotton candy and seeing a “World of Wonders” show at the annual county fair. Or, making it a point to visit any local candy store I happen to be near. Or hiding hundreds of Easter eggs all over the hospital (but don’t worry, never in or near patients’ rooms) so my adult colleagues could have a little holiday fun (yes, there were prizes in every egg lol). Or going to the “Museum of the Bizarre” on a roadtrip. Or making unicorn art projects with my friends’ two young daughters. Just simply allowing myself space to be a little whimsical. My wise mother once told me not to take myself so seriously. So I don’t 😋, although I will say this one is a little more challenging for me and takes a little more work on my end (and sometimes a few reminders from my mom lol).

Ah, the big wide wonderful world of food. There is so much to say about such a fascinating and broad topic. So I will just summarize and introduce this next blog post by saying this: Hello, my name is Ashia and I, my friends, am what you would call a Food Enthusiast. That girl researching for hours where she should eat next and then taking pics of her food in the restaurant? That’s me, alright. No shame ;).

On that note, I have been in North Carolina for almost 2 months now working as a travel nurse. I have found no shortage of things to do in this area and love it here. One of the things I like to explore when I travel is of course, the food! I like to try foods that are different from what I am used to, prepared with some amount of labor, love and local ingredients, quirky and unique, and special to the area.

Lately, I have kept myself busy with many different kinds of Southern food. I’ve been visiting some places featured on the Pecan Trail, which is a list of 20 local restaurants putting pecans in the spotlight. I recently attended a local “Brews and Bites” pairing dinner, which was a lovely evening and exactly one of the type of things I like to do. One of my special finds here is a local bakery run by an interracial gay couple that makes the most INSANE cakes I will ever lay eyes on (shout out to Sugar Art Custom Cakes and Sweets 👏). Their cake creations are true works of art. They make great, funky cupcakes too: bubblegum, pink lemonade, funnel cake, maple bacon, honey bun, Kentucky butter, and peach cobbler doughnut are some of the funky flavors I have had. Yes, I’ve eaten all those cupcakes 😆. So that’s a quick, food-related update on my life for y’all.

I’m sure it’s no surprise then, to hear that I am a fan of Anthony Bourdain, the late chef, food critic, free-spirit, adventurer, story-teller, all around bad-ass, explorer, and lover of good food and drink. Many many others were fans of his too, all around the world. He just had a way about him, a way of ‘going for it,’ if you will, a way of seeing the world that was real, raw, beautiful, haunting and inspirational. By the time of this writing, it has been nearly a month since his death. Because I am a fan of both travel and food and because I feel like the world really lost someone special, I felt compelled to share one of my favorite, personal travel/food experiences with you all in Anthony’s honor. Hope you enjoy.

It was summer 2008. I was staying in Morocco on a college campus taking a 6-week intensive Arabic language course over the summer. There was a small group of us students taking this program. On one of our outings, we got to visit the famous Fez souk, or sometimes called the Medina of Fez. Now, in order to picture what this particular place is like, try to imagine a huge, oriental-themed flea market but the layout is actually in the form of a maze or labyrinth. That is exactly how I remember it: a thousand stalls and shops selling all kinds of wares, a hundred winding, never-ending alleyways branching off into yet more alleyways. Every inch of space filled with the brightest colors and shiniest metallics, every minute your face practically grabbed and turned by some unseeable force that seems to tickle your ear with its whisper of, “over here, look at me!” Now, this was a long time ago and it was my first big international trip as an adult so of course, my mind may be exaggerating some of these details in my remembrance but here is how the layout of the place felt to me lol:

Oh, and did I mention it was hot? Very hot and noisy. Hot, because not only is Morocco of a desert climate but in the souk there are hundreds of bodies in a close space, all brushing up against each other to do their shopping and selling. Here are some actual pictures of it, courtesy a Google Image search of ‘Fez Morocco Souk’:

Here are some of mine that I took at that time.

The thing is, we let ourselves get near desperate due to being hot and tired from hours of walking, a bit dehydrated from running out of water, very hungry, and not full-on “scared” but definitely worried, anxious and concerned that we hadn’t yet found a route leading us back to the bus. We were all huddled up trying to think about what exactly to do next, when in that very moment a Moroccan man came up to us and intensely asked if we were looking for a good place to eat. Of course, we were and hadn’t had any luck yet at finding a suitable place and I think we just collectively decided, “meh, why not? We’re in a group, what’s the worst that could happen?”. It seemed like fate anyway, the way he had just appeared out of the blue asking about food.

Well guys, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written any blog posts. I finished my nursing mission in Sierra Leone and returned to the U.S. at the end of March. Since being home, I have had a wonderful time relaxing, cooking/baking practically every yummy recipe that caught my eye, doing arts and crafts, going on walks, going to movies, visiting friends, pettin’ my cats and just trying to “recover” (possibly too strong a word, but close to what I mean) from long-term, high-intensity work. In short, I have been reacclimating to all the things I have left behind these past 6 months and it’s been great.

So I’ll give an update on what I’m up to next. I have signed on with a travel nursing agency and am currently headed to North Carolina to begin a 3-month contract at one of the hospitals in the area. I’m quite excited, as it is a brand new place for me to explore, and I hope the South is ready for me. By that I mean, I hope they are firing up the grills now and getting some good bbq ready for me 😋 *Disclaimer*: I had originally planned on hiking the Appalachian Trail currently (a 6 month hike across several states), but I was quite ill and exhausted upon returning home and in no condition to hike for 6 months. So my grand hike is postponed yet another year. That’s just Life folks and if anything, ya gotta try to be flexible and “go with the flow” …something I’m still trying to get used to 😏

Anyways. I wanted to write this blog post a couple months ago when it actually happened but time got away from me. So without further ado, here it is:

Awhile back, my friends and I decided to do something a bit different for our rare, coveted day off of work. Usually everyone goes to the beaches nearby or just relaxes at home but on this particular day we decided to hike up a mountain, no big deal. Well, technically it was labeled a hill but I am sticking with mountain because it sounds cooler ;)…and definitely felt like one.

It all started when one of our friends found a guided tour of Picket Hill through the ‘Visit Sierra Leone’ tourist website. She set everything up for us and on Sunday morning, we were on our way to the site of the hike. We were picked up and driven for about an hour to a rural village. Our original tour guide needed to partner up with a local guide from the village as he was native to the area and knew the way to the top of the mountain well, as it is through fairly dense woods & foliage. A tall, somewhat formidable looking man welcomed us to the village and introduced himself as the chief. We mistakenly heard his name said as “Journey” instead of “Johnny” so that was a bit awkward when we were all saying, “oh hi Journey” lol. He then asked us who the chief was of our “expedition” and that is how our group of friends became known as the “Journey Expedition”, quite a fitting name considering the adventure that lay before us.

We got the guide situation all set up and began our hike. It started off as a nice, little trail with a gradual incline. It did not stay that way. Early on the trail got very steep. Now, luckily for us, there were many trees overhead and it created a very nice shade and cooled the temperature greatly. But guys, I’m just going to give you a visual of what we did:

So if that’s a hill, then I can’t even with a mountain. Our pace didn’t necessarily help things either. I wouldn’t say we were speed walking but we were NOT going at a leisurely pace because both of our guides wanted to get back in time for the soccer game on TV 🙄 so we were hustling our bustles.Here were just a few of our adventures/(mishaps? 😆) on our steep hike up:

*I had to go number #1 and my friend did too. We found a secluded spot and took turns being the lookout for each other. Sarah took her turn and everything was fine. I took my turn in the bushes and I guess the spot we found wasn’t so secluded after all…and Sarah wasn’t a very good look out. When I had my turn, a group of 3 African guys all walked by and I’m pretty sure they got to see a very clear picture of the front moon of me…thank you Sarah. 😑🙈 I’m sure that’s a great image for them to have  of the first white woman they ever saw 🙄

*About halfway to the top, we passed a few village women who were carrying baskets and looked like they were out doing some work in the forest (gardening or gathering something). They waved to us and we sort of tried to chat a bit but we didn’t speak the same language. They were all dopey smiles, giggle fits, and practically falling down over each other with laughter. There’s no other way to say this: they were MESSED UP 🤩🤯🤪😆 lol. Later the guides told us that they chewed some sort of root or plant to get high and make the work easier. I wish we would have asked for some because I think had I been a bit “removed” from the mountain, it would have made hiking up it a bit better.

*Probably our more serious “adventure” was us running out of water. When we got to the top of the mountain and were enjoying our triumph and the glorious views, we realized that we only had 1 small bottle of water left for the journey back. Somebody forgot to pack the rest of it. So we dissolved an oral rehydration packet into it and tried not to be too nervous. Also, we didn’t have much to choose from for snacks so we brought what was on hand, which consisted of cookies and Pringles 🙄. Definitely not the best food for about 7 hours of hiking. Also, the British have the cutest names for their cookies: Jammie Dodgers. Now try saying that out loud in an enthusiastic British accent.

Anyways. This whole fiasco/wonderful adventure got me thinking about the type of people we surround ourselves with. It really does make such a difference as far as the type of energy they bring into our lives. For instance, I was most definitely the weakest link on the hike. I had put my stuff in a plastic grocery bag (just bc I didn’t have a proper bag), which was not gonna work, and had to be divided up into everyone else’s hiking packs, thus giving them extra weight. And on the decline of the hike, everyone was getting enormously thirsty and moderately dehydrated…but my friends gave me extra sips of what was left in the bottle bc I had started feeling dizzy and things were going a bit grayish on the periphery of my visual field. Real pals, honestly. On the way up when I truly wanted to quit, when I clearly felt that I simply could not physically manage with the incline of the hike and was going to call it quits, my friends offered that we should all slow down the pace a bit and take a few more breaks on the remaining distance up. They basically encouraged me not to quit, refused to leave me alone in the jungle while I waited for their return on the descent, and offered suggestive solutions on how I could finish the hike with them. I simply would not have been able to do the hike and see the INCREDIBLE views at the top of it had not been for them (we were practically touching some low-hanging clouds!). Shout out to the Journey Expedition lol.

When we got back to the village that was our starting point, all the villagers (maybe 15-20 of them) were kind of gathered waiting for us casually. Once they saw us they began saying how fast we were and how well we did and good job us lol. It felt a little put-on but I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. I am too embarrassed to post an after-pic but it’s basically me sitting on a bench in sweat drenched clothes holding my walking stick, covered in dust and clutching my Pringles for dear life. It didn’t capture it in the picture but I was also surrounded by baby chicks running around me. Yeah, that’s right! The image of a true champion!

So be mindful about the people, friends, groups, communities, social energies, etc. that you are surrounding yourself with. Are they bringing out the champion in you? Willing or not so willing, as in my case 😉 Let’s just say, I am so happy I made it to the top of that mountain and saw that view. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my pals there seeing me through. So as the Golden Gurls theme song goes, “thank you for being a friend”.

After I had been in Sierra Leone a little while, I decided it was time for a haircut. My hair grows extremely fast and although I had just gotten one before I left the U.S., 3 months later it was definitely looking past time for a trim. As one of my friends said, it looked like I had “an upside down bowl on my head”. Thank you friend. So, ya. Definitely time for a cut lol.

So getting a haircut is simple enough in theory. You find time to get one, you find a place to go and you are clear and capable in describing what you want (I usually bring a picture for reference). Simple enough. However, I have found very few things to be entirely simple or straightforward here on this mission or in this country. First, we have very limited days off and they usually fall on Sundays, which here means nearly all of the businesses are closed. Also, it is challenging for us to get transportation anywhere into busy, traffic-ridden Freetown for a variety of reasons.

To be fair, this probably wasn’t the greatest idea from the very get go. But I just wanted to get the haircut over and done with. My saving grace is that my two friends accompanied me to this place even though I hadn’t really expected them to want to come along. We arrived at the shack and a young man greeted us (the barber). There was also another man sitting and waiting, a very nice customer who insisted that I go first. I showed the barber a picture of the haircut I wanted. He said no problemo he could do it and I climbed into the chair. Moments later, my world came crashing down. Well, not quite, but huge chunks of my hair definitely did lol.

I won’t bore you with all the details but I will cover some of the highlights of my Haircut from Hell Hour:

To me, the above scene was absolutely beautiful. A perfect few moments. It was one of the first things I saw in Sierra Leone and it is painted onto my mind. I thought to myself,  the people who live in this house get to witness this view every day. Putting the concept of the ‘Have and the Have-Nots’ aside, this view is theirs. Always.

Now, back to my comment about a person who may seem as if they are outside looking in. Don’t you think someone who allegedly called African countries “sh*tholes” is a person who is standing outside this little house? Someone whose back is wholly turned on the sunset while he shivers from the frothy wave-mist that dampens his clothes. Someone whose view is so fixated on the house as structure instead of shelter, as a hold instead of home, as commodity instead of community. This is a person who can’t possibly take in the broader view of a beautiful sunset as he has rejected it. He is standing outside the home squinting in at it, seeing only the little house yet looking right past it as the sun sets behind him, darkening everything.

Hello all.

As I have been on this mission now for almost 3 whole months (!), some of my thoughts and feelings regarding this experience are settling into place a bit more.

*I am thankful for the fact that even though I am a fairly rigid person, and want what I want when and how I want it, that truly, this place has helped me let some of that go. For instance, although I am a Foodie and constantly dream of making show-stopping meals and desserts to impress people (thank you Pinterest lol), I’m thankful I can put all that aside a bit. Put all my expectations of what I “should” make and be able to have mastered a couple of simple and *delicious* no-bake cheesecakes for our Christmas Eve dessert. Because here, that’s the best I can do. Really, as simple as it sounds I am so proud of this feat. As far as I am concerned, the oven here is too unreliable for my baking preference and I was going a bit crazy at not being able to make stuff because of it lol. So, I compromised and the result was even better than I expected. Golly, I love when that happens. Thank you to the No-Bake boards on Pinterest!

 

*I am thankful for help from people. Truly, I am. Example: after a disastrous haircut (which will be written about in a future blog post), the Medical Coordinator of the hospital (the big boss) grabbed some sharp sterile scissors from the operating room and a pair of regular ‘ol orange-handled scissors you get at any store, and cleaned me up as best she could one evening. In the past, she had had some training as a a hairdresser and she made me feel so much better. There’s not much time here for giving haircuts and the gesture meant a lot.

*I am thankful for discovering new beaches right down the street from my house. And it’s cool that the path to the beach leads through an old cemetery with funky looking trees. And it’s even more cool that said beach is deserted on Christmas Day and provides the most perfect shady, secluded spot you could possibly imagine. A true little island paradise that made the day feel abnormally easy and hazy in its niceness.

*I am thankful for VERY rare trips to get gelato at “the Italian place” even though it usually means at least 2 hours of traffic (the traffic here is something on a whole different level). It is delicious ice cream though and they even have some local cuisine flavors too.

*I am thankful for resourcefulness, a trait I have always had somewhat but being here has really pushed it to the forefront. A few weeks back, the young daughter of our pediatrician wanted a castle-themed costume birthday party. So everyone was assigned roles like princess, Turtle Boy (?), knight, King, Queen, etc. My friend and I were supposed to be the dragons. Okay, cool. But how do you make Dragon costumes with next to nothing? You get resourceful! Green work scrubs from the hospital and scales and horns made out of paper and *lots* of clear packing tape. It’s really a pity I don’t have a picture.

*I am thankful for a confused rooster, whose mis-timed crowing throughout the day reminds me that the day simply is, and that you don’t need to have the correct on-time crow for it to proceed. The day will be so regardless of our expectations as to when the rooster should crow lol.