Real.Life.

I went up to Portland yesterday for a team meeting at Medical Teams International. My medical team of 5 is a month away from leaving for Cambodia. We got our airline tickets 2 wks ago and everything is a go. At our meeting at the headquarters building, we went thru the Real.Life. exhibit. It's in a portion of the big warehouse building and consists of about 15 different rooms. Everyroom is different and set up depicting different parts of a world where MTI has sent teams. By room 3 I was an emotional mess. Everything depicted was spot on to reality. The only thing missing was "smells". There are certain smells that always remind of when I was in Haiti, like burning garbage. We started out in Tsunami room, where they had built what looked exactly like a 25 ft wave and all around you on the walls are lifesize real actual photos of the devastation that took place. I just stood there and looked up at this wave (the actual one was 30 ft), in disbelief. Another room was on Hurricane Katrina, an actual med center was set up, with again, the walls being life size actual photos...you feel like you are really there. There was about 50 people (from approx, 6 different teams who are traveling in the next 6 months) in this group of volunteers, and there wasn't a dry eye in the place. The silence and sounds of sobbing is something I'll never forget. Strangers going up one another comforting each other. The group of strangers putting a hand on the nurse who broke down in the Tsunami room, because not only was she affected by devastation/tragedy she was seeing, she was on one of the first teams MTI sent down for disaster relief. She said this was the second time she's gone thru the exhibit and the pain is refreshed each time, the memories of all the bodies. Other rooms, Cambodia, Africa, Mongolia, and numberous countries, each left me speechless. During our meeting one of the main topics discussed is the need when we get back to grieve, mourn, and how important it is to have a trusted support system you can talk to, debrief, sort through all these feelings .
I have never gone through an exhibit such as this, and it's been on my mind ever since I left there yesterday. We were in there a good hour and half. I didn't know MTI had something like this, it's open to the public, its free, and it's life changing. I walked out with so many feelings going thru my heart. Guilt, humble, humility, and thankfulness. WOW. http://www.medicalteams.org/exhibit