Over the past few weeks I’ve had a difficult time coming up with things to write about. It isn’t because we’ve stopped experiencing things, quite the opposite. We’re still going out, adventuring to different areas, living on the ship, meeting new people, working, and all of that. It’s just becoming routine and we’re adapting to it. The first month is exciting and new and different. The second month you’ve gotten used to the work, the living environment, the outside (to an extent) and honestly it just feels like I’d be rewriting a lot of what I’ve written. So since it’s been some time since I’ve written, hopefully I have more to write about now!
A couple weeks ago we got a new crew member that joined me in the galley, his name is Sam and we’ve become fast friends. Another crew member came back from a two week PTO around the same time named Moïse, who I had met my first week, and then there were three! We have all become good friends and enjoy many great times together.
The three of us signed up to go to a something called Mercy Ministries, Moïse was already familiar with it because last year he was actually part of it. Basically it’s about reaching out to the communities off the ship and going to them rather than them coming to us. Mostly reaching out to children’s areas such as orphanages, schools for the destitute, deaf schools and the like. We went on one of our Wednesdays off which was the school for the destitute. This is a school that helps take care of children who have been abandoned or are left on their own by other means. We weren't allowed to take photos so I'm using the ones from the person they asked to take pictures.
Our leader was a very energetic man. His energy caught me off guard when we first met him (I had to strain my ears to keep up with him) and as he went through a routine speech with us before departing (just giving us an idea of what to expect) I was amazed by just how passionate he talked and acted. As we arrived, his personality suddenly fit so well as he yelled out to the classroom of nearly 30 students asking them if they were excited that they were back to see them again. All the children shouted back with great enthusiasm! They then played a game. The game was to try to remember who had visited before to this school (they visit once a week, usually) and who had not, and on top of that if they remembered people’s names! There were 16 of us there and as our leader pointed from person to person the children would yell out “YES” or “NO” depending if that person had visited in the past. It was awesome to see how well they knew and even more impressive when they remembered their names. It was clear that these students loved these visits and I could see why.
We were prompted to sit among the students and then to dance and sing along to a couple songs that he led. As I stood there and a little girl grabbed my hand my heart began melting and what had been a sense of nervousness at being at this school and not really knowing what to do gave way to a sense of joy and enjoying these kids as much as they enjoyed our visits.
We danced and clapped and blew fake trumpets with our fingers in the air.
Since Easter is coming up they wanted to tell the Easter story to the kids. One of the helpers of Mercy Ministries came up to the stage to tell the story as the leader went into the other room to get the crafts ready.
The helper started the story with Jesus going to the garden of Gethsemane. He called up different people to play the parts as he went.
Moïse was Jesus and I was Judas (much to his delight). Sam was also called up to play a part but they kept forgetting he was up there and giving the parts to other people, which was pretty funny. The kids were part of the story too being guards and disciples and angels. We marched around the classroom as he told his story, listening to his cues of what to do next as we did.
I gave Moïse a big hug to identify him as Jesus (Judas gives a kiss, but you know, the hug worked better in this context). It was all a lot of fun and it was nice to see everyone get invested in the story.
After the story it was craft time. This was by far the hardest part of the visit because I’m pretty bad at crafts and we were supposed to help the kids to build them. The blind leading the blind sort of thing! Our first craft was building a cross necklace out of pipe cleaner and beads. This was easy enough except while you’re awaiting instruction the children are trying to take the craft from you and complete it their own way. We were able to finally complete them, although I’m decently sure the cross of the little girl that I helped probably fell apart pretty soon after I left because I cut a bit too much of the pipe cleaner and wasn’t sure that the beads could stay on! The next part of the crafts was long balloons that we were to fold into hats for the kids. I sneakily sidestepped away and watched as the others folded the balloons. It didn’t take long before you heard one, then two, then three POPs! The kids began covering their ears as we continued to try placing them on their heads just willing them not to pop and scare them. It was all in good fun and it was a joy to watch.
It was almost time to go so we went outside, did another couple songs and dances (think of songs you would learn and dance to as kids with silly lyrics and silly dances) and then high-fived all the kids as they went back inside and said goodbye. All in all it was a very cool experience and one I would definitely like to do again, although I don’t think I’ll be able to because we are leaving before they go again (they’re skipping Easter week). It will still be something that I can remember and look back on, though!
Other than that life as just been sort of a melting pot of random experiences, friendships, and outings.
(Pictures above is another Kassa trip. My first coffee in a bag! And a Cashew Fruit, who knew?)
I went to Kassa again, we’ve gone to ice cream multiple times, celebrated birthdays, and all the things you do while you’re in such a tight-knit community.
A birthday Celebration for Kingsley
Since I haven’t written awhile there are a lot of experiences to share, but like I said its just everyday life right now! I’ll give you some snippets of what its like here.
There was the karaoke night! Of course my first instinct here is to avoid singing at all costs but when the entire galley gets up to sing (not videoed here, sorry!) you have to join in as well. There were some other fun performances as I’ll show here!
And then there was the talent show! Once again a lot of performances and naturally I did not want to participate in that either... MercyShips has a funny way of drawing you in, though. Zodi, one of the youth here and the night’s MC, had placed 8 numbers under some of the chairs of people they would call up to do an impromptu performance (of their choice, written down and drawn out of a hat) and wouldn’t you know it, I had a number.
The other talents were great as well and I’ll show just a little bit of those here.
And now here's Kate doing some cleaning!
We went out to a nice group dinner:
We went out to the Jardin of Guinea for one of my roommate's last nights and enjoyed some great pizza (prosciutto, mozzarella, Kalamata olives, goat cheese, etc), a live band (who ranged from American classics, to Spanish, to African beats, and also ended up calling up some fellow MercyShippers to sing along), and of course some good ol’ Foosball and pool!
I can't help but remember this scene from Community when we played, especially because we were playing with a couple German speaking folk!
Here's more of the band!
Our regular nights range from playing games with friends, to having a quiet night on deck 8 watching the sunset, to watching a show (we’re working our way through Home Improvement for some Tim Allen shenanigans) and to getting introduced to a brand new set of characters from Asterix and Obelix and watching a movie about them with some new friends. Apparently it was quite appalling that this is not a known thing in America, at least not in my neck of the woods. We got invited to watch one of the live action movies based on the comics, it was in French with English subtitles and one of the people we were with could quote the entire thing! It was fun and reminded me of some of the slapstick comedies from the late nineties/early 2000s.
Our next exciting thing would have to be the engine room tour. Our friend Kevin (you’ll remember him from our trip to Roume) took us down to show us around the engine room for an impromptu tour. The engine room is loud, hot, and big. We had to wear earplugs and shout over each other if we wanted to be heard, which never actually worked by the way as we still couldn’t hear anything, That didn’t stop Kevin from trying to explain to us what each machine functioned as. We nodded along pretending like we understood some of it (and we did get the gist of it at least!).
Be warned, loud video ahead!
There were times we’d get to quieter areas where he would explain again what we’d just seen.
One thing that’s amazing about this tour is that often times you forget that you’re on a living, breathing ship. Since we’re docked the entire time it just sort of feels like a building by the ocean. Being down here, though, it shows you just how much work goes into merely keeping you afloat, keeping your water levels good, and your electricity on. MercyShips runs solely on generators because its very common for Conakry to lose its power at random times in the day (we saw it happen a few times at some of the restaurants). If you lost power while in the middle of a surgery then that would be bad news! So this means they need to constantly have a generator running and always know their fuel levels as well as always having a backup plan in place just in case one goes out.
One thing we learned is that for every fuel tank, water tank, engine, whatever it may be, for every one there was always another one that they could rely on if it went down. The engines themselves were massive. You can see by the size of Kate next to it!
We ended the tour by going up and up a bunch of very steep staircases and climbing up ladders. By the end of it we had gone up from deck 2 all the way to deck 8 and higher (6 stories). We reached the very top of the ship and got a nice view and a break from the loud and hot inner workings of the ship. Here's some videos to give an idea of our trek up. Once again, loud videos.
Well I think that’s it for now, next time I post I will be giving a tour of the ship and a day in the life of a MercyShipper in a video! I hope you enjoy and looking forward to giving you a fun look around. Thank you for reading!