Yesterday was Togolese Independence Day, and there was a celebration on board in the dining room for all the crew/day volunteers who couldn't leave the ship for festivities. Africans sure know how to party down.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Togolese Independence Day
Yesterday was Togolese Independence Day, and there was a celebration on board in the dining room for all the crew/day volunteers who couldn't leave the ship for festivities. Africans sure know how to party down.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Cutting chickens and being sick.
I take it back. I will never complain about vegetables again. This past Sunday I spent all day butchering Cornish game hens—ie, whole chickens :(. It was not pleasant cutting ‘em up and taking out the spines/fat/guts, lemme tell you. Sometimes we got to see what the chicken had just eaten before they got axed because we’d find whole kernels of corn inside of them. The proper knife went missing so raw chicken juice went flying everywhere. Awesome… not. We’re so spoiled in the US; all our “meat” comes in neat saran wrapped packages. Poor chickadees. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
This Sunday was the first time when I missed home. It’s been a tough week. I was supposed to be off this weekend, but one of the girls on the other team asked me to fill in her shift, so I worked almost 7 days straight. There’s a reason for our weird schedule—considering the fact that we work 12 hour, labor intensive days in the galley, 2-3 days is all we can physically take before we need a break. By Sunday, I’d worked the past 4 days, AND we had to wake up at 5:30 AM to serve hot breakfast, AND I was sick (queasy, fever, headache). I was not a happy camper that day. The entire day I found myself wondering, "Lord Almighty, what have I gotten myself into?" (except I used more.. colorful vocabulary). Honestly, if I were at home, I could’ve been sitting on my couch in my PJs, watching DVDs with my dog sleeping next to me. Only by the grace of God, and the lovely effects of some citrus flavored Alka-Seltzer, I made it through.
But even when I have my moments, I don’t doubt for a second that this is where I’m supposed to be. I love it here. I can already tell that I’m going to be in trouble when I have to leave because I don’t think I’m going to want to. It is such a joy to live in this community. One of my first nights here, one of the people I met on the ship let me know that a group of them were planning on taking a guitar up to deck 8 to sing songs. The ten or so of us just sang songs for an hour under the African night sky—how surreal, and how completely amazing. I sound really cheesy right now. I’m cheesing, I know, but it lifted my spirits so much. I’d been in an unsettling place in my Christian walk before I came here— very comfortable. Which normally doesn't come with negative connotations, but I was comfortable in the sense that I'd become complacent... almost apathetic. I didn’t feel challenged in my faith anymore. And now I’m around all these Christians who are actually doing something with their faith instead of just sittin’ on it, and it just rubs off on you; it’s infectious. By all means, this is far from a Christian utopia, but it’s still a pretty cool ommunity to be in, nonetheless.
In sum, I’m glad I’m here. Despite the chickens.
PS. I googled "chickens," and this is what came up. I decided I needed to share.
This Sunday was the first time when I missed home. It’s been a tough week. I was supposed to be off this weekend, but one of the girls on the other team asked me to fill in her shift, so I worked almost 7 days straight. There’s a reason for our weird schedule—considering the fact that we work 12 hour, labor intensive days in the galley, 2-3 days is all we can physically take before we need a break. By Sunday, I’d worked the past 4 days, AND we had to wake up at 5:30 AM to serve hot breakfast, AND I was sick (queasy, fever, headache). I was not a happy camper that day. The entire day I found myself wondering, "Lord Almighty, what have I gotten myself into?" (except I used more.. colorful vocabulary). Honestly, if I were at home, I could’ve been sitting on my couch in my PJs, watching DVDs with my dog sleeping next to me. Only by the grace of God, and the lovely effects of some citrus flavored Alka-Seltzer, I made it through.
But even when I have my moments, I don’t doubt for a second that this is where I’m supposed to be. I love it here. I can already tell that I’m going to be in trouble when I have to leave because I don’t think I’m going to want to. It is such a joy to live in this community. One of my first nights here, one of the people I met on the ship let me know that a group of them were planning on taking a guitar up to deck 8 to sing songs. The ten or so of us just sang songs for an hour under the African night sky—how surreal, and how completely amazing. I sound really cheesy right now. I’m cheesing, I know, but it lifted my spirits so much. I’d been in an unsettling place in my Christian walk before I came here— very comfortable. Which normally doesn't come with negative connotations, but I was comfortable in the sense that I'd become complacent... almost apathetic. I didn’t feel challenged in my faith anymore. And now I’m around all these Christians who are actually doing something with their faith instead of just sittin’ on it, and it just rubs off on you; it’s infectious. By all means, this is far from a Christian utopia, but it’s still a pretty cool ommunity to be in, nonetheless.
In sum, I’m glad I’m here. Despite the chickens.
PS. I googled "chickens," and this is what came up. I decided I needed to share.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Patient screening
I had this past Friday off, so I signed myself up as a volunteer for a screening. Patient screenings take place off ship: usually Mercy Ships conducts one large screening at the beginning of the outreach, but because the Togolese elections were taking place when the ship arrived to the country (possibility of unrest/protests), they decided to have smaller screenings, a couple weeks spread apart. This was the last general screening that Mercy Ships was doing in Togo, so they expected almost two thousand people like they’d experienced at other locations: very luckily—as we thought we wouldn’t have enough staff—we only had about seven or eight hundred who showed up.
Screening was such an indescribable experience, but I’ll try my best to paint a small picture of what happened on our screening day. We drove about an hour an a half north of Lome to Assahoun, where the screening would be held (woke up at 5 AM! And boy is the African weather lovely in the morning). We had maybe 15-20 people with us, nurses and other crew members (like me) who were volunteering on their spare time to work in different capacities. The patients would line up to see the nurses who would check if they qualified for the very specific type of surgeries that Mercy Ships can do. Because this was the last screening, surgery spots were mostly filled and we were only looking for extreme cases of plastics/burns, max fax (cleft lip/palates), and VVF. My job for the day was to escort patients from the line to one of the 3 nurses, and then either to the data team, one of the prayer teams, or to the gate.
I stood right next to the nurses’ station so I heard the conversations between the nurses and the patients that came to see them: it was heartbreaking to hear some of their stories, and to see their physical pain. You see the unfairness of it all-- things that would get treated immediately in the US get left untended in Africa, to devastating effects. People show up with goiters the size of small watermelons, tumors growing on their eyes and all over their faces, children and adults with extreme bowed legs. Culturally, those who aren’t “normal” are shunned from their communities, as they’re assumed to have done something wrong. Sometimes they come and there’s just nothing we can do for them: surgery spots are full, surgeons aren’t on the ship, and sometimes the illness is inoperable and will be fatal in due time. I've gained such a whole new level of respect for screening nurses, because I can’t imagine having to tell most of the people who come to see us that we can’t help them. If not chosen for surgery, we take them to the prayer teams and we pray for them: we pray for comfort, we pray for another way someday. We pray because that’s all we can do.
But in the midst of the sadness there are those incredibly happy moments when a patient gets chosen for surgery. Since I knew we were looking for max fax, I was so happy every time I saw a patient with a cleft lip, because I knew that we had the capability to fix it. If screened, the data team takes down their information and gives them a Mercy Ships card so they can come back to the ship for their appointment. At the appointment, the surgeon needs to make sure that the patient is operable, so just getting a card at the screening, which is a huge feat in itself, isn’t a guarantee of surgery.
The whole experience is just so humbling. It just makes you realize how little power you have in the face of everything, and how everything is really in God’s hands. And on a more minor note, it was good for me to get off the ship and get reminded of why I came all the way to Africa to chop vegetables. Puts things in much needed perspective.
Screening was such an indescribable experience, but I’ll try my best to paint a small picture of what happened on our screening day. We drove about an hour an a half north of Lome to Assahoun, where the screening would be held (woke up at 5 AM! And boy is the African weather lovely in the morning). We had maybe 15-20 people with us, nurses and other crew members (like me) who were volunteering on their spare time to work in different capacities. The patients would line up to see the nurses who would check if they qualified for the very specific type of surgeries that Mercy Ships can do. Because this was the last screening, surgery spots were mostly filled and we were only looking for extreme cases of plastics/burns, max fax (cleft lip/palates), and VVF. My job for the day was to escort patients from the line to one of the 3 nurses, and then either to the data team, one of the prayer teams, or to the gate.
I stood right next to the nurses’ station so I heard the conversations between the nurses and the patients that came to see them: it was heartbreaking to hear some of their stories, and to see their physical pain. You see the unfairness of it all-- things that would get treated immediately in the US get left untended in Africa, to devastating effects. People show up with goiters the size of small watermelons, tumors growing on their eyes and all over their faces, children and adults with extreme bowed legs. Culturally, those who aren’t “normal” are shunned from their communities, as they’re assumed to have done something wrong. Sometimes they come and there’s just nothing we can do for them: surgery spots are full, surgeons aren’t on the ship, and sometimes the illness is inoperable and will be fatal in due time. I've gained such a whole new level of respect for screening nurses, because I can’t imagine having to tell most of the people who come to see us that we can’t help them. If not chosen for surgery, we take them to the prayer teams and we pray for them: we pray for comfort, we pray for another way someday. We pray because that’s all we can do.
But in the midst of the sadness there are those incredibly happy moments when a patient gets chosen for surgery. Since I knew we were looking for max fax, I was so happy every time I saw a patient with a cleft lip, because I knew that we had the capability to fix it. If screened, the data team takes down their information and gives them a Mercy Ships card so they can come back to the ship for their appointment. At the appointment, the surgeon needs to make sure that the patient is operable, so just getting a card at the screening, which is a huge feat in itself, isn’t a guarantee of surgery.
The whole experience is just so humbling. It just makes you realize how little power you have in the face of everything, and how everything is really in God’s hands. And on a more minor note, it was good for me to get off the ship and get reminded of why I came all the way to Africa to chop vegetables. Puts things in much needed perspective.
EDIT, 05/07/10>>
We're not allowed to take our cameras to screenings, but here are some official Mercy Ships pictures taken by our photographer, Deb Bell (thanks!).
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Market trip
I had two days off, so on Tuesday, some of my galley team members decided to go to the market. On the way out of the gate, we met a day worker named Caleb who had the rest of the day off and was kind enough to accompany us. Here are a couple of pictures that I took during our trip:
The Grand Market in Lomé sells just about everything: vegetables, shoes, fabric, handbags, African clothes, second-hand Western style clothes, hair weaves, bathroom products, children's toys, men's belts. It actually reminds me a lot of the markets in Korea-- save for the massive amounts of sand and the naked babies. No Korean naked babies. There are no fixed prices at the market, and the vendors will automatically triple or quadruple the normal price when they see that you're white. I've never been a big fan of bargaining even in Korea, as I always feel I'm being slightly cheated one way or another, so it was nice to have Caleb with us who knew the actual price, as opposed to the quoted Yovo price (white person price).
Things are generally organized to different sections in the market by category-- and I use the words "organized" and "category" quite loosely. It's nice, in the sense that you can find everything you could possibly want-- our group ended up buying some small African souvenir statues, Converse shoes, African fabric, and a leather bag in one go-- but I imagine it must take forever to locate something specific when you actually need something, as the roads have no signs or names and everything basically looks the same. If you don't know where you're going, you can end up just walking around in circles for a few hours. I keep hearing the phrase "Africa time" on the ship, and I'm now starting to see why people run on a slower time schedule here-- the way that everything is set up, even something as simple as a "quick" trip to the market is rendered impossible.
The Grand Market in Lomé sells just about everything: vegetables, shoes, fabric, handbags, African clothes, second-hand Western style clothes, hair weaves, bathroom products, children's toys, men's belts. It actually reminds me a lot of the markets in Korea-- save for the massive amounts of sand and the naked babies. No Korean naked babies. There are no fixed prices at the market, and the vendors will automatically triple or quadruple the normal price when they see that you're white. I've never been a big fan of bargaining even in Korea, as I always feel I'm being slightly cheated one way or another, so it was nice to have Caleb with us who knew the actual price, as opposed to the quoted Yovo price (white person price).
Things are generally organized to different sections in the market by category-- and I use the words "organized" and "category" quite loosely. It's nice, in the sense that you can find everything you could possibly want-- our group ended up buying some small African souvenir statues, Converse shoes, African fabric, and a leather bag in one go-- but I imagine it must take forever to locate something specific when you actually need something, as the roads have no signs or names and everything basically looks the same. If you don't know where you're going, you can end up just walking around in circles for a few hours. I keep hearing the phrase "Africa time" on the ship, and I'm now starting to see why people run on a slower time schedule here-- the way that everything is set up, even something as simple as a "quick" trip to the market is rendered impossible.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Down (or rather up) in the galley
OH my. Work is… exhausting. Fun, but I’m thinking that it’s fun right now because of its newness and the novelty of the whole situation—I’m sure it’ll get routine and tiring very quickly. I do really like the people I’m working with though; they (and the music that gets played in the galley) make the time go by a lot faster.
So, as I so jokingly predicted, I did peel carrots on my first day here! If only all my predictions came true. There are two "sides" to the galley— the cold side and the hot side.
I’ve only worked in the cold side so far: we prepare all the fixings for the salad and sandwich line, so we have to sort out/wash/cut all the vegetables/cheeses/cold-cuts/dressings, etc.
Here's a quick picture of a delivery of fresh produce sitting in the reception area. Looks deceptively pretty, doesn't it?
I think someone quoted me that the galley churns out approximately 1,000 meals per day for the crew and all the day volunteers (locals who volunteer during the day only), so you can only imagine how much work goes into even something that seems as simple as a salad bar. For example, I spent my first three hours in the galley with the tomatoes. Just tomatoes. Sounds stupid right? Who spends three hours on cutting tomatoes? But you have to realize that the vegetables here are so organic that they’re not the pretty plump vegetables that you see at home: you get a bucket of tomatoes where only half are good, and even the good ones go bad really quickly. You have to methodically work your way through the bucket, figuring out which tomatoes you can actually eat raw, which are to be used as cooking tomatoes, and which get tossed. And don’t even get me started on the lettuce. I swear, the lettuce here has some kind of vendetta against me.
Anyway, our schedule differs slightly on each day, especially seeing as how I worked a weekend, but basically: the day starts with 15-30 min devotions at 8 AM (or "devos," as they're called on the ship), work until 12 PM, break for lunch, come back at 1 PM to start dinner, break for dinner from 5-6 PM, and then come back after dinner to clean-up/wash all the dishes/trays/pots/cooking utensils that were used in the galley for that day. At the end of the work day, you feel like you’ve been drenched in grossness and you smell like old water and leftovers and sardines (awesome). Sometimes I really feel like I’m cooking potluck for church every single day, especially because we use the same metal trays here as we do back at my home church (which I was really excited about when I first saw the trays, but now I'm not so excited).
I know it sounds pretty monotonous and gross, and it sometimes is (OK, most of the time), but I know that it’s necessary and I’m so glad that I’m here. I knew what I was getting myself into, which is good in the sense that I prepared myself to serve as a “missionary” in a very non-traditional way—that is, I don’t spend the majority of my time with the people of West Africa. The people working in our department are isolated for a good part of the day in the galley, and I’ve been warned that it can get monotonous after awhile. But even though the crew services department isn't as publicized or as celebrated as the medically related departments are, this mission wouldn’t be possible without it's existence. This really is an environment where everyone can serve Christ with the talents they were given—even if that talent is sweeping the floors, or answering telephones, or cutting tomatoes.
And for now, I’ve come to see what Mercy Ships is all about so that I can maybe serve for long-term after I get my dental degree—and so far, I love what I see. And I won’t be working in the galley the entire time: they do a nice job on ship of allowing non-medical personnel be a part of the outreach as well, so I have a surgery observation, a patients screening, and a day at the dental clinic lined up during my off days for the next two weeks. Exciting.
So, as I so jokingly predicted, I did peel carrots on my first day here! If only all my predictions came true. There are two "sides" to the galley— the cold side and the hot side.
Cold side / Hot side (with Stephen and Lorinda)
I’ve only worked in the cold side so far: we prepare all the fixings for the salad and sandwich line, so we have to sort out/wash/cut all the vegetables/cheeses/cold-cuts/dressings, etc.
Here's a quick picture of a delivery of fresh produce sitting in the reception area. Looks deceptively pretty, doesn't it?
I think someone quoted me that the galley churns out approximately 1,000 meals per day for the crew and all the day volunteers (locals who volunteer during the day only), so you can only imagine how much work goes into even something that seems as simple as a salad bar. For example, I spent my first three hours in the galley with the tomatoes. Just tomatoes. Sounds stupid right? Who spends three hours on cutting tomatoes? But you have to realize that the vegetables here are so organic that they’re not the pretty plump vegetables that you see at home: you get a bucket of tomatoes where only half are good, and even the good ones go bad really quickly. You have to methodically work your way through the bucket, figuring out which tomatoes you can actually eat raw, which are to be used as cooking tomatoes, and which get tossed. And don’t even get me started on the lettuce. I swear, the lettuce here has some kind of vendetta against me.Anyway, our schedule differs slightly on each day, especially seeing as how I worked a weekend, but basically: the day starts with 15-30 min devotions at 8 AM (or "devos," as they're called on the ship), work until 12 PM, break for lunch, come back at 1 PM to start dinner, break for dinner from 5-6 PM, and then come back after dinner to clean-up/wash all the dishes/trays/pots/cooking utensils that were used in the galley for that day. At the end of the work day, you feel like you’ve been drenched in grossness and you smell like old water and leftovers and sardines (awesome). Sometimes I really feel like I’m cooking potluck for church every single day, especially because we use the same metal trays here as we do back at my home church (which I was really excited about when I first saw the trays, but now I'm not so excited).
I know it sounds pretty monotonous and gross, and it sometimes is (OK, most of the time), but I know that it’s necessary and I’m so glad that I’m here. I knew what I was getting myself into, which is good in the sense that I prepared myself to serve as a “missionary” in a very non-traditional way—that is, I don’t spend the majority of my time with the people of West Africa. The people working in our department are isolated for a good part of the day in the galley, and I’ve been warned that it can get monotonous after awhile. But even though the crew services department isn't as publicized or as celebrated as the medically related departments are, this mission wouldn’t be possible without it's existence. This really is an environment where everyone can serve Christ with the talents they were given—even if that talent is sweeping the floors, or answering telephones, or cutting tomatoes.
And for now, I’ve come to see what Mercy Ships is all about so that I can maybe serve for long-term after I get my dental degree—and so far, I love what I see. And I won’t be working in the galley the entire time: they do a nice job on ship of allowing non-medical personnel be a part of the outreach as well, so I have a surgery observation, a patients screening, and a day at the dental clinic lined up during my off days for the next two weeks. Exciting.
Friday, April 16, 2010
First two days on ship
The first few days have been quite odd, to be honest, just because I have no work to do. Most of the people on the ship have “normal” schedules—9 to 5, Mondays through Fridays—but the galley is a little different. Obviously, people still need to eat during the weekends, so we have two teams that alternate schedules: when one team works 3 days, the other team gets those 3 days off. The team that I was assigned to had just finished working, so I had my first two days “off”. Which would’ve been tremendously nice… if I wasn’t so brand new . It kind of felt like the first day of high school all over again, except this time, everyone already knew each other. A weird feeling to have at 22, and I can only imagine how those even older than me feel.
My first full day on board (Wednesday), I spent getting over jet-lag and slept until 1 PM, ship time (4 hours difference between New Jersey and Togo, so 9 AM Eastern time). It was really peculiar waking up on a ship: I have these curtains that wrap all around my little bed/cubicle, and we have no windows in the cabins so I when I woke up, I couldn’t tell if it was night or day. I took my first “two minute shower” on the ship (hop in shower, water on, get wet, water off, shampoo up, water on, wash off, hop out); reminded me of my time as an exchange student in France when I had to do the turn-on/off shower to conserve water in the house. I walked around for a bit during the afternoon, getting lost , trying to familiarize myself with the different parts of the ship. I also started introducing myself to nearly every person I came into contact with, which got really tiring after awhile because it's always the same questions over and over again: "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" And the one question that is unique to Mercy Ships, "How long are you here for?" I'm a short-termer, as I'm only staying for 3 months, but a lot of people are here for long term (2+ years), and when you ask some people, they answer, “I don’t know”—not because they’re being evasive of your question, but because they genuinely don’t know when they’ll be leaving the ship (ie, they’re here for forever). Honestly, I don’t know if I could ever come to the point where I’d be OK with living on a ship for my entire life, so I have a genuine admiration for the people who are so committed to the mission.
Then at six, I had my official ship tour, and since I was the only arrival from my group that was new to Mercy Ships, I got my own personal tour guide! She was a really nice girl from Hospitality, the department that deals with arrivals/departures and… hospitality, and we just zipped around the ship. It’s incredible the different amenities we have here on the Africa Mercy. I’ll have to post another time with pictures of what the ship looks like, but it’s really incredible when you actually get here because this is basically a self-contained community that has nearly everything that a person could need on a day to day basis, and some stuff that we really don't "need" but makes life comfortable—I mean, we have a Starbucks café, for goodness sakes.
At night, the galley department went off-ship to have dinner—a goodbye party for the person who I’m now replacing in the galley. We all climbed into the back of a truck and drove on those crazy Togolese roads again, and I had my first “real” African meal! Pretty good, actually—I had rice with a choice of meat sauce. This was where having a Korean background came to my advantage—I was perfectly fine eating the food, while nearly everyone else was huffing and puffing at what I thought to be a tiny amount of spice in the dish. It was really nice, as I got to meet a lot of the people I’d be working with in the galley before I even started work.
The people on my team advised me to get a good deal of rest while I still could, so I took their advice and had a really slow, calm day the next day too. I woke up a little earlier on Thursday (gotta get over that jet lag quick), and went exploring some more— I took a poke into the galley, and they have a piano here (scratch that—three!), so I got to played for a little while, which relaxed me a great deal. I had lunch and dinner with my cabin mates, who are all really awesome girls who each have really different life stories. Funny enough, at 22 I’m one of the oldest in my cabin. I’m in the eight-berth cabin on this ship: there’s one ten-berth and one eight-berth cabin on board, and they’re both infamous for housing the younger girls who mainly work in hospitality/housekeeping/other non-hospital crew. The main advantage of being in an eight-berth though is that there’s always someone around, so even when I felt really uneasy about being “the new girl”, my cabin mates have been good about including me in things like meals and after activities, which I know is not an easy thing to do so I appreciate it so much.
So work starts tomorrow! My shift starts at 8 AM and ends… “whenever” (ie. when we’re done cleaning up after dinner, normally around 7:45/8 PM, or so I’ve been told), so I’m a little nervous about how I’ll be after three continuous days of work, but I’m sure it’ll be OK. Pray for me that I don’t burn anything down!
My first full day on board (Wednesday), I spent getting over jet-lag and slept until 1 PM, ship time (4 hours difference between New Jersey and Togo, so 9 AM Eastern time). It was really peculiar waking up on a ship: I have these curtains that wrap all around my little bed/cubicle, and we have no windows in the cabins so I when I woke up, I couldn’t tell if it was night or day. I took my first “two minute shower” on the ship (hop in shower, water on, get wet, water off, shampoo up, water on, wash off, hop out); reminded me of my time as an exchange student in France when I had to do the turn-on/off shower to conserve water in the house. I walked around for a bit during the afternoon, getting lost , trying to familiarize myself with the different parts of the ship. I also started introducing myself to nearly every person I came into contact with, which got really tiring after awhile because it's always the same questions over and over again: "What's your name?" "Where are you from?" And the one question that is unique to Mercy Ships, "How long are you here for?" I'm a short-termer, as I'm only staying for 3 months, but a lot of people are here for long term (2+ years), and when you ask some people, they answer, “I don’t know”—not because they’re being evasive of your question, but because they genuinely don’t know when they’ll be leaving the ship (ie, they’re here for forever). Honestly, I don’t know if I could ever come to the point where I’d be OK with living on a ship for my entire life, so I have a genuine admiration for the people who are so committed to the mission.
Then at six, I had my official ship tour, and since I was the only arrival from my group that was new to Mercy Ships, I got my own personal tour guide! She was a really nice girl from Hospitality, the department that deals with arrivals/departures and… hospitality, and we just zipped around the ship. It’s incredible the different amenities we have here on the Africa Mercy. I’ll have to post another time with pictures of what the ship looks like, but it’s really incredible when you actually get here because this is basically a self-contained community that has nearly everything that a person could need on a day to day basis, and some stuff that we really don't "need" but makes life comfortable—I mean, we have a Starbucks café, for goodness sakes.
At night, the galley department went off-ship to have dinner—a goodbye party for the person who I’m now replacing in the galley. We all climbed into the back of a truck and drove on those crazy Togolese roads again, and I had my first “real” African meal! Pretty good, actually—I had rice with a choice of meat sauce. This was where having a Korean background came to my advantage—I was perfectly fine eating the food, while nearly everyone else was huffing and puffing at what I thought to be a tiny amount of spice in the dish. It was really nice, as I got to meet a lot of the people I’d be working with in the galley before I even started work.
The people on my team advised me to get a good deal of rest while I still could, so I took their advice and had a really slow, calm day the next day too. I woke up a little earlier on Thursday (gotta get over that jet lag quick), and went exploring some more— I took a poke into the galley, and they have a piano here (scratch that—three!), so I got to played for a little while, which relaxed me a great deal. I had lunch and dinner with my cabin mates, who are all really awesome girls who each have really different life stories. Funny enough, at 22 I’m one of the oldest in my cabin. I’m in the eight-berth cabin on this ship: there’s one ten-berth and one eight-berth cabin on board, and they’re both infamous for housing the younger girls who mainly work in hospitality/housekeeping/other non-hospital crew. The main advantage of being in an eight-berth though is that there’s always someone around, so even when I felt really uneasy about being “the new girl”, my cabin mates have been good about including me in things like meals and after activities, which I know is not an easy thing to do so I appreciate it so much.
So work starts tomorrow! My shift starts at 8 AM and ends… “whenever” (ie. when we’re done cleaning up after dinner, normally around 7:45/8 PM, or so I’ve been told), so I’m a little nervous about how I’ll be after three continuous days of work, but I’m sure it’ll be OK. Pray for me that I don’t burn anything down!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Getting to Togo
After two days and five airplane meals.. I'm finally in Togo! It feels so surreal that I'm finally here-- I look outside the window and there's Africa, in the flesh (so to speak).
My plan was to write about the travel experience while I was actually, you know, travelling, but as it turned out, there was no free wifi that I could take advantage of in any of the terminals that I had to wait in. In Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, there weren't even any plugs (and let me tell you, I looked very thrououghly, to the point where people must've started wondering why this girl kept passing every ten minutes and why she was looking under peoples' chairs). Thus, the update is coming to you from the ship's internet cafe, a full day after travel. I've had a nice meal, and I've showered, which means I'm no longer gross with airplane sheen.
(*BTW, the keyboards here are slightly different than the U.S. keyboards-- I haven't quite figured out which country they're from, but in any case, my usually impeccable grammar will be taking a hit. Which probably isn't that important to you, but... I love nice grammar. It is important.)
I left from JFK on Monday night (April 12th) on British Airways, and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London at 6 in the morning. I had a connecting flight to Paris that was leaving in less than an hour, so I literally had to run through the airport to catch my flight. This was my first time in London, and the entire time I was running I was thinking, "Man, what a shame it is that I'm only twenty minutes away from some of the most important cultural monuments of Western civilization and I only get to see this country through the glass of the airport windows". (To be honest, I was also thinking "Man, I wish I could stop running.")
So I caught my flight to Paris, arrived at CDG airport for a 3 hour layover-- the most boring layover in the history of layovers. Before I left JFK, I thought I would be over the weight limit with my luggage, so I shoved my books into my backpack since they were the heaviest items I was carrying. When I had to check in my bags for Paris, I decided to check in my books in my luggage since I had gotten away with being 10 pounds over from before. Big mistake. I had NOTHING to do for three hours-- like I said before, no plugs for my computer, no paper to write on, no crossword. I would've just bought something from the airport shops, but I bought a cup of coffee for 3,50 euros, and it turned out to be well over 6 dollars on my Visa card. Then I got mad that I just paid six dollars for a teeny tiny cup of coffee, and I (and of course, very logically) decided to boycott the euro for the rest of my trip.
(I just realized that there's a "£" key on this keyboard so I'm going to guess that this keyboard is from the UK).
After the most boring layover in the history of layovers, I boarded my Air France flight to Togo. Pretty uneventful flight-- I slept most of the way because I was so exhausted from not sleeping before. They did give me a wedge of Camembert cheese on my dinner tray, which made me smile. I do love Camembert.
It was amazing to see Africa for the first time through the airplane window. Definitely different than back home; not many buildings near the airport, just patches of grass/dirt and lots of small shrubbery. When we finally got off the plane, we took stairs to get down from the plane door. The hot hot HOT air hit me as soon as I left the plane-- I knew it was going to be hot, but I didn't know this hot. All the humidity in the air makes you feel like you're walking around in a wet blanket in 90 degree weather. In any case, they made all the passengers board a bus, and then they took us to the airport, which was literally 10 seconds away by bus, so I didn't really understand what the point of the bus was-- we could've walked there faster. The airport was really interesting to see, just because it's unlike any other airport that I've been in before. I mean, technically it had everything that a "modern" airport has-- conveyor belts, immigration booths, big signs, grumpy airport people, all that good stuff. But it's much much smaller, and very.. dark. By "dark", I mean quite literally, there didn't seem to be enough electricity to power the lights. And very crowded with people who want to help you with your baggage, which at first I thought was nice, but then I realized that they expect money in return (especially since we're foreign), so I had to keep fake smiling and saying "Non merci," and making funny hand gestures every two seconds to everyone who asked.
It took FOREVER to get through immigration: as I was seated in the back, I was one of the last ones out of the plane, and thus, one of the last ones to get in the immigration line. Passport verification took well over an hour, during which time I sweat more than I have in a very very long time. (Maybe this is over share, but I normally don't sweat that much at home, and as I shower frequently, I have no real need for deodorant. As I stood in line, I remember thinking: Africa is the time to use that deodorant.) After I passed through customs though, everything went pretty quickly-- collected my baggage and walked out to meet my Africa Mercy contact. I met Joel, an optometrist from northern Ireland who would drive us to the ship, and then two others who had been on the plane with me but I hadn't met until then-- an older couple from England who had been with Mercy Ships many times before, and to Africa many many more times than that. They're going off the ship with a small team to conduct screenings/surgeries in northern Togo. Funny enough, the husband is an OMFS, which is what I'd like to be (if I make the grades in dental school, that is). What a great sign that I'm meant to be on the ship, eh?
The drive to the ship was CRAZY. Absolute mayhem. One of the roads was blocked, so we had to take a complete roundabout to get to where the ship was docked, which was actually nice for me because I got to see "downtown" Lomé while in a nice air conditioned truck. And, during the trip, I learned that I never want to drive in Togo. Not for my lack of driving skills, but because people treat street signs and traffic lights as purely optional. People also walk right into the street on busy roads, and since their skin color is dark, you can't see them until you're about 3 feet away and about to hit them. If not driving is the only way I can prevent myself from killing an African, I will gladly not drive. No thank you.
Since this is taking longer than I expected, I'll save the rest for later-- I'll post later about my arrival on ship and my first couple days here. It's only been my first day so far and it's been overwhelming, to say the least, but a lot of fun and everyone is super nice-- I guess I look lost when I walk about the ship, because I've heard at least twenty "Are you lost?"s this morning.
My plan was to write about the travel experience while I was actually, you know, travelling, but as it turned out, there was no free wifi that I could take advantage of in any of the terminals that I had to wait in. In Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, there weren't even any plugs (and let me tell you, I looked very thrououghly, to the point where people must've started wondering why this girl kept passing every ten minutes and why she was looking under peoples' chairs). Thus, the update is coming to you from the ship's internet cafe, a full day after travel. I've had a nice meal, and I've showered, which means I'm no longer gross with airplane sheen.
(*BTW, the keyboards here are slightly different than the U.S. keyboards-- I haven't quite figured out which country they're from, but in any case, my usually impeccable grammar will be taking a hit. Which probably isn't that important to you, but... I love nice grammar. It is important.)
I left from JFK on Monday night (April 12th) on British Airways, and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London at 6 in the morning. I had a connecting flight to Paris that was leaving in less than an hour, so I literally had to run through the airport to catch my flight. This was my first time in London, and the entire time I was running I was thinking, "Man, what a shame it is that I'm only twenty minutes away from some of the most important cultural monuments of Western civilization and I only get to see this country through the glass of the airport windows". (To be honest, I was also thinking "Man, I wish I could stop running.")
So I caught my flight to Paris, arrived at CDG airport for a 3 hour layover-- the most boring layover in the history of layovers. Before I left JFK, I thought I would be over the weight limit with my luggage, so I shoved my books into my backpack since they were the heaviest items I was carrying. When I had to check in my bags for Paris, I decided to check in my books in my luggage since I had gotten away with being 10 pounds over from before. Big mistake. I had NOTHING to do for three hours-- like I said before, no plugs for my computer, no paper to write on, no crossword. I would've just bought something from the airport shops, but I bought a cup of coffee for 3,50 euros, and it turned out to be well over 6 dollars on my Visa card. Then I got mad that I just paid six dollars for a teeny tiny cup of coffee, and I (and of course, very logically) decided to boycott the euro for the rest of my trip.
(I just realized that there's a "£" key on this keyboard so I'm going to guess that this keyboard is from the UK).
After the most boring layover in the history of layovers, I boarded my Air France flight to Togo. Pretty uneventful flight-- I slept most of the way because I was so exhausted from not sleeping before. They did give me a wedge of Camembert cheese on my dinner tray, which made me smile. I do love Camembert.
It was amazing to see Africa for the first time through the airplane window. Definitely different than back home; not many buildings near the airport, just patches of grass/dirt and lots of small shrubbery. When we finally got off the plane, we took stairs to get down from the plane door. The hot hot HOT air hit me as soon as I left the plane-- I knew it was going to be hot, but I didn't know this hot. All the humidity in the air makes you feel like you're walking around in a wet blanket in 90 degree weather. In any case, they made all the passengers board a bus, and then they took us to the airport, which was literally 10 seconds away by bus, so I didn't really understand what the point of the bus was-- we could've walked there faster. The airport was really interesting to see, just because it's unlike any other airport that I've been in before. I mean, technically it had everything that a "modern" airport has-- conveyor belts, immigration booths, big signs, grumpy airport people, all that good stuff. But it's much much smaller, and very.. dark. By "dark", I mean quite literally, there didn't seem to be enough electricity to power the lights. And very crowded with people who want to help you with your baggage, which at first I thought was nice, but then I realized that they expect money in return (especially since we're foreign), so I had to keep fake smiling and saying "Non merci," and making funny hand gestures every two seconds to everyone who asked.
It took FOREVER to get through immigration: as I was seated in the back, I was one of the last ones out of the plane, and thus, one of the last ones to get in the immigration line. Passport verification took well over an hour, during which time I sweat more than I have in a very very long time. (Maybe this is over share, but I normally don't sweat that much at home, and as I shower frequently, I have no real need for deodorant. As I stood in line, I remember thinking: Africa is the time to use that deodorant.) After I passed through customs though, everything went pretty quickly-- collected my baggage and walked out to meet my Africa Mercy contact. I met Joel, an optometrist from northern Ireland who would drive us to the ship, and then two others who had been on the plane with me but I hadn't met until then-- an older couple from England who had been with Mercy Ships many times before, and to Africa many many more times than that. They're going off the ship with a small team to conduct screenings/surgeries in northern Togo. Funny enough, the husband is an OMFS, which is what I'd like to be (if I make the grades in dental school, that is). What a great sign that I'm meant to be on the ship, eh?
The drive to the ship was CRAZY. Absolute mayhem. One of the roads was blocked, so we had to take a complete roundabout to get to where the ship was docked, which was actually nice for me because I got to see "downtown" Lomé while in a nice air conditioned truck. And, during the trip, I learned that I never want to drive in Togo. Not for my lack of driving skills, but because people treat street signs and traffic lights as purely optional. People also walk right into the street on busy roads, and since their skin color is dark, you can't see them until you're about 3 feet away and about to hit them. If not driving is the only way I can prevent myself from killing an African, I will gladly not drive. No thank you.
Since this is taking longer than I expected, I'll save the rest for later-- I'll post later about my arrival on ship and my first couple days here. It's only been my first day so far and it's been overwhelming, to say the least, but a lot of fun and everyone is super nice-- I guess I look lost when I walk about the ship, because I've heard at least twenty "Are you lost?"s this morning.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
You know what's weird?
Looking at the ten day weather forecast and realizing that I won't be here by the time the weather comes around. That's what's weird.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Mefloquine dreams
So I'm taking this antimalarial called Mefloquine; I got my prescription when I went to go get my Yellow Fever shot. I haven't thought about it since then, but yesterday was my one week mark before departure and I'm supposed to start taking it a week before I leave. Filled up my prescription at CVS: bunch of hermetically sealed, tiny white pills, looked harmless enough. Then I googled it (because I google everything), and some crazy stories about Mefloquine started popping up out of nowhere (a whole host of psychological side effects: extremely vivid visions, nightmares, hallucinations, insomnia, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts). Anecdotal stories, of course, as these things on the internet usually are. I normally wouldn't be concerned about seeing some patterns on the wall, but I definitely don't want to wander into the African forest one night in a dream-induced state. Fun stuff.
I took it anyway. So far, nothing. Kind of anticlimactic if you ask me. I asked my mom about it, and in her infinite wisdom she said, "You're not crazy. Only crazy people get crazy dreams. Don't be stupid." So apparently I have to stop being stupid and I'll find out soon if I'm crazy or not.
In other news-- one week before I leave!
Monday, April 5, 2010
Mail!
To send mail:
Christine Lee
Mercy Ships
M/V Africa Mercy- Food Services
PO Box 2020
Lindale, TX 75771-2020 USA
1-954-538-4258
Please note mail will take about 3 weeks to get to me, and if you send a package or anything over 1 ounce, I'll be charged $5.50 per pound. Thus, please do not send me an anvil. Not that you would (because really, who has a spare anvil lying around. I assume all anvils are in use, no?).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
