Galley Yearbook

Every time I look at the group pictures that I take with the galley folk, it's always interesting-- and kind of sad-- to see how fast the faces in the photos change. Every couple of weeks I can look at a picture and point out 3, 4, 5 people who have recently gone. I guess it's just a symptom of the nature of Mercy Ships, but it doesn't help that we basically only take group photos when someone is leaving.

This photo was taken the day after I arrived (one of my first posts was about a going-away dinner for someone in the galley; this was taken right before that dinner)-- I was to replace Carol, the woman with the green hat in the center. I remember feeling completely intimidated because she was so loved by everyone in the galley; I had some big shoes to fill.

About 2 and a half weeks after I arrived. Mercy Ships had a group of amazing "day workers"-- volunteers from the World Race-- and two of them came to work in the galley for a month; Allison and Lindsay left at the end of April. They were so much fun to work with. A couple of days after, the last Italian on the ship, Davide, also left our team to fly home.

This was taken towards the end of May: this doesn't seem all that long ago, so it's strange to think that over a month has already passed since Stephanie left (green sweater in the front). She was one of those, beyond-words-amazing type person in that she just had this attitude of constant joy. And what was weird was that you could tell that she was completely sincere-- you know what I mean, some people you can tell are just putting up a façade of bubbliness, but not her. I still remember, the on the day that I arrived, I was all disheveled and gross from sitting on a plane for too long, disoriented because I was jet-lagged and because (duh) I walkin' around on a boat. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, when someone introduced me to Stephanie as the "new girl on your team". Her entire face lit up with a smile and she gave me the biggest hug (seriously, who gives perfect strangers hugs these days?). After talking for awhile, she grinned again and said, "I'm really glad that you're here." I've missed her since she left; raspberry vinaigrette has never been the same.

Lorinda, our team leader (next to me), and Kristin, one of the girls from the other team (center, in the African shirt), also left around the same time that Stephanie left. A lot of goodbyes that week.

And this photo was taken just a couple of days ago (end of June). Mary Lou, our wonderful dining room manager is leaving at the beginning of July, so we took a group photo as a souvenir.

A lot of times I get so caught up in the present that I forget that things have a before and after-- that they existed before I came along, and will continue to exist long after I leave. That's how I'm feeling right now about the galley, especially after I've seen all the photos lined up like this. New people will come and take my place once I leave. They'll work in the same place I worked, chop vegetables on the same counter that I chopped vegetables on, squeegee the same floor that I squeegeed, be bugged by the same things that I was bugged by, take photos in the same corridor that I took pictures in. I've been feeling this way about this entire ship as a whole, but especially about the galley since we spend a good chunk of our time there. I don't know... I'm having one of those weird, ontological moments right now.

Or at least, I think I'm having an ontological moment. I forget if I'm using that term correctly. It's times like these I wish I had paid more attention to what I was supposed to be learning in college, instead of just thinking of what kind of bagel to get after class. I'm feeling weird right now. That's right, my ridiculously overpriced college education has given me ability to think of the word... weird. Impressive, no?

Update time.

I haven't posted in awhile, so I feel like it's time for an update... but really, there's nothing much interesting to update on. Lomé's been going through some unrest the last couple of days; protests and riots have unexpectedly broken out across the city as a result of rising gas prices. For our safety, shore leave had been cancelled and we've all been stuck on the ship for the last couple of days. It was fine when I was working and was stuck on the ship anyhow, but I've been off work for the last two days and physically cannot leave the ship; if I need air, the only places I can leave the interior of the ship for are the dock, deck 7, and deck 8. I'm thinking, perhaps this is what a dog feels like, staring at the outside world from inside the window. So close, and yet so far away. It's been three days so far, and at this point I feel quite like a chicken in a chicken coup-- albeit, a giant, floating chicken coup. Or one of those tiny metal balls caught inside a pinball machine, only able to bounce around to its limited locations. In this case, it would go something like this: midships (ping!) - cabin (ping!) - dining room (ping!) - midships (ping!) - internet cafe (ping!) - cabin (ping!) - Starbucks (ping!) - deck 8 (ping!) - library (ping!) - dining room (ping!) - midships (ping!) - cabin (ping... ping ping ping!). Anyone else annoyed yet?

In other news... I have conjunctivitis! (Didn't expect that now, did you?). More commonly known as pink eye, or in my vocabulary, "Gaaaaaah." My eyeballs doesn't hurt or itch or anything, but I've had to wear my glasses the last couple of days, which leaves me slightly disoriented and makes me look like a complete dork. The glasses/perpetual dorkiness I can deal with, but my eyes are pretty red which is annoying as A) I look like I've been crying, B) everyone keeps asking if I've been crying, and C) I now bear a slight resemblance to Voldemort. Of all the people I'd want to look like, Voldemort is definitely one of the last people I'd choose-- he's right up there with Shrek, girl version of Shrek, and Pee Wee Herman.

And now, I present to you, a very pretty picture. I took this photo a couple of days ago, on a trip to Lake Togo, located about 45 minutes from Lomé. This really has no relation to any of the stuff I've just written, but I feel like maybe a pretty picture will offset my Voldemort comment? Fingers crossed.


I know this is for our own safety, and I trust that it'll work out in the end, but I really hope shore leave will be restored soon... if only to preserve my sanity and/or prevent more blog posts like these.

If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it.

I had one of the best galley days today that I've had since I've arrived. We just got everything done, and a bunch of things done for tomorrow; we even got things done for the day after tomorrow, which practically never happens. We were so ahead that we actually had to stop prepping things, otherwise they'd just rot and go to waste. We're usually scrambling around like mad men, but I feel like our galley team has really been hitting our stride recently: for example, we actually had the time to make cookies today. Cookies. If you cross the cookie line, you definitely know for a fact that you're ahead, because you have to make around 600 cookies for the entire crew... and 600 cookies take a long time. I think I've worked in the galley for too long when I can say that there's nothing more satisfying than looking in our refrigerators and seeing seven pans of lettuce sitting there. I know that makes no sense to anyone, but trust me... feels great.

As hard (and sometimes disgusting) as the work is in the galley, I was just really hit by the fact today that there are so many things I'm going to miss about working here. I'm really really going to miss singing and dancing with complete abandon to Beyoncé with my day workers in the galley. They love Beyoncé, and I love them for that. It's just too funny to watch 'em shake it and sing along to "Single Ladies" in their Liberian/Ghanaian/Togolese/Beninese accents. It's even funnier when we dance while we're washing dishes, because we wear these huge clear trash bags over our clothes to keep us from getting wet, and those heavy duty yellow dish washing gloves. Needless to say, we look absolutely ridiculous. And I love it.

... But I will not miss the sardines. No, will definitely not miss that.

2 1/2 weeks.

Tonight, after the Mercy Ships church service, we gathered up a bunch of people to play Apples to Apples. We started playing, and after a couple of rounds, one of my friends (who I'd met at the very beginning of my stay here) leans over to me and goes, "... I don't know anyone in this circle right now".

It was the weirdest realization to have at that moment; I still remember a couple of weeks ago, we were in almost the exact same location, almost the exact same table/chair configuration, but this time, all the faces were different. Last time we played with "our" group of friends, but by now they've all left, and new faces fill their spots around the game circle, in the cabins, in the halls. I understand that because people are here on a volunteer basis, this is the way that Mercy Ships life is-- this constant rotation of faces-- but I don't have to like it. I miss the friends who have already left, and though I feel bad about it-- especially with the recent influx of smiling college kids on their summer breaks who have invaded the ship-- I really have no energy to make new friends at this point (horrible attitude to have, but that's how I feel right now. May God change that). And I'm only here for three months; I cannot even begin to fathom how difficult this particular aspect of Mercy Ships must be for the long-termers who are here for 2+ years.

Akloa Falls

The next morning, we got up bright and early, ate ourselves some breakfast, got our finances in order (paid about 8,000 CFA each- about $16 USD- for the night, breakfast, 4 water bottles, and a couple of cokes. Not too shabby, eh?), and headed out to town in search of some motos to take us to the waterfalls.


We wandered into the town proper and there were a bunch of zemi drivers just milling around, so we found five and climbed on back. For 500 CFA (a dollar), we had the most amazing zemi ride through an actual African forest- seriously, it was some of the most stunningly beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. I've seen beautiful nature before, but this was something else. The entire time I was just thinking, how great is a God who can create such majesty? It was incredible. Completely and utterly breathtaking. Knowing that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I took out my camera and took a bunch of pictures (safe, I know. I'm pretty sure that my zemi driver didn't realize I was taking pictures.. he was probably so confused as to why I kept waving this black box in the air. Stop that, you silly yellow person).


After about half an hour, we made it to the "entrance" of Akloa Falls.

The entrance to the falls is basically a small village that's located closest to the falls-- perhaps, sensing the tourist contraption the waterfalls could possibly be, the village called dibs first? We paid fee to the local villagers, who then gave us two guides to take us on the hike up to where the waterfalls are located. The hike itself wasn't too long- perhaps less than 45 minutes one way- but we were hiking through some serious African jungle. The paths were so narrow that eventually, they didn't even seem like paths anymore. We waded through streams and our feet squish-squashed in our hiking shoes-- and then I was really embarrassed, as we kept slipping around with our "proper" hiking shoes when these African guides were hopping from rock-to-rock with just their flip flops on. We hiked past cacao and coffee bean plantations; we saw a smattering of corn planted here and there; bananas; one of our guides randomly found an avocado. From where, I don't know, but he seemed really happy to have found it. He tucked it away on a secret tree branch and picked up his avocado again on the way down. For some reason I found that really funny. Secret avocado? Who doesn't find that funny?


We were sweating like crazy; you can't really tell in the photos, but most of the hike was extremely vertical. So there we are, huffing and puffing away (and me thinking that I seriously need to get in better shape because I sound like I'm wheezing up a hairball), when we can start smelling the waterfall. Yes, I'm not being insane here; you can totally smell a waterfall. Soon we can hear the water rushing down from somewhere... and then all of a sudden, we come across a clearing and are all simultaneously hit with this huge blast of cool mist. We were so ecstatic when we first saw the waterfall-- it seriously instills in you an incredible sense of awe-- and we all just stood there for a second to catch where we were at that moment. Waterfall... in Africa. AFRICA. Words cannot even begin to describe.

And then, of course, we jumped in, and had the time of our lives.


Totally worth everything it took to get there.

The ride back was almost as crazy as the ride up. We took the same road back down from the mountain... and lo and behold, the truck that had fallen off the side of the mountain was still there! We had to sit and wait for 2 hours by the side of the road until they succeeded in pulling that sucker up. (And thank the Lord at 2 hours, because God knows how long it could've taken; apparently that thing had been there for the last 2 weeks.) While we were waiting, we saw some taxis drive up, and Andrea says dryly: "I thought taxis couldn't get up this mountain."

But now... I'm tired of typing. My brain is fried. Like an egg. Egg. And uploading pictures is a LOT of work; I'm working with African internet here, give me a break! So sadly, you'll never know how the ride down went. Here's a tiny violin for you. You can play it for yourself. I'm going to go splash off in an African waterfall in the meantime.

En route to Badou. Badou, Badou, Badou.

What a fun word to say.

You know you've been working in the galley too long when you can estimate the number of people on the ship at a given time by the number of food pans that come back from the dining room after a meal.

You know you've been left behind on the ship during a ship holiday weekend when you have eighteen thousand food pans coming back, and am really tempted just serve yesterday's leftovers and not to cook anything the next day.

This past weekend was a scheduled ship holiday—nearly everyone got their Fridays off to make this particular weekend a three day weekend, so most of the crew took advantage and headed out. Sure, there were still people moseying about—people on duty, people who were sick, people who were too broke/tired/lazy to get off the ship, etc. etc.—but the ship just felt very strange and eerily quiet over the weekend, as if it had just been suddenly emptied out. My team had to work this weekend, which for us meant a 1 PM start time on Friday instead of the usual 8 AM (yay), but which also meant that we were left behind on the ghost of Africa Mercy while everyone else was off having their fun ship holiday adventures (sad).

So on Sunday night after our shift finished, Rachel and I are just hanging out (and by “hanging out,” I mean just sitting around looking pathetic because we’re so dead tired) when we looked at each other and just simultaneously had one of those “We need to get off this ship” moments. Before I came, I bought a West African travel guide book, and I’ve been reading the guide off and on for the last couple of weeks. So far the book has been pretty much useless to me, since Africa is a huge continent and little is written about the tiny sliver of land that is Togo, but the book had a teeny tiny paragraph about these waterfalls located near Badou—the Akloa Waterfalls, the tallest waterfalls in Togo. Hm, only 4 hours away from Lomé, you say? We had just come off the weekend shift and we had the next two days off; why not take a random, spontaneous journey to see some waterfalls?

We gathered up our entire galley team, and Rachel, Sara, Andrea and I— and we invited Johan along, since he’d also worked the weekend— left the ship on Monday afternoon around 1:30 PM.
One of the Mercy Ship drivers was kind enough to take us all the way to the bus station where we could find taxi drivers willing to take us all the way to Badou. There's one main "highway" that runs north from Lomé, but the roads that branch off of it are pretty terrible, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a taxi driver willing to make the trip. Surprisingly, we found a driver and agreed to pay 3,500 CFA each, or about $7 USD, for the (supposedly) four hour taxi ride. Not bad, eh? The five of us squish into a taxi, and we were off to Badou… or so we thought. The taxi ride up though was absolutely stunning...

I was already sitting in the trunk, but the taxi driver decided that we absolutely had to get one more person in the car. You know, since we're already on the way, why not cram more people in? So Johan got a not-so-little visitor in the front seat:

Three hours later we land in Atakpamé, the fifth largest city in Togo. The taxi driver stops in the middle of the city center, gets off, and goes to talk to the people standing around the buses parked right behind us. Ewe, ewe, ewe— he soon comes back to the taxi, and announces that we’re to switch into a bus now because his taxi “cannot get up the mountain”! See the bus in the picture for yourself; there’s no way that his relatively new-ish taxi couldn’t get up the mountain if this rickety, ten million year old bus could.I mean, look at the thing! This is a picture of what the steering wheel looked like; doesn't that make you just feel safe? We argued for several minutes about the fact that this is not what we agreed on, but eventually- and very begrudgingly- we all squished into the bus, which already had 12 people squashed into it. At first we were really unhappy, but then it suddenly became hilarious because of the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation— going along the bumpiest, most pothole-filled, winding-est mountain road in the oldest van known to man. Sara and I weren’t even sitting on real seats, just boxes covered in a blanket, and even the driver was squashed up against his window because there were four people sitting in his row instead of the normal two. The driver also kept stopping in random places to talk to his friends that he saw along the way- once he stopped for a full half hour, and when we asked why we were stopped, one of the people in the van said nonchalantly, as if this was completely normal behavior, "Oh, he's just selling his corn". There was a grandpa sitting back-to-back with me, and apparently he thought I was the seat-back because he kept leaning more and more backwards until I was basically in a completely crouched position. And the funniest thing—the grandpa (we think he had some kind of Alzheimer’s) was talking absolute gibberish the entire time, so Johan starting talking Dutch back to him, nodding and making random hand gestures as if he understood everything. The entire van was watching the interaction and laughing, and we were wondering what was so funny, until we finally figured it out—the crazy grandpa was trying to “buy” Sara as his wife! At which point, Johan “claimed” Sara by pointing at her and then back at himself (“Thanks for claiming me, Johan” became a favorite phrase of ours for the weekend)… but not before offering to barter her for 2,000 camels!

Oh, and later we found that there was a baby somewhere hidden in the car and we didn’t know it until we reached our destination 9 hours later.

Yes, you read correctly. NINE HOURS. Three hours in a taxi, five hours in a squashy bus. Oh, for the love.

(I just had to include this picture because... look how unhappy Andrea looks- I can't stop laughing at her expression.)

We eventually made it to Badou, but not without seeing some... interesting things along the way. For instance, we saw a massive truck that had completely driven off the side of the mountain; it was seriously a miracle that the driver hadn't died in the crash because the entire front was smashed in. Local Africans were trying to use a bulldozer to lift the truck out, and in the process, ruining the asphalt roads ("So this is why all the African roads are terrible...").

When we finally got to the hotel, we just about crashed because we were exhausted, and knew we had an early morning and a long hike ahead of us.

Johan, of course, was a gentleman and a scholar and "offered" us his mattress (ie. we stole it from him while he was in the bathroom). Sorry Johan. Lesson: don't go to the bathroom next time.

When you give a kid your camera..

...you end up with pictures like this,
and like this,and like this,
Kids here get really excited about pictures: having their picture taken, having their picture taken with you, taking pictures, taking pictures of really random things and then laughing really hard at what pops onto the camera screen. Adults are very similar too, actually (aside from the "taking pictures of random things" bit)-- many have never gotten their photo taken before, or seen what they look like in picture-form.

So when a bunch of friendly, overly happy yovos (and one yellow person) are riding with you in an ambulance, I guess it makes sense to take advantage of the time you have to play with a camera. By "ambulance", I mean a Mercy Ships jeep designated as a shuttle between the ship and the Hospitality Center about two miles away. Technically, I think the ambulance is only supposed to be for patients, but we've never had a problem hitching a ride to the Hospitality Center whenever the jeep is waiting at the end of the gangway. The Hospitality Center is a Mercy Ships run compound about 2 miles away from the ship. Many of our patients come from incredible distances to seek medical care on the ship-- some travel five, ten, twenty hours, some travel across country lines. The Hospitality Center houses both pre-op and post-op patients (and their caretakers) who don't need immediate medical attention on the ship but who still need to come back for follow up visits.

I love spending time at the hospitality center-- it's just a really cool place, to see the amazing results of the work being done in the hospital ship that we live in, to be able to sit down and hear the stories of some of the patients. The kids are so incredibly happy too, despite the pain that they've been through. On a more personal note, every visit to the Hospitality Center has just been such a blessing to me; I know I've said this before, but when you're in a non-hospital department, it's very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of ship life and lose focus of the bigger picture, of why we're all here. The Hospitality Center gives you a big helping dose of reminder, and then some.

Plus, it works as a pretty good pick-me-up; you can't help but have a fantastic time when little kids in casts-- little kids who will soon be healed-- are putting stickers all over your face.

Um, so the World Cup begins tomorrow...

... and I'm in AFRICA! How ridiculously awesome is that?! The ship is getting geared up to watch, and there's an area in the dining room that's specifically designated for World Cup viewing where a couple of us watched the kick-off ceremony tonight. Shakira was up on stage, doing her thing, and when she yelled "This is Africa!!", all of us in the dining room went "AFRICA!!" The only possible thing that could make this better is if Togo had qualified for the World Cup. Still, it's definitely going to be a month to remember, watching football with not only all the Africans on board, but with all the other people from other countries-- you name the team, we probably have at least one representative of that country on the ship. Except North Korea; no North Koreans on Mercy Ships. On a side note, I always find it kind of funny when asked which Korea I'm from. Just to clarify, I'm from South. Why? Because if I were from North Korea, well, I'd still be in North Korea. Or I'd be dead.

Well now, hasn't this blog entry suddenly took a rather depressing turn? As Forest Gump would say...


EDIT>> June 24th
Soccer-- excuse me, football-- has become so universal that even in the middle of nowheresville, Africa, you can somehow watch the game.

Rainy days and flying dumpsters

Rainy season is here and it’s definitely here to stay— I woke up this morning to torrential rain. Like I’ve already said, there’s really not all that much you can do when it’s raining like this in Africa, so although my galley team had the day off today, I found myself stranded on the ship. Luckily, Annie Lou— who works on the same shift as me in the dining hall— had the day off as well, so we scampered off to deck 7 to sit underneath the canopy where the rain couldn't hit us. We watched the rain, and ate some lunch, played guitar, wrote a song. I have to say, what seemed like would be a dreary afternoon turned out to be one of the most relaxing days I’ve had so far on this ship.

Sitting outside on the deck is really nice, and sometimes you get to see some funny stuff. For instance, I witnessed a completely random, no-holds-barred water fight between Jens and Joy. Jens was sitting out on the deck with us, when Joy walked by and flicked some water at him. He then took his dining room cup of full of lemonade, threw the lemonade over the side of the deck, scooped up some rain water off the floor of the deck, and threw the water at her— which, of course, she couldn’t let him get away with. What resulted was a water fight of epic proportions:

Even though it looks like Joy got owned in the pictures, I declared her the default winner of the water fight, because Jens eventually ran away.

AND, to make my day even better, I got to finally see the flying dumpster! The galley has two dumpsters that it uses, and every day, the deck department opens up the roof above the dumpsters (the roof opens up to deck 8), hooks up the dumpsters to the crane, and then lifts them straight up into the sky. I’ve always wondered where they took the dumpsters to empty them, and today I got to see where it goes. We were eating lunch when Annie Lou said nonchalantly, “Oh look, flying dumpster,”— I look behind me, and lo and behold, a flying dumpster! I don’t know why exactly that made me so excited, but it totally did.

Rita's Church

Funny story.

This past weekend, Rita, one of our day workers, invited me and some of the galley staff to come and see her church. She’s been very adamant about us visiting— when she first invited me, she made this stern face and waggled her finger and said, “You don’t go away, you don’t switch shifts with anyone else this weekend, you come to church with Rita, OK?”.

So on Sunday morning, I find myself sitting through the LONGEST church service OF MY LIFE. I mean, I've been to 4-hour African church services before, and technically, time-wise, this wasn't any longer (by which I also mean it wasn't any shorter), but for some reason this service just felt very very very (did I mention, very?) long. At the end of the very long service, the pastor finally gets up to acknowledge the presence of us Mercy Shippers. He makes a very grand, very LONG speech about how thankful they are to have us in Lomé, about the difference we are making, about how we're all different but we're all brothers and sisters in Christ since we're working towards the same goal.

He looks towards the congregation and says, "You see black people," looks towards the Mercy Shippers and says, "You see white people,"

And then he looks directly at me and says, "You see yellow people..."

...

It was literally one of those complete, smack your forehead, what just happened, LOL moments. I hate that I'm starting to actually think in initialisms, but seriously, I can't describe it any other way. I just sat there going... Wait, did he just say that?? For the record, ONE. You see ONE yellow person. As we walked out of the church, Jeff turns to me, laughing, and says, "Well, at least they acknowledged you."

Oh Africa. How I'm going to miss your completely un-PC ways.

This is NOT a drill: fire in the galley?

I don’t think I’m supposed to post on the internet the exact time and date of Mercy Ships fire drills, but I will say that our theoretically “spontaneous” fire drills always happen on a routine schedule. To be honest, fire drills are pretty boring affairs for everyone except the emergency teams. The alarm goes off, the captain comes on the overhead with the familiar “This is a drill, this is a drill…”, and the emergency teams reenact prepared emergency scenarios. But for us normal people, we just have to go outside—under the hot African sun—and stand at our “muster stations” for anywhere between half an hour to an hour, until the captain announces that the drill is finished. Basically everyone knows when to expect them, so those who are on the ship usually come prepared with a book or a towel to sit on; if you’re lucky enough not to be working that day, you get off ship (and go to the pool at Sarakawa, like the other team does) to avoid the tedious fire drill.

So this morning, I’m doing my thing, a-working away in the galley, and a piercing alarm goes off—an alarm that sounds surprisingly like the crew alert alarm that begins our fire drills. I didn’t think much of it, until I realized that this wasn’t on the day or hour that I’m supposed to expect it. Two minutes later, the captain comes on the PA, and announces, “This is NOT a drill… There is a fire in the galley.”

Whaaat?? …I’m IN the galley!

I look over on the hot side, and they’re all looking back at me in surprise, and their looks all say, “Where’s this fire?”. And even more strangely, when I look down, there’s not fire , but water flooding our floors. Turns out, there was some sort of electrical problem and a switch went off to activate the sprinkler system in our walk-in dairy fridge, which then activated the fire alarm. Who would’ve known that such a tiny sprinkler could produce a massive stream of water? By the time I got over to the dairy fridge, there was water just completely pouring out of the sprinkler, and the emergency team and some of our galley staff were holding up trash bins up to the sprinkler, trying desperately to keep the heavy stream of water from completely flooding our floors— and in the meantime, getting completely soaked themselves. I mean, they were just getting absolutely soaking wet, which I guess is what naturally happens when you stand directly below a sprinkler (who would’ve known). I ran to grab my camera to see if I could get a photo of all the commotion, but once I had it, I felt really awkward trying to stick my camera out in front of the emergency team amidst all the commotion. Plus, I felt like I'd just be reaffirming my Asian stereotype. So I took one photo, which doesn't do justice at all to the crazy scene that was the "fire"-- you can't see anything and all the water steamed up my lens-- but here it is anyway.

Luckily, Jens, one of the ship’s carpenters, was in the process of making some proper shelving for the dairy fridge, so most of the stuff inside of it had already been moved to our vegetable fridge. Unluckily (so very, very unluckily), the sprinkler in the vegetable fridge was also set off while they were trying to test the alarm/sprinkler/electrical wiring in the aftermath of the dairy-fridge-fiasco (Fieroasco). The amount of water wasn’t nearly as bad in this fridge as the amount we had in the dairy fridge, but it was still enough to require the complete washing down of all the food in the fridge (and the water ruined all the cardboard boxes storing said food). So that’s what my team did this afternoon: we heaved everything (EVERYTHING) out of that fridge, rinsed down with bleach, wiped down every shelf in that giant fridge, and then put everything back in place. Doesn’t sound too difficult when I sum it up in a sentence like that, but it really, and truly, sucked. BAH. An exciting morning that met a fateful, completely not-exciting end.

Of course, after we did all that, the electricians were still testing the wiring. I stood hovering around, watching them really nervously, with what I'm sure was a completely pathetic look on my face. So Jesse (the head chef) went up to the electrician who was about to check the sprinkler pressure and asked him if there was any chance the sprinkler in the vegetable fridge would go off during the night. The electrician thinks for a second, shrugs his shoulders, and goes, “Maybe,”-- to which Jesse replies, “You have to make sure that it doesn’t. If it does, she,” and he turns and points to me for emphasis, “will kill you.”

So, a little about why this blog went missing…

If anyone has been reading this blog (which I sincerely doubt, but who knows), you’ll know that I privatized my blog for about a month. Mercy Ships has a page that lists all the blogs of people who serve on the ship. One day, I looked on the Mercy Ships site and saw that my blog had mysteriously been added to the list-- without my permission.

To be honest, I was annoyed, and I still kind of am. It was fine when I wasn’t on board, but now that I personally know most of the crew and see them around every day, it’s weird to think that they too can read what I post (you know who you are... obviously if you're reading this >:/). I was more freaked out if anything than annoyed at first, but then when I went to the website to see if I could get my blog taken off the list, I came across this disclaimer:

"This site relies on the ability to access public RSS and Atom feeds to keep it updated. These links are all publicly accessible on the Internet and no laws have been broken in accumulating or displaying these links. If you wish for your website/blog not to appear on this listing or be accessible to the public it is your responsibility to make your website/blog private.

(www. = WORLD WIDE WEB)"

Um, can anyone say, rude? Yes, I know, they may be technically correct, but it still would've been nice if they (whoever "they" are) dropped me a line.

I’m not a very public, internet-y person. I very much dislike MySpace, and Facebook news feeds, and the utter stupidity that is Twitter. I started this blog so that I wouldn’t have to write 12 emails whenever I wanted to update my friends or family or church kids on my whereabouts— I did not start this blog so that I could reveal to all the people on the ship (and to all the people who are coming to the ship) that I sweat a lot and that my inner monologue is just a wee bit crazy (or that my inner monologue uses words like "wee" in the first place). And to be completely honest, I also felt pretty petty in comparison to the other Mercy Ships blogs. I still do. I do nothing medically related on the ship, so while the medical personnel write about patients and surgeries and miracles, and sometimes the heartbreak of dealing with death, I'd write about... well, Obama underpants.

Apparently, as was so unceremoniously pointed out to me, it was "my responsibility" to privatize my website, so that's what I did. But this weekend, I decided to get over it. I give. Whatever. Que Sera, Sera. Read if you wish. I will say though that I'm still a bit wary on the decision; there's a chance the blog may become privatized again, so if for some reason you'd like to follow my ramblings, let me know and I'll put you on the list so that you can still read the blogitz even if I have another "Oh crap, what have I done" moment.

Obama underpants? Obama underpants.

The Africans seem to be a tad bit obsessed about our current president, and his face gets imprinted on the strangest things. So far, I've seen Obama t-shirts, Obama socks, and Obama shoes. I've seen Obama's face plastered on the side of trucks, Obama murals painted on walls, and he even has his own beach here, appropriately renamed, "Obama Beach". When we went to Ghana, we visited a bookstore, where I saw an entire shelf of Barack Obama comic books, depicting the teenage life of Obama... in cartoon form. But today, I went to the market and saw... Obama underpants. Pretty classy, if you ask me.