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.