Archive for December, 2008

It has been a long time since I have posted anything. Sorry for my silence. My silence was not due to lack of blogging material but a time of personal reflection. This year has been so many things to me and I want to soak them all in. I want to be a better  woman because this year. I have learned lessons from the Lord, lessons from crew members, lessons from girls at the orphanage and lessons from my patients. The Lord has drawn me closer to him by teaching me that I am not alone, He is all I need, to cast my cares upon the Lord, and so many more things. I think about the impact that these lessons have had on me and will continue to have and I am so grateful.

There have been many crew members that that have been true friends  to me and then there were those few that challanged me to grow. I am so thankful for the hugs and encouragement during my ugly cries and moments of “what am  doing here?” I am amazed of the Lord’s provision of friends that have just learned these lessons and are  willing to walk with me on my journey. When I came to the ship the last time I was single and friendships were all I had but this time Tyrone and I came as a team and he is the best teammate ever. He helped me keep everything in perspective, he listened to me talk about my patients and  listented to me as I verbally processed this crazy year on a hopital ship in Africa!

I have always loved to laugh, you know that deep belly laugh that makes your eyes water and your shoulders to shake. I have learned from my girls at Mama Victoria’s orphanage that even in grim circumstance you can still laugh till your side hurts. Those nine girls know how to laugh and have fun. They are incredible women of the Lord and I miss them  so much, already.

The faces that occupied the beds were my patients but so much more than that. They were individually unique. Some drove me crazy and others became good friends. They all had a story.  Most of them include living  in a country that went through a 14 year civil war. All include tragedy and now they contain a new hope of being accepted back into their village after being out casted due to their illness. Being at their bedsides made me laugh, cry, shake my head, raise my eyebrows (the Liberian way of saying yes), sing my heart out, and hope for a better future for Liberia.

Thank you  for sharing this year with me.

Evelyne is pictured to the left in this picture.

Oretha (look at picture in previous Liberian Friends post) found and trained this replacement so she (Oretha) could leave to attend a discipleship training school in order to come back to the ship as a permanent staff/crew person instead of a day worker. [more about Oretha in another post]

Evelyne was a good worker, quiet, and was only with us for the last 2 months.  I think she was really starting to get comfortable and enjoy being in the galley (kitchen) when it was time to say goodbye.  Evelyne thought I was a little strange, but she was already warned by the others so she did good.

Ophelia is pictured in the middle.  She is short, feisty, and fun.

When she is cooking in the kitchen she has three favorite sayings:  Delicious!  Fantastic! and Mama G!

All three words/phrases are said loudly with a high pitch sound followed out with each syllable pronounced with a kind of singing cadence…yeah, I know, its hard to translate into text in a post!

‘Mama G’ is supposed to be a sign for something that tastes delicious.  As I understand it Mama G is an older West African woman who cooks extremely good food.  That may not be exactly right, but supposedly she is at least known to be someone in at least one Nigerian movie where she cooks good food.  ANYWAYS, it makes for a fantastic new way of saying something tastes great when Ophelia says, ‘this food is Mama G!’.  And Ophelia wanted to taste everything I/we cooked.

Ophelia is a live wire that also loves to argue ferociously with fellow day worker Foday about ’supposed’ Liberian politics…it makes for an interesting time for the rest of us.  But then I have to break the fun up and get them to quite down and do some work.  To somebody outside this cooking team they would think a big fight was about to break out in the kitchen!  The rest of us just know its fun and games.

I noticed right away that some of the West African women on board would have hair extensions or weave applied to the their head/hair at different time or intervals.  So I started giving Ophelia & Jemima a hard time about how their hair fluctuated from being so short to extremely long and styled.

They thought it was hilarious that I would ask them, ’so how long is your hair on vacation this time?’  Sometimes I would give them a hard time by saying, ‘those poor bald headed horses running all over Liberia’ and then I would roll my eyes at them. [I have no actual proof of this, I had just heard a couple of times before that hair extensions were made out of horses mane sometimes]

I know, I know, that’s probably inappropriate…but they loved having fun, telling stories and jokes, and giving each other a hard time while also working hard.

Even Stephanie would come to the galley/kitchen to visit so she could see what the latest ‘drama’ was and see what the day workers were up to (and to ask them how I was treating them)!

Being here on the ship I can’t say that I miss the big ‘hub-bub’ and commercialism of the ‘Happy Holidays’ in the United States.

Its Merry Christmas!  Remember that, M-e-r-r-y C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s (spell it out, I know you can do it!).

But what I do miss is friends, family, and eating ‘Happy Birthday Jesus Cake!’ with my niece and nephews.

My niece and nephews are full aware that friends and family are the gift givers of Christmas day and unless I am mistaken it was my niece who years ago asked ‘If its Jesus birthday why doesn’t he get a cake like everyone else?’  (that may not be exactly how it happened, but with a 6 hour time difference I AM NOT calling my sister to ask her!)  And so started the ‘Happy Birthday Jesus Cake’ tradition.

To my niece and nephews Santa Claus is just another funny looking man that comes out every Christmas to excite the kids and hang out at the malls for pictures to be taken and gift requests to be received while sitting on his knee.  They can’t be bothered with that…They want to know when Meme and Papa are coming to the house, or when is Oma coming? (German word for Grandma).  When can we open the presents or eat the cake?

Sometimes (maybe now in the past) Katy & Noah would play Mary & Joseph and not just for Christmas!  I can’t remember if they used VJ for baby Jesus or not, but it makes sense (if my sister would let them) to use him for the ‘baby’ since he was!

Maybe I can give VJ a haircut for a Christmas present when I get back to the United States? (inside joke, I cut his hair a little short one time with the electric clippers – when he was still ‘toddler’ size made him look like a bald headed baby again!)~

*I apologize for not posting the follow-up (day worker)  stories to the last post yet, but they are coming…as you can imagine I am busy with special meals and plans here on the ship for Christmas.

In Food Service we had a total of eight day workers, but really only 6 working at a time.  Look at the picture, see their names.  Oretha left before the end of the outreach to go to the Liberian Discipleship Training School with YWAM which would certify her to work full-time as crew on board the ship.  She was replaced by Evelyne.  Korpo was added to the Dining Room staff about the same time because of shortages in our department.

Some of these day workers had worked on board the Anastasis in previous outreaches in Liberia and were rehired when the Africa Mercy took over permanently for this years outreach after the ship-to-ship transfer last year (2007). (I was on that sail, the maiden voyage it was called…I was on loan for about a month, from work and my wife)

On December 5th 2008, we said our final goodbyes.  And for most of them, it was probably the last ’stable’ job that paid decent and kept them employed for almost a year in a country with almost an 18% rate of employment.  Employment, NOT unemployment.  So that means that maybe one of the day workers might get a job in the coming year, and that’s a BIG maybe!

I can not say that I have a big outward display of sad emotions, but I miss them.  I truly do.  I made some good friends working with them day in and day out…and it has been sad to move on without having them in the kitchen each day.  We hugged, took pictures, swapped email addresses, (most of them will have to use an Internet cafe that they can’t afford to check their email) I was presented with an African shirt as respect for me being their ‘boss’ (followed by embarrassingly nice words spoken about working with me) and then proceeded with the long process of seeing them off the dock after they were disembarked from the ship.

The next week was just not the same…and its still not the same now.

The Liberian Fund allowed us to share with each one of them.  I presented each one of the six of them privately with a hundred dollars and the two shorter term workers (Korpo & Evelyne) with fifty dollars and explained to them that you, the financial supporters, made this possible.  Because YOU believe in what we are doing and in return you expressed your love thru a gift that would contribute to helping them out when there job is literally floating away.

In future posts I will use the pictures we took of each one and I will tell you a little bit about them.  Thank you for your continued financial support thru February 2009.  And for those of you who contributed separately to the Leaving Liberia Fund, it made a world of difference to these eight people.

* (posts may come slow and sporadic the Internet comes and goes while sailing — and things are busy on the ship as they start getting ready for project teams and next years outreach while being docked in Tenerife)

On Friday afternoon the Africa Mercy pulled away from her home for the past consecutive 10 months and the better part of the last 4 years. Many of the crew were on deck 7 or deck 8 waving to the 20-30 faithful supporters. I was sleeping, yup I slept through the whole thing. At one point  I woke up to my cabin being searched for stow-a-ways. After 10 days of coughing so hard my whole body aches but I am starting to feel better, Praise the Lord. Now I get to enjoy the sail. It is truly beautiful. The weather is hot during the day and breezy,perfect for the sunsets, and the meteor shower last night was majestic!!!

I love to sail!!!

I noticed after a nice email from my friend Beth back home that the author of the post was not showing up in our updates…so I corrected that!

Stephanie was/is the one that is sick right now (a lot of sleep and antibiotics seem to be the cure…).

Even though the outreach is over, we still have to pack up and prepare to sail.  Then the sail will last another week before we arrive in Tenerife.

Stephanie and I will continue to work on board (because as you can imagine no one ever stops eating!) and we actually don’t return to the ’states’ till the beginning of February. So ‘everything’ is not quite ‘over’ yet.

We saw a significant decline in financial support over the summer.  I know some of our financial supporters are probably going through a tough time – the economy, layoffs, personal, and/or financial problems.

In light of that, our plans are to return home in February, look at locations and job opportunities, then decide what to do next…and then hopefully be able to work full-time (save and raise money) and do mission/volunteer work short-term each year.

The transitions we will be making are:

• The end of outreach is always hard, packing up, saying goodbye…
• After outreach is a time for rest (physically, mentally, spiritually) it takes time to comprehend all that you have experienced in a year in an environment like this.
• Life goes on, and we must keep the ship afloat while we still look to ahead – cleaning, packing, sailing – and those are work things, then its the personal version of cleaning, packing, traveling…
• Saying goodbye again when we actually leave the ship and all the friends we have here on board.
• Going home, visiting friends, family, and supporters (which includes some more travel)
• Adjusting to being gone a year…and the changes back ‘home’ we have missed.
• Getting back into society and going back to work…

Whew!  There’s a lot to completing a mission and also going home to start the next ‘adventure’.  I would not suggest it to people who are prone to have anxiety attacks!

Sincerely,

Tyrone

PS. I have some pictures and updates of the money raised for the Liberia Fund and also my own tales of work and friends made…I know I have been slack of my writing duties lately, I’ll try to catch up on the sail.