On the left hand side of me is Jemima.  And yes, I did make fun of her by calling her Aunt Jemima which is a popular syrup and buttermilk pancake product in the United States(which as I remember, was also delicious).  Nope, I am not going to apologize…I explained it to her and she thought it was funny and EVEN she had heard of it.  BUT you want to know something more interesting than funny about her name?  Her mother named her after a woman in the Bible.  Yes.  Its true.  Remember Job?

Job 42:14 (King James Version)

14And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch.

Now if you are truthful you will admit it never occurred to you or remember it, or you would have questioned whether it was the true by running to find it in your Bible.  But there it is…plain as day.

Jemima was another one of those people who always looked serious but would ‘break out’ in a big grin when you talked to her (or threw water on her, after the scream of course).  Jemima worked in the dining room but would come up to the galley to get food to eat or help us with something we were doing (because we were always short a hand or two, but you probably realize this by now from my posts).  We would enjoy sitting around and talking while we ate in the galley (instead of in the dining room) because that’s where they wanted to be, plus its where the ward food was made which was/is true Liberian food.

Jemima is a hard worker…nobody in dining room or galley would ever question that, but she is a great friend as well.

Korpo came to the dining room to help out because the work load was too much for the current volunteers we had on staff.  I may be wrong but I believe she was already working on board but was ’shifted’ over to the dining room from another department.  She too would come up to the galley like Jemima did, but I think it took her a little while to get used to me.  Because just like Jemima, she thought I was a little strange and crazy.  And to her/their credit, I am.

I did not know her as well as the others but I enjoyed her friendship as well.  She was surprisingly a little more aggressive in talking to me and giving me a ‘hard time’ in return when I aggravated her on purpose.

I hope they all are doing well, I wish I knew.

Kind of quiet, HARD WORKER, and loved to wear all the odd head and apron gear he could find in our galley cabinet!

John (sorry Foday) was the real dish machine!  He would just let them pile up till they were worth doing (a few at a time while they trickle in is wasting time) and in the mean time he would help the ward cook, the cooking team, and/or the salad team prep their food for the meals.

You know that one person at school, church, or work who is always the one you add to every team that works great with others?  John was/is that all around good worker.  No complaints.  I tormented John a little bit, but torment is probably a strong word.  He had this bad habit of leaving a lot of water in big metal bowls after he washed them, and since we stack our bowls on a rack right side up, the water would stay in them instead of draining out. (which by the way is the WRONG way in the food service world, but you have to go with what works in situations like these…)

I used to ask the dishwashers repeatedly ever week to drain this water out, but they could never remember…so I started tossing the water on them if they were close to me when I retrieved a bowl to use and it had water in it!  That surprised John a little bit and he started to remember to drain or dry them better. 

Don’t try to start in on me for being mean, its WATER!  And they loved it, it was fun…and it created more jokes and laughter.  Later I would just surprise anybody close to me by throwing the water on them, and then say, ‘Don’t forget to remind your friend John to empty the remaining water from the bowls before stacking them up…’ then they would start aggravating John about the water left on the dishes…worked quite well.

The rumor is that John may show up in Benin to work in the kitchen/galley for the next outreach.  That will be good for Peter if both John and Oretha can make it back!

Foday needs an exclamation mark at the end of his name.  Believe it or not, (and it was hard for us to believe) Foday is about 50 years old with 9 kids!  The last baby he had was born in 2008 and he named it Peter (after my boss, the Chief Steward) because Foday said he wanted his child to grow up big and healthy like Peter! (I think it was meant as a compliment, but Peter looked a little skeptical)

Foday is one of two dishwasher, they (Foday and John) rotate on their assigned cooking team…so they don’t work together.

We have talked about Ophelia in a previous post where I described her and Foday having those heated arguments in the kitchen.  Foday can/will drive you crazy and have you laughing hard at the same time…and sometimes separately.  BUT…

Somewhere along the line Foday has blurred the reality between dreams, his imagination, and being conscious - but of course living through a civil war, in poverty, and having 9 kids to feed may do that to you…and I mean that seriously as well as humorously.  Foday tells us great stories of killing 50 foot eagles and knowing the ‘Bong Mine’ Troll (search bong mine for other posts on Bong Mine).  And he is adamant about them being true and correct, which of course makes for some interesting conversation and questions from new crew/staff/volunteers to the galley.  Of which we, the people who are long term, get some very great entertainment out of it!  And of course Ophelia does her best to get him ‘riled up’.

The downside to this is that Foday has a hard time concentrating on getting work done, or paying attention to instructions.  When this happens I aggravate him by comparing him to John, the other dishwasher.  This usually does the trick, but then starts him on a new tirade of undecipherable English.

I could share more, but it probably wouldn’t be appropriate in a public post…got to leave him some dignity, right?

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)!

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)

The week before Easter I (tyrone) went out to work at a local orphanage on my time off. I signed up for maintenance/concrete work. Well let me tell ya, the ride there and back almost did me in NOT the work!

Carl, who is a Dutchie, along with his wife are here helping build new places on some ground the orphanage acquired. The orphanage (that the Children live in now) is just a small walk from the ship port BUT the place where the new one is being built is what we call, ‘in the bush’.

Carl has this half motorcycle half mini-covered wagon thing that we (Tony an English man about 6′4 or 6′6 and three of the boys from the orphan) all piled into the back of. For the boys it was plenty of room and of course Carl was up front ‘riding’ the motorcycle part. But for Tony and I it was like riding as a hunchback on a hard metal bar while traveling thru a dried river bed for 45 minutes.

We mixed concrete and lay bricks till it really became too hot out to continue (I probably drunk at least 2 liters of water easily and sweated it back out!) and then we prepared for the ride back. Apparently there was a tow truck trying to pull one of those massive Mercedes workhorse trucks/vehicle out of a diagonal position after it slipped off the edge of the road, so we had to turn around and go another way after 20 minutes of back breaking bone jarring fun ride (ahem) in Carl’s Ladybug as he called it, thus stretching out our ride for a total of about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Yes, we stopped at the orphanage on the way back…but it was really like the old ‘bait and switch’ tactics of advertisement. Here we thought we would ride a mere 2 or 3 minute ride down the street, do some work while being inundated with children playing all around…yeah, not quite. Ha!

But it was good time, and we got to help work on the new place. I have some pictures from the orphanage with some of the other women that went from the ship specifically just for playing with the kids. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the actual site or motorcycle contraption we rode in because I felt it would not be very good on the camera if I brought it to do dirty work(and I made a great decision by not taking it too). It looked almost Identical to this, with us riding in the back!

I met 3 of the boys that worked with us - Aaron (who was the oldest at 15 although physical stature only looked 12) Peter, and Mo Mo Joe. (they looked to be about 8 and 10, but who knows?)

The following pictures are linked to bigger pictures. It is a new feature just added to the Wordpress blog software I use to run my website.

[Slideshow]