For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Romans 14:17

I got an app that lets me make gifs so now my posts will have at minimum 1000% more animated gifs for when videos are too much but still photos aren’t quite enough. This week, we had some cool boat-related activity going on, we got some new lab toys, Mercy Ships founder Don Stephens came to visit, and I went to a fancy hotel with a Chinese restaurant inside for some Chinese food. We officially said bye to Betsy (for real this time), Sarah from the lab is leaving tonight, and Monce leaves tomorrow. I have pictures from the HOPE center visit a couple weeks ago, also!

Follow up from last week

I got a photo with Mel before she left, despite her original response. She’s the one in the white in the front standing next to me :) This is from our goodbyes to Mel and Miriam.

The little boat(s) that could

While we were taking tea break in the afternoon on Monday, we saw this man giving quite the effort to paddle his canoe through the port. Let me tell you, it’s a huge port, so this man is going to take a reaaaaally long time just to exit the port. He was working so hard and we were really cheering him on.

Some time later: long enough that we had moved on in conversation, but not so long that we had forgotten about him, rowboat man is frantically paddling in the other direction with all his might. We look behind him to find that this huge shipping ship was on its way over. Oh my.

Then! We got to see the pilot boats from the port turn and park the shipping ship. I took a time lapse because it was going so slowly we weren’t really sure anything was happening (we were also arguing that the boat in the front should have been pushing from the other side of the boat to help it turn faster but what do we know about pilot boating?). The time lapse was really cool! It’s only about 30 seconds long, but I was holding the camera against the window for at least 30 minutes (my arms were super sore after). The pilot boats are just there to basically maneuver large ships that won’t be able to make such tight turns in the port. *push push push push push* Pretty neat! And also pretty cute. You also realize how huge these ships are.

Also sort of boat related, we had something called “articles reassignment” on Wednesday. The articles are a legal document that mariners have to sign off on to basically pledge to follow the captain’s orders. They have to reassign the articles every six months to all crew on board, so on Wednesday, they had to somehow arrange for all 400+ people on board to sign the same 3 sheets of paper.

It just looked like this. For hours and hours and hours, ahahaha. But we all got it done.

In other news, the ship is on tight water restrictions due to “unknown problem with our water.” We’re running low on water, and it seems that the technical crew is working around the clock to isolate whatever seems to be the problem (I’m not sure if it’s just low water like a leak, or if there’s another problem). The crew was given strict water usage guidelines, things like only allowing one load of laundry per week, showers should be less than 2 mins (with “sponge bath preferred”), no unnecessary water usage, that kind of thing. Our toilet has already been having trouble backing up and as I write this we’re now an hour and a half into a four-to-six-hour vacuum system down time (no toilets, showers, sinks, drains of any sort—including the hospital). Unsure if the vac system downtime is related to the water restrictions, since they announced the vac system downtime before we went on sudden water restriction. Anyway, if you want to poop you have to go on the dock in the porta-potty. No one wants to do that, can you imagine the kind of smell that gets baked into the porta-potty in the hot African sun? Oh man it makes me a little nauseous just thinking about it…

Anyway, while the ship is basically first-world living, we still get reminded of the other resource limitations that are a part of living in Guinea. There is still an element of self-sufficiency that I think is pervasive throughout the ship (both in operation and in living), and this kind of thing starts to really chip away at it.

Mercy Ministries

Mercy Ships runs programs during the week called “Mercy Ministries” where they visit the HOPE center, local orphanages, and a deaf school to evangelize and do other ministry and outreach with crew. They happen pretty much every day, but it can be hard for crew who work Monday to Friday to have time to go since they go out during the work day. Luckily, the nurses and other shift workers have a lot more opportunities to go so the trips are never empty. :) Since we aren’t allowed to take photos while we’re there, the people leading the ministry trip will usually bring one “official” camera for photos. I finally got a hold of some of the photos so you can see what the HOPE center is like! I went a couple weeks ago during my holiday week off.

Like I mentioned before, the HOPE center is Mercy Ship’s “Hospital Out-Patient Extension” Center. The one we have in Guinea is a borrowed Ministry of Health building. Patients who come from far away in the country (or even other countries) can live here while they get treatment on the ship. The Mercy Ministries team goes out and teaches Bible stories and does crafts with the patients and their caregivers during each visit. They’ll lay out tables under the tent in the courtyard with benches and people will gather to listen and participate. There’s also music, singing, and dancing as well! I was adopted by several kids during our visit there (they have no loyalty to any person). I sat with Anna, who serves in Finance.

Kingdom Purpose

The founder of Mercy Ships, Don Stephens, came to the ship to visit this week. He gave a little talk on a few points like the history of Mercy Ships and the like, but one thing he had been asked to answer was, “No matter how big we get, what is something you don’t want us to lose?”

His answer was that he would hope that we would always remember the Kingdom Purpose that fuels why we do what we do. The truth of running an operation like Mercy Ships (or any operation where you serve) is that it has to be run in a way that is sustainable and effective. They have to make decisions based on business sense and not just ethics and morality alone, because without focus the whole thing kind of falls apart because it’s spread too thin. But focus too much on the business aspect—cost-effectiveness, operational efficiency, sustainability, branding—then you lose the original reason and purpose for it. I think it’s something that we can work on better here. Don is probably the person who is the most direct about the Kingdom Purpose whereas those in practical leadership positions tend to more PC about things in their public roles. I think personally that the evangelism aspect of “following the model fo Jesus” shouldn’t be just aimed to locals and day crew, but our ship crew needs to be convicted of it as well.

People leave every week and it makes me sad so I tried to stop making new friends but then I can’t stop making new friends so here I am still getting sad

Betsy left (for real this time). I already wrote about her, it’s too much work to write it all again so just go read the post from like two weeks ago. But here are some DoCK pHOtoS! If it gives you any idea, Betsy’s airport run was a solo trip (she was the only one going to the airport), but so many people came to see her off. She’s made such a huge impact during her time here. I know she’ll be a huge blessing when she gets back home as well.

Our beloved chief officer Monce leaves Sunday. I was going to go to a local church with chaplaincy but Monce leaves during the service so I’m still debating if I want to see Monce off and go to the church another time, or if it’s just one of those tougher sacrifices to make because it happens so often. I haven’t gone to a local church yet, but I really would like to. Time has been flying here (I’m almost halfway done with my service term, wow).

Sarah from the lab is also leaving tonight. It only took us seven weeks, but we finally got together to take a “stack photo” (photos with the big blue Mercy Ships smokestack) yesterday.

Sarah is a supervisor in her lab back in California and she knows a million and one things about hematology and blood bank (thank goodness because I don’t remember a n y t h i n g ). She’s probably going back to a desk drowned in papers, but hopefully her next-in-line-for-the-throne at work will be willing to help lend a hand (or, she might be drowned in that pile also). I’ll really miss Sarah because her being here meant I didn’t have to do manual differentials. JUST KIDDING it’s that but mostly because she’s a wonderful person. To send her off we went to…

Hotel Kaloum

Kaloum is the business district of Conakry. Hotel Kaloum is a fancy hotel owned by Chinese people marketed mostly for other Chinese businessmen who are in the area as a result of China’s latest investment in Africa. There are five flags outside the hotel—three are hotel flags, one is a Guinean flag, and one is a Chinese flag.

We went up to their sky bar to watch the sun set over the city, and it was super posh and sparkly.

SUPER weirdly enough, as the sun was going down, there was a huuuuuuuge stream of bats flying in from the seas. Like, so many. It went on for at least an hour before we left and went to eat dinner downstairs. It was kind of strange and unsettling.

Then we went to the Chinese restaurant downstairs to eat. It was also super posh.

The food was alright. I mean, it was quite good considering it was Africa, but I wasn’t super impressed.

It’s quite expensive and doesn’t have quite the same “homecooked” feel that we have at the Korean restaurant. I think it left something to be desired, and it was rather expensive. Our total bill for 11 people was 1,661,000GNF ($1USD = 9,195GNF), or about $180, which is not bad by Western standards. The main issue is that our bill was over one million, but the highest denomination bill in Guinea is only 20,000GNF. Imagine paying for a $180 meal when all you have are $2 bills. It’s quite a stack, as you can imagine! I’ve since acquired and honed the role of cashier for when we have a group that needs to pay a large bill.

Overall, it was a nice dinner with some friends!

Anyway. Goodbyes are hard, but they get a little easier to deal with as you know how to handle them when they’re coming. I’ve been decidedly less proactive about making new friends because so many people keep LEAVING but it’s hard to really avoid it because everyone here is so friendly.

I did start meeting one-on-one with one of the photographers on board named Lara. It was kind of a God-thing that we sat next to each other one day during dinner and I had never really talked to her before that, but by the end of the meal we decided to do some accountability together! I’m hoping that it’ll help me be more intentional about continuing my spiritual growth here (it’s easy to fall into the routine once you’ve been here long enough), and it’s nice to have a specific person to talk to. We shared our testimonies last week, and we’re gonna keep talking and hopefully start reading the Bible together. Speaking of which, I told her I’d at least crack open the chronological Bible I found in the library the other day so I should be sure to do that as well since I told her to ask me next week if I did!

I hope everything is going well with you all back home. I got to video chat other Jasmine the other day and it’s always great to see and hear familiar faces from back home. I was hiding in our lab blood donor room because the ship was so full I couldn’t find anywhere to sit that was quiet. But it’s also FREEZING down there, so I’m wearing my fluffy Uniqlo hoodie, ahahaha. About every 10 minutes or so I use up too much bandwidth and I get kicked off of the WiFi mid-sentence and then am awkwardly scrambling to reconnect.

NEW LAB TOYS

I forgot to add this when I initially posted but WE GOT A GENEXPERT AHAHAHA oh my goodness I can’t escape it. We got a countertop four-cartridge one, and we’re going to be using it for MTB/RIF assay for TB screenings. I think they want to do HIV viral loads if we can as well, we’ll see how it goes. It’s still in the box but I’ll take pictures of how cute the little thing is when we take it out and set it up. Since I’ve done that assay before, I get to help with ProCedURe WriTinG.

I also got to do some more senior-like duties, like looking at lots of charts to see what MicroScan panels would work best for our ship.

We realized that our current panels don’t have MIC dosages that go low enough to call things susceptible for Imipenem against Gram negative rods and I think Ampicillin on Staphylococcus this whole time (but we have been). A W K W A R D. So I used our pharmacy formulary, a chart of MicroScan’s panel combinations, the CLSI guidelines in the product insert, and some really, really hardcore Googling to figure out what panels would be able to give us maximum coverage for the drugs that we have on board.

Honestly, as confident as I am in throwing things together with what resources I have, I’m starting to learn more and more what it reaaaaaally means to “do your best and rely on God for the rest.” Coming from a place that does research study after research study, goes through all the literature on any given topic, a place that has statistics on patient populations and has access to people with decades of experience in the field… being thrust into a situation where you have to make decisions without the control of near-absolute certainty is challenging. Back at home if I wasn’t certain about something, I had people to ask but here it’s a bit less like that. A lot of the times I’m the one who’s being consulted on a culture and having to make decisions about what I think something might be. My 3.5 years in micro don’t ever feel like enough. And in a lab where we will report presumptive Haemophilus spp. solely based on plate growth and Gram stain with no further identification testing available, it’s hard to let go of what has been drilled into me at home with being super fearful of making mistakes. We do our best with what we have, but you have to adapt a lot to what is possible and practical here. One day I hope I’ll feel a bit less shaky as I get my “sea legs.”

Miss you all! Hope that this first month of 2019 has been full of blessings and growth.

Jasmin