He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

Wow, where did February go? Only a month left on the ship before I leave Guinea and go home. It’s been admittedly a tough week, with covering more responsibilities at work, saying more heartfelt goodbyes, and feeling bit lonely with so many close friends gone. Here’s to a week of making and deepening a few newer friendships, ending AFM chapters with some others, more blood bank frenzy, and developing new skills.

Gracious loneliness

The season of goodbye is in full swing. I know I’ll probably be a bit of a broken record about this until I have to say my own goodbye to the ship at the end of the month, but it doesn’t get any easier. I’ve met so many amazing people on the ship—with more and more people leaving, my day has become noticeably more empty of the people I’ve finally built up relationships to feel at home with away from home. This week I didn’t have the energy to initiate, but God was really gracious and merciful and sent people my way to make me feel His love in my time of grief. For this I’m so grateful, as it helped me keep my head space in the present a little bit more.

Rehab Family Dinner

So if you remember at the beginning of my term here I made friends with all the rehab kids because I first met Rosie on the plane, and then from there just started making friends with all the rehab team. Even though I haven’t spent as much time with them, they were kind enough to include me in their weekly family dinner where they pick some theme and make food to share together. This week they invited me to eat some summer rolls and pad thai with peanut sauce. It was delicious! Then we watched The Greatest Showman while we ate. Such a good movie!

It was the first vegetarian meal I ate in a while and man it was good! Emma is vegetarian and is one of the main members of the family dinner group. She knows how to make a good meal even without meat! (Y’all know how much I love my meat.)

Crafternoon

My new favorite word, which I learned from my “new” nurse friend Diana. Diana and I have a weird history, apparently she’s been here this whole field service, but I didn’t see her for the first time until this random day in January when I sat with her at dinner one day. We had a nice long conversation about a bunch of random interests, and then I didn’t see her again for like another month or so when she paged me at 3am for the blood a few weeks ago. Then one day on the ward she was intimidatingly direct and told me she thought I was cool and thought we should be friends and we should hang out whenever I have a day off and have a crafternoon. I was caught off guard with the directness but then the usage of the word “crafternoon” totally sold me on the idea. Luckily, I got a day off this week because of my call last week so we scheduled our crafternoon for Tuesday when we both had time off.

Diana’s from Philly and a fabulous baker/chef. She made some awesome French toast for us to eat. She also has a side-hustle as the Academy art teacher, and another side-hustle with chaplaincy doing their artsy stuff for the international lounge (she did the Sermon on the Mount display you see in some of the pictures of ship services and meetings).

We then spent the rest of the day engaged in our crafternoon. Diana and I both had a little travel watercolor set so we painted some cards before she moved on to planning this super cool quilt with African fabrics she found here.

Also, her hair is super cool. She has this really neat subtle muted rainbow swirl going on when she ties up her hair in a bun but I forgot to get a good shot to share. It’s just really well done and classy! It’s not super in-your-face like a lot of hair coloring is. And her hair has all this volume and I can see how it would get crazy on some days but she pulls off the perfect hair all the time.

I was honestly a little intimidated by Diana at first because of her super direct Philly personality, but it’s oddly comforting at the same time knowing she just speaks her mind and is also just super chill and cool. Kind of the “what you see is what you get” kind of deal. I guess I’m so used to Southerners where everyone is nice up front, but you have to read into their subtle actions and body language to get what they really think of you. But there wasn’t anything to read into so I just got really confused. In the end, a very successful crafternoon. I have one more call week this month before I leave, perhaps I’ll take another day off to crafternoon with her again when I get another day off. :)

Amore Mío (my love)

I’ve been meeting up one-on-one with a friend named Lara who works as a photographer on the communications team. Usually we just meet up and talk about life updates and then read Ecclesiastes together. Lara just became a driver (congrats!) and she invited me out to a local ice cream place called Amore Mío for our weekly meet up.

She had a crazy nervous time driving to the ice cream place but SHE DID A GREAT JOB. GREAT JOB LARA I AM SO PROUD OF YOU. All of the ship’s fleet of cars have manual transmissions, and she said she learned to drive manual just to become a driver. She was way more careful than a lot of the African drivers (true “traffricans”—traffic Africans—as we accidentally coined) so we were at the mercy of a lot of other drivers to let us in when we didn’t want to take the risk of rushing into an intersection to get to our destination.

She also brought a polaroid and we took a proper selfie. Always a risk, since you don’t know how it turns out until the photo develops. I think she did a pretty good job aiming. :) At our time at Amore Mío, we talked about Ecclesiastes 4, which begins with words about toil and oppression. She wrote on the photo, “There is Evil Under the Sun… and there is also ice cream.”

The ice cream was really good! I had two flavors—lemon (citron) and strawberry (fraise), my favorite two flavors of sorbet. Personal rule for those who don’t know: if an ice cream/gelato shop offers both lemon and strawberry sorbet at the same time during time of visit, all other cravings are foregone and I immediately get those two together. I established that rule when I went to Barcelona in 2017 and it hasn’t failed me yet. Never disappointed. It doesn’t apply if either one isice cream, though. The cream kind of ruins it. It has to be sorbet.

In any case, it’s been a blessing that there are so many people on the ship who are so in tune with extending love and care. It’s been a hard week, but I still feel so supported in some really unexpected ways. God is truly amazing and I am so grateful for all the people here. And for technology that lets us connect when we’re far away!

A few small things

MAIL TIME!!!

Sarah (labbie from CA) sent us some mail!!! I WAS SO EXCITED I ripped everything open before taking a photo. Take my word for it that it was so nice to get mail and see how she’s been doing back at home and get some words of encouragement. Her sister makes earrings and she sent us all earrings! The card and the earrings were beautiful. <3

Toast coasting

We got new toasters in the dining room. And they properly toast bread now!!!! You have no idea how much of a pain toasting bread used to be because the settings were never really clear on how fast or slow or brown or soft they’ll be so people were changing the settings all. the. time. and then sometimes you’d have to throw your toast through the toaster multiple times when someone set the heat too low but now we have a KNOWN STANDARD SETTING that will toast your bread and you can easily adjust it more or less so you’d only have to throw them through once and not confuse everyone when their toast comes out just slightly warm instead of toast it’s called a toaster people it makes TOAST NOT WARM BREAD IF YOU WANT WARM BREAD JUST MICROWAVE IT OR SOMETHING. BUT NO LONGER!! Now you know how your toast will come out when you throw it in. NO MORE GUESS WORK. #bless

When Dr. Leo Chang’s medical in-service on in-flight resuscitation becomes scarily relevant

This is Jenny.

She’s an anesthetist from the UK and she was only here two weeks. I made pretty good friends with her in the short time she was here, but she also left early this week. :(

Anyway, the next day she tells me her flight (with many other Mercy Shippers onboard) got redirected to the Canary Islands because a man on the flight had a stroke. She got called to assess! Really crazy stuff. I hope the guy is okay. But a lot of people missed (or nearly missed) their connections because of the reroute. GOOD JOB THOUGH JENNY.

Heather-Ann is on PTO

My bunkmate Heather-Ann is the max fax ward nurse team lead and she went on PTO to visit some friends and do a Eurotrip. Everyone and their mother asked me if I was gonna move to the bottom bunk while she was away (ten days)—I honestly wasn’t going to, since I like being on a top bunk but the question came up so consistently that I did it to see what the rage was all about. So, we’re on the bottom bunk, baby!

For those who don’t remember from week 1, here’s what the setup normally looks like:

I honestly don’t think it’s really life-changing, mostly because we still have our common area that I habitually use to sit. I can see how helpful it is to have a bottom bunk when your cabin doesn’t have a public comfy space to sit in, though. The top bunks on our deck are too high to let you properly sit in it, so I only use it to sleep (which is what I normally use my bed at home for…). The main difference is not having to climb down a ladder, which isn’t too bad anyway, I think. I think the main convenience I’ve enjoyed is just not having another person in my cubicle, but then it just means I can stay up as late as I want without bothering someone else and honestly really it’s probably not the best because I’m so undisciplined. I told Heather-Ann when she left on PTO that I would immediately implement poor sleep hygiene until she came back to fix it.

But then it caused this mix up when hospitality came in to make the bed for Kari who’s leaving this weekend, but then they stripped Heather-Ann’s bed and made that up instead. We’re still missing sheets for Kari’s bed because she already turned in her sheets and then hospitality came and stole the sheets off the other bed. I called the person who made the beds over the weekend and the person gave me kind of an attitude about it so all the energy I tried to save from the effort of moving the mattresses all around backfired since now I have to move more mattresses than if I had just properly exchanged the bunks in the first place and not folded up the top bunk. Oh well. It happens.

When Kari wants peanut butter

Kari is our 4th cabinmate at the current moment. She’s an OR nurse and leaves this weekend, but last night she looked around for a fork or spoon or knife to eat her peanut butter with her banana but no one had one. So she disappeared for a few minutes (presumably to get an eating utensil from the dining room) and returned to her spot on the couch and unashamedly ate it all with her toothbrush handle. “When in Africa…” as they say.

Look at that smug mug.

Rachel is made of quality

She’s always been quality but this week Rachel really did a lot to care for me, like visiting me during my weekend call in the lab and just general company and shenaningans. Also, she calls me “Jasmina” and I love it. She started calling me that and it stuck and I love it and it makes me glad how it just… happened. She coined it and I accepted it without any fuss and it’s just a sign of our friendship. Our work schedules lined up nicely so she visits me a lot when I’m working a weekend lab to learn some cool science.

Also, bless her, she threw my laundry into the wash on a particularly stressful day where we had to issue a lot of blood (more on that later) and I was trying to draw donors and get things tested but had signed up for laundry and I already wrote about how militant people are about laundry… but yeah.

ALSO on our walk the other day we checked the freezer and found April’s old pack of frozen dumplings.

We were SO EXCITED!!!!! GUESS WHO IS EATING FROZEN DUMPLINGS SOMETIME LATER THIS WEEK. WE ARE.

Rachel is also a master of fancy-hair. She did my hair yesterday and I felt like an absolute p r i n c e s s . If you need wedding hair done or something she just can casually whip this out in a few minutes with one hair tie. WHAAAAAT!

I EXPECT A CARD FULL OF MUSHINESS

Along with some other cool people, Caitlin left this week. I’ve spent so much time with Caitlin and we connected so well. She’s a really comforting presence and classically openly funny Aussie. I’ve taken her absence a bit harder than I thought I would—I feel like I was just this empty crying shell on Friday after she left. (“JUST KEEP IT TOGETHER JASMIN.”) And then working in the lab alone when Kathy was in a meeting and Caitlin was gone and Maartje hadn’t started because she doesn’t start until 10am because she’s on call was just… lonely. I’m super grateful for her friendship and I’m super excited to visit her in South Australia where she can teach me how to paddle board (until the shark helicopters come)!!

We had to represent the lab at the Academy’s career fair where all the little students dressed up and we did this little interview thing asking about how the lab works and what kinds of things we look for in an applicant and the things they would do and their work hours, etc. etc. etc. Then we got job applications and phone calls from the students later who wanted to apply to “work” in the lab! The chosen student then gets to shadow us sometime mid-March after they’re “hired” by Kathy. We went because Kathy was sick. It was a pretty cute event.

Caitlin requested that she get Cookies & Cream Oreo Cheesecake Brownies for her going away treat. But because Kathy was sick I took on the task of making them. It is not a hard thing to make, but I am unduly stressed when making a recipe for the first time, not to mention I never really used the crew galley for cooking so finding everything and using all the appliances and trying to figure it out as I went for such an important thing was probably not the best combination for my mental health. IT TURNED OUT OKAY and the HSS + biomed team constantly affirmed me over and over that they were delicious (thanks guys). There was a point in time during its creation where I was searching frantically for a tablespoon measuring spoon and Rachel snuck in and hid my batter and I was so stressed about it disappearing that it nearly brought me to tears ahahaha but it’s all water under the bridge or whatever the phrase is. Esther was an accomplice. YOU GUYS!

Now that I’ve made it once, I’d be okay to make it again sometime. It was quite delicious. The HSS team has slowly turned over as time has gone on, but we’re still a happy close family.

This week and next week, Colleen is onboard! Colleen is our lab manager who usually stays in the States supporting the lab from the ISC in Texas. She does a lot of the recruiting and logistics stuff (she’s the one who “interviewed” me when Mercy Ships was considering my application). She’s visiting to work with Kathy on Global Mercy stuff, but that means Kathy has been out of the lab in meetings most of the time.

Speaking of, did you know Mercy Ships is building a new ship? All of our ships so far have been refitted/repurposed ships that were bought for scrap value, but the M/V Global Mercy (aka GLM) will be a brand new boat! It’s also bigger than the AFM, so Mercy Ship’s giving capacity will be more than doubled once it’s completed. The two ships are planned to have “opposite” schedules— the AFM will operate on a summer-to-summer schedule (August to June), but the GLM will operate on a (North American) winter-to-winter schedule (probably something like February to November?). This helps line up schedules for volunteers who come from the northern vs. the southern hemispheres (plus also just general coverage stuff too, I think?) since places like Australia have summer break during Christmas break whereas the United States operates on a fiscal year with Christmas break dividing the two halves, something I never thought of! After the GLM is up and sailing, the AFM will probably go into some much needed extended maintenance and refitting period before getting back into the game, but it takes a lot of work to get a new ship off the ground (or rather, in the water?).

Anyway, it was a really teary goodbye. We took the traditional group selfie.

I jumped into the car with her and rode with her to the airport! It was really nice to be able to actually see her off through security and the gate. It felt like a true send-off and I’m really glad I did it after not being able to send off April last week in the same way.

I then proceeded to go back to the ship and basically just cry a lot. When we got back from the airport it was ice cream time after the community meeting so I grabbed a bowl and went upstairs to eat thinking it would make me feel better (it did not) but Kailee did give me some really comforting hugs and presence and words and a space to be vulnerable and experience all my emotions (which did help). Halfway through my crying session some rando pulled up a table behind us on the deck like four feet behind us and started typing away at his computer (lol). There was also this Chinese boat that was doing all sorts of strange an unexplainable maneuvers in the port waters which also provided a bit of entertainment to lighten me up.

A lot of people asked me if I was doing okay the next day and all I could muster without bursting into tears was “I DON’T WANNA TALK ABOUT MY FEELINGS!!!!!” and somehow stumble over the words and dramatic gestures to communicate that all I wanted to do was eat my feelings with a large order of freshly made Chick-fil-A waffle fries but then when I realized I have to wait another month even for that, it made me more emotional. I’m doing better now at the time of writing, but I still reaaaaaaally want some good hot fast food. We have a lot of good sweet treats, but a lot less comforting salty oily fatty fast food. [Insert stern Pao-Hwa 阿姨 face condemning my food cravings]

THIS IS A DRILL—THIS IS A DRILL

I love how fire drills still somehow make it into the blog post every two weeks.

Remember how there was that one fire drill when they didn’t tell us when it was? THEY DID IT AGAIN THIS WEEK (albeit a lesser extent, at least they told us it was Thursday but not what time). I was so mad when they announced it during the Monday briefing. BUT THEN thanks to Caitlin’s recommendation, I GOT TO BE THE CASUALTY!!! WHICH MEANS I got to know when the fire drill would be beforehand.

The scenario was a smoke inhalation injury, so no cool special effects makeup this time. For some strange reason, a medical worker was in the main galley (which is typically off-limits) and coincidentally a fire started at the same time. It was hilarious because when we were setting up the smoke machine, I went up to the galley to look around for a good place to collapse when I ran into pharmacist-from-NC Caron’s husband Mike who works in galley and he was so excited to see me and asking what I was doing there and if I wanted to get a tour of the galley and everything. I kind of used poor nervous acting to be all “ooOoHHh I’m just looking around, don’t worry about me ha ha haaa…”

The smoke machine is quite impressive. It filled up the galley and dining room really quickly with such thick smoke that you couldn’t see your hand after a while.

I got carried out by the fire team to the café. The fact that the fire started in the galley meant that a lot of new decisions had to be made since the dining room is the usual emergency medical base, and with it and reception (muster control) being so close to the galley, they had to find a place to go and move.

It was fun to witness the emergency team in action, but with a drill, it’s always a bit silly. When I got brought in, I’m pretty sure I heard Laura say in an endearing voice, “Awwww…”

Because smoke inhalation injury is a loss of airway risk, they called anesthesia to pretend-intubate. So Brian came in to intubate me, complete with his “#2 DAD” OR cap.

Then afterwards every time I saw someone from the emergency team they would exclaim, “Wow, you’ve made an incredible recovery!” from my intubation. Colton told me if I did a good job that I could be fire victim in a cooler scenario. More to come on that, possibly...

Blood bank frenzy!

We issued and drew more blood this week than we have the entire time I’ve been here combined. There were a couple of bleeders in the OR in addition to our pre-transfusions for the Hb 3.4g/dL kid (who apparently plays football with his friends all the time and walks half an hour to school every day and doesn’t have any other problems that we can tell from it… amazing). God really built on the trusting in Him aspect from last week. We were O-depleted at one point (no type-O blood on the shelf!) when the OR took two of our units one after another and after we drew a fresh unit for the pre-transfusion. We drew four units that day, it was nuts! Then again the next day the OR took our only A unit then asked for another unit before we could draw the next, so we had to pack an O that we drew the day before. Needless to say, I am very comfortable taking donors now. Got to draw some of my friends, too!

And then of course as a part of my mission to poke all the higher up ship peeps, I drew the Field Security Officer, Mike. He’s here with his wife Laurie (a ward nurse), and originally worked in housekeeping. But then our FSO left early and he got tapped for the job because he’s done a lot of security and intelligence job stuff stuff with his work in the Marines and all. When he heard Laurie was donating, he came to the lab to take a photo but she was so fast at donating she was already gone. Then he really wanted to donate! So we picked him to replace one of our units that expired yesterday. He had really great veins (read: big) but I missed the first time and he gave me SUCH a hard time about it! He bruised though, joke’s on him. Just kidding. It wasn’t intentional _{(or was it?)} — his vein was just rolly-poly-oly.

Outbreak! ☣️

… of (presumably) chickenpox among our patients. Kari got a late-night call to do an emergency surgery and she told me the next day that they had noticed that a bunch of tiny blisters developing on the kid while they were in surgery… Cue a flurry of infection-control measures. It’s been a bit stressful on Lizzie our IPC nurse because we aren’t equipped to isolate patients with chickenpox. Our isolation rooms are just individual rooms to put patients who have contact precautions so they’re not in close contact with the other ward patients, but we don’t have things like negative pressure rooms and things. To make matters worse our isolation rooms are connected to the ICU room, so we can’t isolate aerosolized risks effectively in those rooms because it puts our ICU beds at risk. The medical staff should all have immunity, but a lot of patients do not, so the operations team is scrambling to try and limit contact. All non-essential hospital and HOPE center visits are cancelled until further notice. It’s really interesting to see how difficult things like this can be when the laboratory can’t support the efforts by confirming or screening suspect cases, and we don’t have the resources to deal effectively with it. I think they’re having to discharge the patients to local hospitals, but I’m not sure what that means for the rest of their treatment. Incubation for chickenpox is up to 21 days, so it may be something in place for a while. I’m keeping my eye on it.

Where is the love?

My parents specifically asked for video proof of me rapping in karaoke, so I asked around to see if anyone took any vids. Here’s it is. Sorry for the potato quality. But I’m the one on the left in the gray. The other two rapping with me on the right are Rachel in black and April in gray.

Well that that’s a wrap on the last week. Things are starting to close and open at the same time here. Our “stint” on board is coming to a close, but I’m still here to witness the open of a new chapter. Such is the life of the ship.

—Jasmin