… but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.
—Jeremiah 9:24
This update’s featured image is a photo of a ship called Selah that I took as it sailed by on Friday morning. It was just a nice pause at the end of a crazy week. And crazy it was.
Man, Christmas with the ship is one heck of a ride. I had a very strange and exciting and ultimately super fun and filling experience at a Filipino Christmas house party in the city, and discovered that one of the Filipina mommas on the ship is one of the most amazing cake baker-and-decorators I’ve ever met. I saw the heavy machines that keep the ship running (or sailing), and I worked my first on-call stint ALllLlLl byyYyYyy mYyyYYSEeellLLLlLfFfFfFFF!!!!1111!!1one
Per usual, this post is excessively long #sorrynotsorry. I recently also discovered that my blog has garnered a reputation with some people on the ship for its extremely detailed documentation of events. You can thank the laboratorian in me for that. (“If you didn’t document it, it didn’t happen.”) Apparently, April is sending people here instead when they ask her about how life is on the ship. Who knew.
‘Twas the night before Christmas
Let me tell you the story of what happened on Christmas Eve. Oh Lord have mercy I still shake my head when I think about it.
A few days before Christmas Eve, I was heading back to my cabin when I was stopped on the stairwell by Monce. Monce is a Filipino dude I met through Niña (more on her later), who is this super wonderful Filipina lady who invited me to her cabin on my second day on the ship to eat her homemade adobo. The ship’s Filipino cohort is this super warm and welcoming family of Niña, her husband Ramon, her son Kim, and Ramonito (aka “Monce”), who was absorbed into the family because that is how the Filipino do.
Anyway, I had barely spoken two words to him before this, and yet he invited me to go to “a Filipino thing” with them out in the city on Christmas Eve if I was free, and to invite my friends April and Trancy (both Asian-Australians about my age). We settle to meet at the gangway at 8pm.
It’s 8pm Christmas Eve. April, Trancy, and I are at the gangway, and Monce shows up, and we group up with Flynn and Sina (two Germans I had not met yet, also about our age). Kim is also there. We find out Niña is busy working on a cake for the ship’s Christmas celebration (SEE THE SECTION BELOW FOR DETAILS–IT’S AMAZING), so she and Ramon are not coming. Oh, okay…
In any case, I’m super bad at interacting with people in new places, especially in things like going to parties where the people I don’t know outnumber the people I do know. We go along anyway, not really sure where we’re going or what the plan is. We take two taxis, and we get split up a little bit because traffic in Conakry is a little bit C R A Z Y.
Our taxi pulls into a dark street. I mean dark. No street lights, no lights from surrounding buildings. We originally thought we were going to a restaurant or something to celebrate, but instead we ended up going to someone’s flat. We’re welcomed inside to an apartment full of middle-aged Filipino men wishing us Merry Christmas. Uh.
We wait while some other men grill lamb kebobs in the kitchen. It smells absolutely delicious. We make some small talk (my baneee) with one of the men in the apartment (we didn’t learn any names), who had been in Conakry for about a year and a half working in procurement for a mining company. Aside from two of the men in the group who had been in the country for 32 and 19 years, most of them were only there for a few years and didn’t have plans to stay long-term.
In any case, it’s starting to feel like we’re intruding on a close friend gathering and we feel a bit awkward. Until this jolly woman (Stella) and a younger lady (Michelle) bust into the party with TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF FOOD AND PRESENTS. They’re like flying around the room holding a million things giving everyone (including us) kisses and Christmas wishes and taking pictures. It completely changed the mood (not to mention it was kind of a relief to have other women in the room other than the ones that came with us). The table was empty at first, but when they were finished it looked like:
We find out that Stella is one of the chefs at the US Embassy. WHAAAAAAT. And it shows (tastes?). Her food is SOOoOooOOO good! Sweet and sour fish, some savory cake/bread thing (the one surrounded by orange carrot flowers), lamb chops, adobo, spring rolls, lamb kebabs, a type of famous bread with raisins and nuts, a fluffy flaky sweet cassava cake dessert, and chocolate caaaaaaaaake! Now this is a treat! Y’all know the straightest path to my heart is through my stomach. ;)
After everything was settled we eat! I know I might have said this before, but it was delicious. I’m not usually a fan of lamb because it can be really gamey, but this stuff was so good and tender and flavorful. I went back to the table at least 3 times. AND MINIMAL VEGETABLES YAHAHA!
All throughout dinner, the Filipinos are taking selfies. It’ll start with a couple people, but then as people see a selfie being taken, more and more people will join after each subsequent photo until almost everyone is there. Then someone else will take a selfie, and then the process starts all over again. I don’t have a set of selfies that show the progression, but here’s one that Monce took of the Mercy Shippers:
After dinner, Monce says that he and Michelle have prepared some games to play with some prizes. He splits the Mercy Shippers into two teams + Louis, one of the younger guys (half Ghanian, half Filipino and mainly speaks Tagalog). None of the other guests participate (???).
Okay, pause. Remember that we left at 8pm, so we didn’t get to the party until 8:30pm, and we didn’t really start eating until 9pm. We probably started playing games at 9:30pm. Now, the ship has a curfew for all crew on board at 11pm. If you are not on the ship at 11pm, they will call your cabin to look for you, then send security teams out into the city to search for you until you are found. It’s a pretty big deal; a lot of people get involved because the crew’s safety is a huge ship concern, especially since we have agreements with Guinea’s government and the provided free visas to all of us and so on and so forth. Anyway, Sina works in reception, who has the duty of doing this accounting at the end of each night. All of us take curfew pretty seriously. Except Monce. Once is the chief officer. He’s one of the first people who get called when the searching begins. Here’s how the conversation went.
Us: Monce, are we going to make curfew? It’s at 11pm.
Monce: No, it’s 11:30pm. Or whenever they call me, we can play until then and then we have to leave.
Us: Monce, that’s not how curfew works, we have to get back by 11pm, they’ll call our cabins and wake up all our cabinmates!
Monce: Ah, we can make it back. It will be fine. One more game?
One game later…
Monce: We still have time for another!
Us: omg we’re going to get in so much trouble.
We play more games. We play as fast as we can so we can go home and not trouble the entire ship’s security team. It’s a heck of a lot of fun, but we’re also a little bit worried.
At the very end, Michelle gives us each a wrapped present. So sweet! We intruded on their house party and didn’t bring anything to contribute and we got gifts. We all left (ran out to get back to the ship) with full hearts after spending the days leading up being a bit homesick from not being able to spend Christmas at home with family.
We’re missing a handful of dudes in the photo, but it was quite a lovely time. The story doesn’t end there, though.
We leave the apartment at 10:55pm. It takes at least 15 minutes to get back to the ship by car, even more since the main road is one-way away from the ship since the ship is ported in Kaloum, the business district of the capitol. The main road is one-way into Kaloum in the morning hours, and one-way out of Kaloum in the evening hours. So we had to take back roads.
We beg Monce to call reception and account for us so they don’t bother anyone with our tardiness. He is unbelievably casual about it. He’s clearly done this several times. XD We’re jammed into a car, and he pulls out a ship phone to call:
Us: Monce, can you call reception and tell them we’re coming? Otherwise they’ll wake up our entire cabin.
Monce: Hmm? Oh sure sure sure. …. …. …. Mmm, who am I calling? Reception?
Us: Reception. Becca’s working tonight.
Monce: Okay. [dials reception] Hi, is this Becca? …. Becca? …. Yes, is this Becca? …. This is Monce. …. Monce? …. Yeah, Monce …. Your chief officer. …. Chief officer! Monce. …. Yeah, so we’re almost back, okay?
Us: Monce, you have to tell her who’s in the car, she doesn’t know who’s with you.
Monce: OH, okay, so I’m in the car. We’re almost back (aside: we are just leaving the flat, definitely not almost back). Yeah, so I’m in the car with Sina …. Yeah, Sina …. Flynn …. Mmhmm. And uh, Sina …. Yeah.
[The rest of us begin collectively yelling our names.]
Monce: Mmhmm… April. …. And uh, Trancy. …. Jasmin. Yep. That’s it.
Kim: MONCE, I’M IN THE CAR TOO.
Monce: OH, and Kim. Kim. Sanchez. Yeah. Yep. We’re almost back, okay? Yeah, soon. Mhmm. Bye.
There’s nothing we can do at this point. Traffic is fairly backed up, for 11pm, but weirdly enough, it’s quiet. Usually during traffic people are literally honking nonstop. Then we find out why. The military has set up a checkpoint a major roundabout and stop every car passing through. This is common, and it can take a while. We were told that they will try really hard to find things to fine foreigners for to get money out of them.
An army guy walks up to our car and shines his flashlight inside. Monce brings out his badge and tries to explain that we’re people from Mercy Ships, and we all follow suit by bringing our badges out to show the army guy. He doesn’t seem to care for it, and has the driver get out of the car (Louis, the half Ghanian half Filipino guy) and open the trunk so he can search it. I’m sitting in the third row of the car, and it takes a surprising amount of self-control to not turn around and watch what’s happening right behind me. In the end, the army dude finds nothing of interest and waves us through, only for us to be stopped by the next officer. He does something similar, shining his flashlight inside the car to us waving our badges and all enunciating “Mercy Ships!”
Imagine this tough African man wearing army fatigues and a red beret with a serious RBF to match, and we’re all just desperately trying to convince him to let us pass so we’re not even later for curfew. He doesn’t speak English, and none of us speak any French. There is about 15 seconds of confused shouting with the second officer. Then, he has a moment of clarity and then yells, “AH!!! MERCY SHIPS!! C’EST BON, C’EST BON!!” (“It’s all good”) and his entire demeanor changes and he’s super smiley and happy and clapping and pointing and thanking us and saying how everything is fine and we can pass. Sigh of relief.
Louis speeds down to the port and we get back to the gangway quarter past 11pm, and the security officer at the top of the gangway jokingly points at us and goes, “LATEEEEEE! LAAAAATEEEEEEE!” Ahahaha. Oh man he has no idea what a night it’s been. We’re all so glad for the hospitality of the Filipino community in Conakry, we’re so glad for Monce’s lighthearted casualness towards curfew, and we’re so glad to be back safe at our home that we’ve made here.
You should ask me to recall this story if we call. I think it’s much better when I get to act out all the voices and accents.
Meanwhile…
This is Niña, our ship’s Filipina momma.
She was expected to come to the Christmas Eve party, but she was busy making this AMAZING CAKE FOR THE SHIP’S CHRISTMAS PARTY WHAAAAAAAAT.
Of course I had SO MANY QUESTIONS. She was wonderful and answered all my questions and even provided PROGRESS PICS so I could accurately document and report her amazing work back to you.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE? She started making the cake in the last week of November, by my quick maths that’s FOUR WEEKS. Not every day was spent on it since she had an actual role to serve in on top of that. She baked 40 trays of cake. From scratch. (They were frozen as she amassed her chocolate cakes for their final form).
She thawed the cakes on the 22nd so she could begin assembling and carving the cake. The cake’s layers are held together with a chocolate Swiss meringue butter cream and the design is fondant based.
On Christmas Eve, Niña recruited some help with cutting the ship’s portholes—all 200(!!) of them. The rest of the details she did herself, I believe.
There was no time or energy to take pictures while they were adding the decorations, but just by looking at it you can see why she might have been a little busy on Christmas Eve and couldn’t make it to the Filipino Christmas house party. Enjoy the photos and details. Every time I look at it it gets better and better.
It was also really, really delicious. The crew devoured the entire thing in pretty much one meal time.
The crew is a crew of many talents, and oftentimes people don’t work in the departments in which they work in professionally at home. This is something I’m learning more and more about. Niña works in hospitality, and she is an incredible artist, baker, momma, and friend. She is hosting a silent auction of some portraits she drew to benefit the children at the CASOG Orphanage in the city, and her work is amazing. CASOG is one of the orphanages/children’s home that Mercy Ministries partners with to have regular visits (I’m trying to get on the list to go to one of the homes in a couple weeks). They have around 50 children from newborn to 17 years old, including 17 babies. Most of the children either had mothers who died in childbirth, were abandoned by their parents, or are HIV positive.
She told me her father’s side of the family (but not her father) is really artistic. She spent a lot of time watching people draw and perfect their art and learned a lot while doing that. How beautiful is that!
Dream log—
Learn to live the ordinary day
I had a dream on Wednesday night that left an impression on me, so I thought I’d share it. I’m still sorting my thoughts out on this so let me know what you think if this kind of thing interests you. Otherwise you can skip to the next heading.
For those of you who may not know me very well, dreams have played a pretty major part in my life. I tend to always have very vivid dreams where, upon waking, the memories of their experiences are as fresh and solid as if they happened in real life. It’s a blessing and a curse, since I’ve had some really amazing experiences that I wouldn’t otherwise in real life, while on the other hand, nightmares can really take a psychological toll on me. Sometimes I’ve found myself really disoriented from having lived “an alternate life” (some of you probably have experienced my amusing initial confusion firsthand). I usually remember my dreams (which, for a while, I didn’t really realize wasn’t common) in quite a bit of detail, though most of the times I eventually forget them if I don’t share them or if they’re boring and mundane. In any case, here’s what happened:
The dream is set in a church or town hall or some sort of assembly place in 1960s United States. Racial segregation has recently been outlawed. The gathering place has a polished marble tiled floor, and it’s just a single center room with possibly some offices or other smaller side rooms around the perimeter. I’m seated on the second floor balcony overlooking an ornate wooden railing onto a gathering in the main room, where people are seated, sharing their relief and excitement towards this civil rights victory. The room is mainly filled with people who support integration, but it quiets as someone points out two people in the room who are “segregationists,” or people who supported continued segregation. The room is rather respectful, and is eager to hear what the segregationists have to say. It’s an older lady dressed in a red coat and hat and a younger boy dressed in a smart plaid collared shirt with khaki shorts. Presumably, they are mother and son. The chairs in the gathering are arranged in rows, and they sit in the back right corner of the group.
The mother speaks. She talked about how she didn’t really seem the harm in segregation, so long as “separate, but equal” was in place. While she didn’t still fully accept integration and struggled with feeling comfortable around black people, it was something she was actively working on, as her interactions with them were slowly opening up her eyes to the worth of “the other” as people. She struggled with fear and ignorance, and it fueled her understanding of what was the best policy. The mother was very well-spoken, and it was wonderful to see how human her struggle was, even though in the end she would be written off in history as a bigot full of hate. The people in the room also responded respectfully. They affirmed her feelings as valid feelings, even though the reason for her feelings, her beliefs, were not justified by the truth. She concluded her sharing with the sentence that resonated with me, saying “We must learn how to live the ordinary day.” After she said this, my dream evaporated and I woke up. It was 3am.
It was hard to fall back asleep. I turned that sentence over and over, trying to grasp its meaning or its origin. I eventually fell back asleep, but when I woke up at 6am, it was still all I could think about. I finally just pulled out my phone and googled it. Weirdly enough, it was almost word for word a sentence from the April 16th devotional entry called “Can You Come Down From the Mountain?” from Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest. If you’re feeling lazy, I’ve pasted it below:
We all have moments when we feel better than ever before, and we say, “I feel fit for anything; if only I could always be like this!” We are not meant to be. Those moments are moments of insight which we have to live up to even when we do not feel like it. Many of us are no good for the everyday world when we are not on the mountaintop. Yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there.
Never allow a feeling that was awakened in you on the mountaintop to evaporate. Don’t place yourself on the shelf by thinking, “How great to be in such a wonderful state of mind!” Act immediately— do something, even if your only reason to act is that you would rather not. If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don’t say, “I’ll do it”— just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary “gray” day according to what we saw on the mountain.
Don’t give up because you have been blocked and confused once— go after it again. Burn your bridges behind you, and stand committed to God by an act of your own will. Never change your decisions, but be sure to make your decisions in the light of what you saw and learned on the mountain.
Now, I have been reading Utmost (I highly recommend it, by the way! You can find it free on the Utmost website), but the sentence is from the updated (modern) language version, and I only have the classic version (“Ye Olde Utmost” hehehe). ALSO, I’ve not read to April’s devotionals, so Thursday morning was reading it for the first time. Where did this come from? My only conclusion was it something from the Holy Spirit. Time will tell more.
Kailee mentioned that it’s possibly related to the phenomenon that people experience when they go to a retreat or Bible camp and come back supercharged on the Spirit, and how right now while on the ship we’re possibly getting a view from that mountain. This reminder to learn to live in the ordinary day is perhaps something I will need to revisit when I come home in April. Anyway. It’s a stone that I’ve got in my hand that I’m turning over and over.
Down to Deck 1
So remember last week I made a friend with chief engineer Irik from Canada (but is actually from Holland)? I got to go on an engine room tour! It was super loud and super hot down there.
Some cool basic ship facts: the ship has 4 propulsion engines attached to 2 propeller shafts and 4 generators for electricity, of which 2 are usually active. The propulsion engines are MAN 21/31 GenSet V16 engines, each of which can output about 5,000 horsepower. 🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎 While in port and not sailing, the ship consumes approximately 7,000L of fuel a day to keep everything running. While at sea and sailing to a destination, that consumption goes up to about 30-32,000L a day. The ship uses a pretty crude form of fuel, which comes thickened like a paste when we receive it, so it has to be heated to about 135ºC before it will be liquid enough for fueling and use. Ship fuel is the operation’s most costly expense; it is about $600USD per 1,000L. Typically the crew is the biggest expense for a ship, but since our crew consists of volunteers, the fuel becomes our most costly operational need.
Please don’t ask me what all these things do because I can’t remember. I’m probably going to take another tour later to get learnt because the group we went with was so big I could barely hear half the time over the sounds of the engine.
Our ship is quite old— almost 40 years, actually. Originally a Danish rail ferry called the MS Dronning Ingrid, its control and switchboard rooms are all very old-fashioned. Nowadays, ships all have a ton of computers onboard that do the same jobs. But we get to pretend we’re in a spaceship, instead!!
Since we’re a ship docked in West Africa, it’s hard to get parts and service here. A part could take months to arrive on the ship, and so much of the maintenance, repair, and replacements are done in the workshop on deck 1. This is only a bit of the crazy walls and walls and walls of tools (very well organized and satisfyingly arranged) that they have here.
The engine room also houses our incinerator for medical waste. We can’t ship the waste ashore since it’s hazardous and there are some issues with it while you’re in Africa, so we have to incinerate it all downstairs. That’s what this big boi is for.
As you can imagine, it’s quite hot down on deck 1. With all the machinery and not really much ventilation, it can get super warm. Add the African heat during the day, and the fact that they all wear heavy coveralls, and I have much more respect for the folks who work down here.
Mel (hilariously real English teacher from Australia but serves in housekeeping) mentioned afterwards that she was getting confronted more and more with the reality of Ephesians 4:16—
from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
There are people who were willing to pay to work down in a hot engine room in a ship in Africa because they believe in the operations of the ship. People are willing to pay money to come to Africa and wear hot coveralls and work on the decks. Pay to clean toilets and floors. To wake up at 4am to prepare food for the ship. Every role is so vital and important—it’s kind of the nature of a mission. Roles are put in as they are found necessary and taken out when they become obsolete. Every person has such an important role from the most prestigious surgeon or director down to the lowly jobs that no one really wants. People here serve with such enthusiasm and sacrifice for one another with humility. It’s so refreshing to experience a much better balance of it. You give to serve others, and others give to serve you. The culture is so ingrained that it pushes out selfish intent.
Something I’ve learned that I think is often overlooked as a valuable trait is wholeheartedly accepting the service of others. I feel like back home, I would turn down offers of service or favors (regardless of intents) because I don’t want to trouble someone else, or I want to take care of things on my terms, or I don’t want to owe them, or me me me me me. You won’t, don’t, can’t be self-sufficient here. You stop feeling bad for taking a day off when you’re not well, because you would gladly let others rest when the “ship bug” inevitably catches up to them as well. Come in on a day off to help, and stay the whole day. Get a blanket when someone’s cold. Make and bring them a hot chocolate. Give a massage. Accept a massage. Ugly cry on a shoulder. Rant about struggles. They’re all ways that we love and bless one another. There are no secret intentions, there are no guilty strings. Perhaps some stem from insecurity. In any case, it’s just people trying their best to live out the love of God. And their best is all you can ask of anyone.
Ball and Chain
I was on call for the first time since getting here! During the Christmas and New Year’s weeks, the lab is on a “weekend/holiday schedule” for the full duration. So technically, the lab is only open from 10am-12pm each day, with the lab tech on call when emergencies and urgent work (key word) pop up. When you’re on call, you can’t leave the ship, since we have to be pretty much immediately available in case there’s an urgent need for blood product (ask me about the dramatic Benin patient).
Sarah calls it “the ball and chain”—Aside from tethering you to the ship, it’s actually a pretty good physical metaphor. The pager sits in a plastic case with a belt-clip, and the pager itself has a tiny leash only a few inches long with a metal clip on the end so the pager can be DOUBLE SECURED TO YOU. It’s also weirdly heavy and pulls your pants down just a little bit if you wear it on your waistband. I have to tie my scrub pants a little bit tighter when I’m wearing it.
In any case, one thing that I found pretty interesting how this week’s on call went. You can see God’s hand in it the whole way. The first sign (rather, warning) was when Kathy pondered, “I wonder if it was a mistake scheduling only one person.” right before she and Caitlin (another lab tech) left the country for several days to travel.
I am by no means comfortable beyond basics in chemistry or hematology or blood bank or anything other than microbiology. I don’t think I even know all of our QC schedules or even where everything is, but I just had to trust that God would provide and keep the lab from burning down somehow or other. And He did, in a way. By sending me one basic CBC to run, a couple of UAs (with microscopy… uhhh what does a hyaline cast look like again?), and then EIGHTEEN cultures to set up.
Let’s back up a little. For my lab homies, 18 cultures is nothing. We get probably hundreds in a shift back home. But please remember a few key points as to why this is still considered quite a bit: We do not have an electronic health record system. We don’t have label generators or barcode scanners. Every plate, every sub, every panel, every thing has to be hand labeled with patient name, MRN/DOB, source, date, and isolate descriptions, quantities, and/or IDs. All of our results are hand written. Our full culture workup is written down on a sticky note that is torn in half to save resources. Blood cultures are done manually, Gram stained and blind-subbed at day 1, 3, 5 and plates reincubated and read again at 48 hours if they’re no growth. MicroScan panels are hand labeled with all the patient and culture and isolate identifying information (DO YOU KNOW HOW SMALL THE SPACE IS), set up, processed, read, interpreted, and cascaded manually. Our incubator is non-CO2, so plates are bagged with a satchet and labeled again. Getting tired yet?
All this to say there was quite a bit to be doing as one person and it really made me appreciate the conveniences of having a computer system to write your workup and track your isolates and even print labels. Quite complex, remember how to do it here, but it was complex that I could handle. Had we had trouble with our analyzers, had an order for something that wasn’t QC’d, I would have probably been a dead fish in the water. I didn’t even touch our chemistry analyzers the days I was on-call. I didn’t have to do a smear review. I didn’t have to transfuse anyone.
And then when Sarah (who does more blood bank/hematology) took the pager, we suddenly had all sorts of blood work to do, chemistries to run, a smear to stain and review, you know. I went in to help out with microbiology since it was still pretty insane (“it would be fine if nothing is growing… ahh, man everything is growing.”). And even more so because I HAD MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
The next paragraph is for my mates who work in the micro lab, everyone else can skip to the paragraph after, just know I made a preventable mistake that normally would warrant a repeat of everything major because things at home are different than things here in some crucial steps of our work, but are similar enough that I didn’t realize it.
So I already mentioned that our MicroScan panels are processed manually. We use (pretty expired lol) ID/sensi combo panels, which have the biochemicals on the top. Like APIs, you have to add oil to some wells and then add reagents when reading the next day. Well… our WalkAway used to do that for us, so it wasn’t really something that was on my mind to have to do because we didn’t have a WalkAway. I got the reagent part when reading, because manual reading was different enough that I could remember to do that. Buuuuuuut I forgot to put oil on the wells that needed them when I set them up, so I had something like 9 panels that had invalid ID portions. We don’t have alternate methods that are as conclusive (just quick tests like catalase, oxidase, PYR, you know). We ALSO don’t streak purity plates when we set up panels, because well, that’s like extra SB we could use for actual culture set ups. We don’t have TSB to grow organisms in broth (we have a turbidity meter, either—everything is set up by prompt).
A N Y W A Y S, long long long story short, if it weren’t for the years of experience I had working in microbiology (and also the many procedures I’ve absorbed over the years), we’d end up having to repeat everything from the beginning, effectively delaying the cultures at least two or three more days. Sarah was technically following me after my big goof, but both of us were relieved that I was here to help with the huge influx of cultures (although I was also the one that screwed them up, yahahaha. Can’t have your cake and eat it.)
We don’t have real protocol for most things in microbiology, aside from literal step by step how-tos, like “how to concentrate a stool for an O&P exam”. There are very few policies on what to report or work up. Kathy literally told me, “Jasmin, you can do microbiology however you want.” (She also told me about adding oil to MicroScan panels, but clearly that went over my head.) It was admittedly really hard to transition to this lab when I come from a lab that has so many rules that it takes weeks to teach someone all of them and people still don’t always understand them fully.
It’s been a while since they’ve had someone who worked primarily in microbiology in the ship lab, because most people who are generalists aren’t as confident in the deeper things of microbiology, and most microbiology specialists don’t have the confidence to do everything else in the lab. It was perfect that I had just enough experience in microbiology but not too far out from school that it would be difficult for me to pick up the rest of the lab sections. Microbiology is so complex and always changing, and a lot of concepts that are easy for us to understand can be tough for people who don’t work in microbiology to grasp. Kathy asked (and it’s also increasingly on my heart) to take some time to sit down and go over, rewrite, and possibly newly write some of our microbiology procedures. I’ve already written one on how to read and interpret the D-test on the MicroScan panel (they were just assuming that inducible resistance was always present). It is surprisingly humbling to be chosen to be used in God’s plan—to have the honor to be the vessel that is able to bless the lab and help bring it up in more ways than just serving in it. It’s also really awe-some to see how God spent so much time preparing me and molding me for this role on the ship, how He is able to use me in His grand plan and time everything perfectly that I and others may grow in this chapter of our lives.
Despite having spent my Christmas working alone in the lab, it was quite a joyful time spent pondering the grandeur of God with nothing but wonder to fill my soul. It wasn’t what I quite imagined Christmas on the ship would be like (that happened leading up to the ship). I was admittedly a bit bummed to find that I would miss Christmas at home when I saw my service dates, but I’ve found a different kind of home here.
With wonder,
Jasmin