The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.

Psalm 28:7

We’ve made it to double digits! We’ve made it through week ten together and I’m grateful that you’re here with me to share this journey. This week, we celebrated Chinese New Year with ANOTHER dumpling night and karaoke on Deck 8, I went to a local English school that was originally established poor and orphaned children, we took selfies with the captain on the bow, watched pilot boats deal with some containers that fell into port, ate a “million dollar” meal to say farewell to some friends, and found some more exciting parasites!

CHINESE NEW YEAR

One thing I’ve really enjoyed about being on the ship is the mixture of cultures. Even though I live in the United States, the “melting pot” of the world, a lot of traditions can get lost or “melted” away. When you have a place like the ship, everyone is so excited and eager to share the traditions and cultures of their hometowns and Chinese New Year is no different! We threw a ship-wide invitation out to come learn how to wrap dumplings (and eat them!) and it was just as exciting and successful as last week.

I was really worried for a while that we’d have too many people come and we wouldn’t have enough things to let everyone wrap and eat to their heart’s content but everyone was so gracious and helpful and pitched in to prepare enough for everyone who came! It’s definitely been a case of me really trying to get something to work but knowing I can’t do it on my own.

Then we went up to Deck 8 for some KARAOKE! The Filipino cohort onboard of course has their own karaoke set that they set up outside on the top deck. Everyone did a really great job selecting songs so it was a pretty AWESOME time. The energy was contagious. I went up and did my signature song with April rapping The Black Eyed Peas’s “Where is the Love.” I didn’t even have to look at the lyrics because I’ve done it so many times now at all the Filipino parties that I know all the words. Proof below:

It was a great time. We will definitely be doing this again. My voice was shot after that night.

Good songs for karaoke (aka singing really loudly without a care in the world):

• Where is the Love? — Black Eyed Peas
• Complicated — Avril Lavigne
• Since U Been Gone — Kelly Clarkson
• Shut Up and Dance — Walk the Moon
• Don’t Want to Miss a Thing — Aerosmith
• A Whole New World — Lea Salonga and Brad Kane
• You Belong With Me — Taylor Swift
• Dancing Queen — ABBA
• Macarena — Los Del Rio

There were so so so many more but I can’t remember them all. We sang for at least a couple hours until quiet hours were enforced and we had to stop to spare the ship a sleepless night.

Destiny English Academy

One of the other Mercy Ministries destinations during the week is the Destiny English Academy School for the Destitute — kind of a weird last part of a name but the academy was originally established by locals to take in orphans to teach them English. If I understand correctly, the teachers also take care of the children and have adopted many of them? As the school gained a reputation for how well it’s run, people would just send their children there to learn English (paying school fees). I took a day off on Wednesday after my call week and went with my friend Rachel to see the kids. The ministry activities are pretty similar to what we did at the HOPE center earlier in my term—we go there, sing and dance and praise, share a bible story, then do a craft.

When we walked in, they all shouted something (that I couldn’t quite make all out) welcoming us all to the school and that they were glad for us to be there.

The bible story that was shared was an interesting choice, it was from Numbers 21, the story of the bronze serpent. So we made paper chain snakes and the memory verse they put on them was verses 8-9: “And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses Mae a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” …. ??? Seems like a really strange choice. I think they were trying to convey God as healer and provider of needs but it just seems like it could easily be misunderstood.

We then went out into the school yard to play some games after we finished all the paper chain snakes.

Rachel’s really good with kids. She helped moderate a Jenga game while I tried to do more physical play with the bigger kids. I got to jump rope (harder than I thought to do in a skirt!) and it was a grand old time. We did more dancing and singing outside before we said goodbye.

It was really nice to connect with more locals and interact with the kids here. I think we have a pretty isolated life on the ship, and it can really feel a lot like we’re perpetuating the white savior problem with humanitarian work. April made a good point in other missions settings that we’d been in that we lived and worked and served among the people we were ministering to, but here we have a big white boat and these people come to us to be helped. There are obviously some limitations to how good of care you can give when local conditions are lacking, but I think a lot of my desire to connect with the Guineans here stems a bit from being so isolated from them. Even times like this when I get to help out with the local ministries leaves something to be desired when it’s not really real relationship building where I can invest and deepen relationships with people who are less like me.

One of the questions everyone asks often is, “Are you going to come back?” And honestly, I don’t know. I’ve surely built a lot of relationships with many people from around the world, but less so with the people who are from the West Africa region. Perhaps it’s something that I need to work on in terms of mindset also — what am I seeking, and what is my purpose here? Who am I ministering to? Is my mission my workplace, or the work? Or something else? So many questions. And a lot of heart examination to be done.

Drama in the port waters

After we came back from the English academy, Rach and I took a communal nap and then went to the pool. While we were there, some containers fell into the sea and we aren’t sure from where.

The pilot boats were just pushing them around in the sea. It was some good entertainment. Not much happens in the port waters.

Dolla dolla billz

Hannah left this week, so for her farewell party we went to Istanbul where you can get schwarma, flatbreads, hummus, and PIZZAAAA!!!!!

The food was tasty. I had more pizza.

Everyone who comes to the ship gets a water bottle, but they come in many different colors (blue, red, green, gray, purple, pink)—but what are the chances that everyone who was at dinner (except Michelle who didn’t bring her MS water bottle) had a blue bottle??

Though I’ve been noticing an uptick in blue water bottle prevalence, I think probably because they’ve been running out of the other colors. I’m starting to have trouble grabbing the right water bottle. I put a little gummy bracelet on my lid (fourth from the left) to help.

We racked up another million-dollar-plus bill. Then comes the money counting.

The problem with Guinean money is that their highest denomination bill is 20,000GNF. Remember what I said about paying for a $100+ bill when you only have $2 bills as your largest denomination? Yep.

If there’s any Guinean cultural thing I’ve learned and gotten quite good at, it’s how they count and fold money for large bills like this. You make stacks of 200,000GNF at a time. All bills are enclosed by the largest bill folded in half sideways across the bottom, then you stack them in a neat stack with all the folded bills on the same orientation on the bottom of the stack. Any “leftover” bills that don’t get included in a 200,000GNF stack is laid on the very top. It’s not illustrated properly in the photos above, since we’re just trying to make sure we all have enough for the bill before assembling the stacks on stacks on stacks on stacks on stacks to give to the waitress to count. (Everyone else thought it was really funny so they took the photos).

Ice cream after before going home.

Open bow

The captain opened up the bow of the ship this week to people to come walk on it and “take selfies with the captain.” The bow is the front of the ship (think Titanic pose). It’s usually closed when we’re in port, because the mooring lines that keep us tethered to the dock are so thick and taut that if it snapped while someone was by it, they could be killed. The bow is usually open to whomever during the sail since the mooring lines aren’t out.

Caitlin took me up to the bow and we took a selfie with our (new) Danish captain, Milo!

Apparently Milo was one of the last passengers on the ship before it became the M/V Africa Mercy. It used to be a Danish rail ferry, the Dronning Ingrid before it was purchased to be refit for Mercy Ships. You can still see the former name from the bow.

There is also an oh so small tiny blue cross that is situated on the bow. The chief engineer Octavian was kind enough to take a photo of it for me.

Hospital happenings

[eye twitches]

Flies. They’re freaking EVERYWHERE. When you kill one, another one immediately appears, but not usually more than one in the lab, anyhow. On the wards, it’s a different matter:

In other news, I found MORE PARASITES!! Our first bad boy of the week was Necator americanus, or the New World Hookworm. Kind of a misnomer, since it’s also endemic to southern and central Africa as well as the Americas.

This particular poo was filled with them:

I also had another one that really bothered me because I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but after consulting with parasitology back at home, we determined it’s “definitely an Entamoeba” but its diffuse and central chromatin “is more suggestive of histolytica than coli.” I was having too much trouble with it and not knowing which to report and then Kathy told me “you can just report “Entamoeba species—possibly E. histolytica” and that’s enough. Derp.

In any case, it’s been quite an awesome week. Things are getting a bit routine around here, I’m trying to not fall into the easy lull of being a hermit all the time. Hope you’re all well.

Blessings,
Jasmin