Settling in Togo

We've been in Togo now for a little more than a month. We still don't really feel that familiar with Lome', the port city we are docked in, but we are slowly getting out and about. When we arrived in February the country was gearing up for elections and we knew that our freedom of movement would be limited. Personal travel away from the ship was suspended for a little over a week during the election and the initial post-election period. We heard lots of reports of large gatherings and some protests, but things seemed to resolve in a mostly peaceful manner. In 2005 there was quite a lot of violence surrounding the Togo elections, so this year many of the Togolese here in Lome' closed their bank accounts and left the country for Ghana or Benin in case violence broke out. We had all been praying that things would go well this year, and apparently they have. The approach to screening patients has been very different this year as well due to the elections. Instead of having a very large screening, effort has been made to avoid large gatherings and have multiple small screenings. I think this system has been working fairly well. Jenny and I were involved in the first screening when there was a lot of uncertainty about how big the turn out would be, but we haven't been involved in the more recent screenings. We, as a family, hope to get out a little more in the coming weeks, but we are often too tired to even want to leave the ship on the weekends. Sooner or later, it seems, cabin fever should force us out more.

In the past month or so I have finally gotten around to doing some reading in the evenings. I finally read "The Shack" by William Paul Young that had been much discussed here. It explores some basic issues underlying our conflicts with God. I have also been reading "Have a Little Faith" by Mitch Albom on a kindle borrowed from a friend. I've found both books very interesting.

A team from Discovery Channel in Canada joined our ship in Tenerife and has recently left the ship after finishing filming an episode of "Mighty Ships" for the cable network. I expect it will air in May or so in Canada. It's possible that it may be seen outside of Canada as well. It will be interesting to see what the film team came away with.

Jenny made heart-shaped waffles and eggs for Valentines Day. And Jenny and Bethany made some pretty pink play dough from scratch using beet juice for the coloring. Bethany made crepes (from white play dough) with scoops of strawberry ice cream (from pink play dough). We all would have liked for it to be real. I spent some time in the crew galley too making real chocolate souffle's. I had forgotten how to make them so the second attempt was much better than the first.

Running club for the kids, which we didn't have in Benin due to the dock conditions, has started up again on Thursday evenings. The kids are having a lot of fun with that, and we love to watch too. I ran with the kids last Thursday. They have a few fun games at the beginning and then fit the kids with pedometers and set them running up and down the dock for 45 minutes or so. They love it and we love that they love it. Bethany saw a rat run under one of the vehicles parked on the dock during running club Thursday. It ran out from under one of the shipping containers that form the wall around our dock space and probably decided that seeing all those kids running was a terrifying sight and immediately headed for cover for fear of being trampled. Good thinking, rat!

A few weeks ago Bethany aquired another temporary pet. She found a very sluggish fly in the dining room and decided to bring it back to the cabin. Jenny and I weren't too excited about the idea, but figured there wasn't any harm in it. Besides, Bethany misses her cat Smokey and has wanted a hamster for years. In light of that it seemed a bit cruel to deny her the pleasure of having a pet fly for a day. Bethany kept the fly in the top of a shoebox without a cover and named it "Mungry the Hungry Fly". She gave it bits of apple and drops of water on a piece of plastic. She even provided some furniture and decor for the fly's new home. And the fly seemed to like being there okay. It stayed on the shoebox cover for six days!! Every day Bethany tended to it and fed it. Finally the evening of the sixth day it left. Where it went we don't know. Perhaps it got strong enough on apple juice and water to fly away.

John

Tenerife, To & Fro and Togo

Well, we're not still sailing now! I realized that our last post was titled "Still Sailing" and much has happened since then! We arrived in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, in the port of Santa Cruz, where we had docked a year earlier, just before Christmas. The last few days of our sail to Tenerife was very rocky. There was a storm centered over the Azores to the north and we had some large swells to pass through. I would say that the mood on the ship during that period was a bit depressed as most were suffering from some degree or other of motion sickness. We had a bit of rather serious damage and some huge messes in a couple of places on the ship as things got loose and went careening about. The floor of the galley was covered with flour and eggs at one point. We went without hot meals a time or two as well because it was too dangerous to use the ovens with all the rocking. We were just happy to have something to eat to keep our tummies settled. The O.R. was hard hit as one of the large eye microscopes (on wheels) got loose and paraded around the room smashing into things. Before it was discovered it had buckled the double doors so badly that they looked like a giant piece of popcorn. So a few additional things not on the list before the sail also needed to be attended to when we arrived in Tenerife.

We were very happy to arrive in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and our family was in the middle of the pre-Christmas (or pre-Three Kings Day - Jan 6 in Spain) buzz trying to prepare for the 25th. We gathered small gifts and candy for others on the ship and did our more-or-less annual clothes, shoe, and toy shopping for the kids. And I bought enough Greek yogurt (one of those lovely European delights that you can't get or is way too expensive in West Africa) to stuff our small fridge. Christmas came and went. I was able to say hello to Nestor (the guide who had taken the boys and me caving the year before) at the shop where he works. We ate at McDonald's which we all enjoyed maybe more because of the familiarity than anything else.

The week after Christmas, we took the ferry to Gran Canaria, one of the neighboring islands for a little family time away from the ship. We had a friend who had offered us a free place to stay there, and we had wanted to visit a different island, so we accepted the offer and had 5 wonderful days there. Since it was Christmas-time there were no rental cars available, so we got around using the public bus system, which happens to be very good in the Canaries. We played on the beach, ate Korean food (a highlight for me), went grocery shopping for many of our meals (that was really pleasant for us because we have done so little of that for so long), and wandered in and out of shops looking (also something we don't really do in Africa). I got some Russian candy from a Russian food store that, if not amazing, was interesting. We visited the Casa de Colon in Las Palmas, the house where Christopher Columbus stayed on his way to the New World and we saw the large Christmas sand sculpture nativity scene they do every year by the beach in Las Palmas. We also visited Aguimes, Puerto de Mogan, and got a camel ride through the sand dunes in Maspalomas. Much fun was had by all.

We arrived back in Tenerife in time for the Three Kings Day parade in Santa Cruz on the evening of January 5th. We went to the parade and watched the three kings arrive in town on camels and assemble to greet the long line of children waiting for them. Somehow Joey, David and I wound up where the soldiers on horseback leading the procession assembled at the end of the parade. One of the horsemen let the boys try out his helmet and play the part. That was a really fun bonus. Some months earlier I had planned to go on a mountaineering trip with some friends on the ship so some of my time after we arrived in Tenerife was taken up trying to gather last minute items for the trip. A good friend of ours who we met at our introduction to Mercy Ships class (IMS) in Texas in January 2008 had done quite a bit of mountaineering in the past and had become interested in arranging a trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I figured that I would not be able to go so I basically dismissed the idea. Well, she went through with the preparations and had gathered a group to go by September or so and the question came up again. I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to climb with a group of friends like this, I desperately needed to get in shape and a trip like this would provide the incentive, and Jenny was very supportive of the idea, so I decided to go with them during January. I must say that the idea of leaving the beautiful island of Tenerife during this respite to travel back to Africa was not overwhelmingly appealing, but I had wanted to see Kilimanjaro for a number of years and was excited about the opportunity. I didn't think Joey was quite ready for the intensity of Kilimanjaro, but he did a number of great hikes with our team as we prepared in Tenerife. They were really strenuous with incredible views and Joey took every one in stride. He's a great hiker! Joey and I even went most of the way up Mt. Teide in Tenerife, and the highest mountain in Spain no less :), in a day. We didn't make it quite to the summit, but we both agreed we had had enough. Since the weather up there wasn't the best and we had to hike back down before sunset we turned around 45 minutes or so from the top.

I left with the others for Tanzania in early January. Climbing Kilimanjaro was very hard, but good. We spent 8 days on the mountain.Summit day was certainly the most difficult part. We left our tents before midnight and hiked in the dark up from about 15,000 ft. to 19,300 ft. (5,895 m.) or so at the summit. It was cold and windy and the trail never seemed to end. The high altitude caused a lot of physical and mental changes including some confusion, disorientation, apathy, headache, muscle cramping, and momentary loss of coordination. I had never experienced anything like that before, and there was just nothing easy about it! We arrived at the summit just after 7 am and spent 15 minutes or so at the top. It was very foggy and frost was forming on everything and everyone. We arrived back down at camp around 10:30 am, collapsed for 1 hour, had lunch, and then hiked 4 more hours down to a lower camp. In addition to summiting, we descended about 9,000 feet in all that day. It was quite a blessing to have done it, but I would be happy not to do it again:) Since we were going to be in Tanzania anyway, we had decided to see some animals too, so we visited the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area and the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania. God's creation is stunning and northern Tanzania is an incredible part of it.

While I was gone for those 2 1/2 weeks, Jenny's parents came to visit for a week in Tenerife and everyone had a great time. Jenny spent a week after that looking after the kids and working on some continuing education coursework needed for her nursing license renewal. My time in Tanzania was great, but for me, I was more excited about coming back to the ship than I had been about going to Tanzania. My time away helped to remind me what a blessing my family is and how much I enjoy doing stuff with them. It was really wonderful coming "home". A few days after I got back to the ship it was time to sail for Togo. But before we left we were able to squeeze in a visit to Monkey Park on Tenerife. That was a blast! Several of the cages there are walk through so you can feed and touch the monkeys.(The first two lines of that sign are: "Please keep your children under control during your visit." and "Do not leave your children walk alone." So, we made sure to put Bethany in the cage with the monkeys.)One of the monkeys pulled Jenny's scrunchie out of her hair and ran off with it. Thankfully, he soon had enough of it and we got it back. There was a moment of horror during our visit too! We were watching one of the small brown monkeys up close when he suddenly reached up and grabbed a ball of poo from the rear-end of a nearby mongoose lemur just before it fell to the ground! The monkey returned quickly to face us with his newfound payload. Convinced that it was soon to be hurled in our direction, Jenny and I yelled for the kids to run away and I'm sure I muttered some military lingo or other like "incoming!" It was quite a tense moment, but soon the monkey dropped his handful on the ground and, with that, the panic subsided. Whew!!Back at the ship we again stocked the fridge with yogurt, got a few ice cream bars for the freezer (very uncommon treat for us in Africa), made sure we had what we needed for the next 6 months and sailed away. The day we sailed was stormy early in the day and cleared later, so we were able to leave, but Tenerife got hit with some bad flooding and storms the following day and over the following weeks. We were fortunate to have sailed when we did, but we were sad for their losses.

So, then we sailed to Togo in early February experiencing even rougher seas during the first 2 or 3 days than during the previous sail! UGH! I don't think much got damaged this time, though, thankfully.

Someone had given a donation specifically for a new pool, so the ship had gotten a new pool mostly installed during the time in Tenerife. It is still in the process of being finished and due to water concerns in Togo, it may be a while before it is operational.

Arrival in Togo went well and there were brass and drum bands to welcome us into the port. We all dressed up for the occasion and sang African praise songs as we arrived. Very nice! Now its time to get our hands dirty; that's what we're here for.

John

Still Sailing

It's hard to believe that we have been sailing for eight days now. We seem to be rolling a bit harder today, enough to make me feel a bit queasy, but it's still smooth and we've had good weather for the most part. A couple of nights ago there was a very nice meteor shower that we were able to watch from deck eight. The above photo was taken up there at night, but of course there are no meteors visible in the photo, just some squiggles where the stars are. Sailing at night with a clear sky has a way of making you feel really small with the huge expanse of the universe above and the expanse of the deep below. One can only dream of what may be out there in any direction, up or down.

On Saturday it rained and the kids decided to start playing in the little wave pool formed by the water that had accumulated on deck faster than it could drain. The water formed little waves as the ship rocked back and forth. The kids got soaked of course, but it was a great opportunity for them to burn off some energy, so we were happy for it. They even made "water angels". Of course you couldn't see anything once they got up except maybe a slightly cleaner place on the deck, but they had fun doing it. Sometimes the kids make "sand angels" too in Africa as there is no snow that I know of within 1000 miles of where we spend our time.

We had the annual Winter Wonderland on board a couple of nights ago where people sell Christmas crafts and snacks and stuff. The kids are working hard on play rehearsals for the Christmas play the Academy is doing this week.We have had our usual drills too. I got a photo of Jenny just before the camera battery ran out.

David and I got a little bored at lunch the other day. We entertained each other, and a few others, with napkins.

We're having a good sail, but we're ready for Tenerife. I just like land.

John

An Education

In the early fall of this year (I should probably say September since the idea of fall, or any of the other seasons for that matter, does not translate in Africa at all) I met a fellow on the dock who said that his name was Mark, that he was from Ghana and that he had come to Cotonou in order to work as a day volunteer with Mercy Ships. He arrived much later than February and there were no positions available by the time he arrived. He said that his friend who brought him here had assured him of being able to work with the ship and had stolen his money and headed to Nigeria. He claimed he had no place to live.

A couple of weeks later I bumped into him again as I was walking along the very polluted beach area not far from the dock. He said he had been sleeping in an abandoned building by the beach there and that he had no money, no job, and had been scraping by hoping to get enough money to replace his passport that had been stolen so he could return to his home in Ghana. I told him my name and left because the time had come for me to do laundry on the ship and I didn't want to lose my laundry slots.

Some days later Mark came to the ship and I got a call from the guard at the gangway that he was there looking for me. Well, his purpose was to ask if I would help him to pay the fee to get his passport replaced. He said that someone else from the ship had helped him with getting photos for the passport. It is normally better to say no and, if you really feel you want to help in a financial way, help only people that you have a real relationship with rather than give money to just anyone who asks. There are so very many of those kinds of requests where we live. Nonetheless, contrary to common wisdom, I believed this fellow and agreed to help him. I gave him some money for his passport, and on another occasion gave him some money for his return trip to Ghana and prayed with him. I expected not to see him again because I had helped him to get out of Cotonou and back home.

Well, that was not the case and he came back to the ship a week or so later claiming that he had returned to Ghana, had found out that his grandmother had died while he was in Benin and had left him an inheritance. He claimed that he had a valuable gold necklace and some property deeds that he wanted me to keep for him. He also claimed that his bag had been kept by the bus station until he paid the remainder of what he owed for his return ticket to Cotonou. At this point, I was certainly questioning the man's character and wondered if there was any truth to his story, although I really wanted to believe that he had been telling me the truth up til now. I did not agree to keep anything for him to his great disappointment. It was clear to me that that was not the thing to do, although I did give him the relatively small amount of money he asked for on the off chance that he was telling the truth.

Later that night my friend Olly spoke to me and said that he had seen me on the dock talking to "his friend, Mark". Olly wanted to know the story that Mark had told me. Olly is in charge of transportation and spends a lot of time on the dock dealing with the ship's vehicles. The story that Mark had told Olly about himself and his situation was very different from the story he had told me. It was very clear at that point that Mark, if that was even his name, was a spinner of tales. Olly and I had both compassionately given him money thinking that we were really helping him. Olly also told me other really interesting stories that he had heard in his interaction with shady characters on the dock over the years.

I confronted Mark the next time he came asking for me and told him that I did not believe his story and he did his best to spin his way out of that too including stories accusing others of diamond smuggling. I began to wonder why he would talk about smuggling and at the same time be so eager to get me to take and keep something for him on board the ship if he were not engaged in some kind of smuggling himself.

It became clear to me later that he most likely was trying to see how difficult it would be to get some cooperation from crew members in smuggling drugs or even people on board the ship while lying to get some money in the process. It was so educational for me to go through this that in the end, although it didn't feel at all good be lied to, I felt like it was worth the money I gave him to have the knowledge I gained on how to recognize criminals despite how silky their tongues. No great harm had been done and I feel much wiser for the experience.

John

Green Thumb

On April 25 Jenny wrote about how Joey and I had gone into town to work on an orienteering requirement for Boy Scouts. That was the beginning of a story that I didn't write about then, but has now played out much more fully. Our final destination on that walk into town, following a map and using a compass, was a mosque nearby that had a couple of towers that Joey could measure the height of using some techniques from his Boy Scout handbook. Once we finished the scout work we were confronted by a group of people begging in the median in front of the mosque. We spoke with them and tried to help them understand what our purpose in town was. We explained about the ship and that the ship offered surgeries on board. I knew at that time that the schedule had already gotten very full and I wasn't qualified to screen people for surgery. There was one fellow lying there on the ground, however, who said he had "sickness" in his thumb. He unwrapped his thumb and showed it to me and it looked quite bad, tapering up from the joint to a greatly swollen, 1.5 inch diameter tip that was open and infected. He had been packing the wound with herbs in an attempt to stop the infection. I figured that he could easily die from infection with his condition and I thought I should really try to help him. I gave him what clinic information I could and gave him my name. A few days later he came to the gangway of the ship asking for me. I asked Jenny if there was any way to get his thumb looked at. She doubted it knowing how full the schedule was, but knew that there would be an orthopedic surgery team doing some additional screening soon and so she referred me to the orthopedic team leader. I had to go to a bit of effort, but was able to get him a card for the screening. By the time I worked that out he had left so I drove back out to the mosque the next day to deliver the card and, thankfully, Vincent was there lying in his usual spot in the median. After the screening, I was told that Vincent had gotten "the thumbs-up for a thumb off". I was happy that my extra effort had landed him a place in the surgery schedule. Well, Vincent came to the ship, had a portion of his thumb amputated and left. It was not the last we saw of him though. He returned multiple times afterward for more surgery on his thumb because it continued to get infected. I began to wonder why I had found him and worked to get him seen if he may be in no better shape when we leave Benin. I don't know how Vincent is doing now that we are gone. I pray and hope that his thumb is healing. What I do know is that there were a number of day volunteers (local people who work with us during the day as translators or who help in other ways on the ship) who began asking why we were helping him. They had apparently said that he had been cursed and that was why his thumb would not heal. They said that he had been caught stealing and had had his thumb slashed because of it. I don't know if there was any truth to their story, but clearly they thought he was not a good man and we should not be bothering to help him. I doubt all of this would have come about if he had not been returning multiple times to the ship for treatment. It all made me wonder if maybe part of the purpose for him being a patient on the ship and returning again and again was to help our day volunteers understand that, in following the example of Jesus, we do not turn away those who may need help the most. Jesus was a friend to all and spent time among the outcast and those who society considered to be evil and had rejected. If we are to follow Jesus example, we also have to reach out to those same kinds of people. I hope that the fact that we were helping this man, whom some of our day volunteers did not consider worthy of our help, helped them to understand more about the true character of Jesus. I don't know the full purpose of having found Vincent that day, but I'm sure that God knows and I will have to leave that for Him to sort out. I am encouraged, though, that perhaps the purpose for him to come to the ship was much greater and went much deeper than just helping to fix his thumb.

John

Sailing

We have now packed up, said our goodbyes, left Benin, and are sailing to the Canary Islands for some down time and preparation for another field service in West Africa to begin in February. The sail so far has been nice and smooth, but there are still some who feel a bit rough. It's a bit hard for me too to look at the computer for very long without needing to go out on deck and get some fresh air. Yesterday was pretty eventful, especially in the evening when we saw a water spout pass by us on our port (left) side at not more than about 200 yards away. I was able to see it change shape and size over time as it stirred up the water beneath it. It was an incredible sight. It lasted for probably ten minutes at various intensities. We are also seeing quite a few flying fish flying away from the ship as it passes through the water. They must think we are an awefully big whale and want to escape as quickly as possible. They sometimes are hard to distinguish from birds flying continuously just above the surface of the water. They often fly 100 yards or more before they disappear back below the surface of the ocean. Yesterday evening there were Christmas plays and stories told all over the ship in 20 minute intervals by different individuals and groups. Since we don't have cold weather to remind us that it's the holiday season like we're used to, its nice to have some Christmas spirit on board.

John

President's Dinner

In November we had the honor of attending a dinner in Cotonou given by the President of Benin, Dr. Yayi Boni. Not long after the ship arrived in Benin, the president issued an invitation to the entire crew of the Africa Mercy (all that could come) to a state dinner. A few weeks ago it came to pass and our family and most of the crew were able to attend. (That's Joey and me in the photo below on the left. By the time we entered there were no tables with five free seats so Jenny, Bethany and David sat at another table.)The president gave distinguished national awards to the founders of Mercy Ships (Don and Deyon Stevens) and three key administrative crew members. Don presented Dr. Yayi Boni with a framed photo of the Africa Mercy in Cotonou made up of many smaller photos taken during our work here. That was an honor to me also because I had taken that photo of the ship from the nearby fishing village. It was a very nice dinner followed by dancing by several dance troupes from all over Benin. It was one of the more notable events of our time in Benin. (Photos by Debra Bell)
John