serving on the Africa Mercy: meet the neighbors

Today I'd like to introduce you to a few of our neighbors.....

If I think about it for a few minutes, I remember how odd it really is to live in an industrial shipyard. I mean, think of it from the perspective of the port workers- they spend their days doing port worker things...like driving fork lifts and big trucks and recieveing containers and shipments of things. And then one day they hear that a ship is coming and the government is letting them use a prime berth space for a whole 10 month period at no charge. And not only that, there are 400 men, women and children living on board and it's a hospital.

In West Africa, we are pretty well known. We've visited those countries repeatedly over the last 35 or so years, and so the white hospital ship is a welcome sight. But this is our first visit to central Africa, and people are still getting to know us. We are still earning trust and proving that we are really going to do what we promised. So we show up here, park a small village at the end of this shipyard, and then go back and forth with our land rovers all day long bringing patients on board. Anyway, I just think it's probably a bit weird for the people who work here- now when they come to work they might see our daily car full of a dozen blind people headed towards our ship. They have been very welcoming; the port has to work hard to host us, and we are thankful for their partnership.

The Africa Mercy is right where that blue dot is, the end of the peninsula shaped bit is the port, and we are on the inside part of the dock closer to the shoreline.

Port Autonome de Pointe Noire is where my floating home is parked here in Congo, and we have an ever-changing backyard. But, as it was in Guinea last year, some of the ships return frequently and there is an array of fishing boats and tug boats that live here permanently. And a few half sunken boats that live here very permanently. (Photo credit for this next photo goes to Josh) In this photo there are lots of fishing boats, they are docked right near our ship. When they come in with a catch it smells, umm...very fishy. Last year I had a favorite fishing boat in the Guinea port, it was really colorful and looked like a life-size version of a bathtub toy. I'll have to choose a new favorite for this year.

Borrowed this next photo from Emma- skip it if you are squeamish....but here's a reason for the fishy smell...

Deck 7 is one of my favorite places on the ship. The port side of the ship is not actually the side with the dock and the gangway. Starboard side is to the dock, and port side is towards the water. How's that for confusing.

This is deck 7 port side, looking towards the shoreline.

There's this handy website called marinetraffic.com where you can see live satellite information on ships coming and going around the world. I took some screen shots of our neighbors.

Here we are- (we are the blue dot with the black box around it)

Here's our nearest neighbor (for today anyway), Safmarine Sahara, docked directly behind us.

The blue ship on the left is here in port frequently, Niledutch Cheetah. The names are great. I told my cabinmates I was writing this post, and Amy mentioned that one of the ships that visited often in Guinea was the "Celine Dion".

And a couple more...

Here's the other side of deck 7, nearer the dock. There is a nice green floor mat for the kids to play on, and a net to keep balls from going overboard.