Flight of the 990

The field service of the Africa Mercy is over for Togo 2012 and the hospital work has ceased, but the bustle of activity has only increased in preparation for our sail from Lome to Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Our captain has told us we're anticipating a ten day sail, fair weather most of the way, thank goodness 'cause I feel like the swaying is quite a bit! Thank goodness for friends, handrails, walls, doors, anything to hang onto while traveling up and down our hallways.

Some of the tasks we've been involved with in preparation of shutting down our hospital have included the infamous bleaching down of the wards (walls, ceilings, floors) that some of you are familiar with from previous descriptions from last year. We got to redo it again at the end of Togo but was quite a bit cleaner only having been a 6 month service this time. One of the more onerous tasks was sorting and scanning patient charts so they can be stored electronically. One way to make the time go faster though is to stick all the nurses in an empty ward with boxes of charts and playing Pirates of the Caribbean projected on the ward. Time flies when you've got good friends and Johnny Depp :-)

Did I mention we're sailing? And swaying. Swaying a lot! So there was loads of bolting things down going on, securing our belongings on top shelves that you don't want whacking you on the head in the middle of the night or landing on something breakable. I'm told the lack-of-balance thing will pass as soon as I get my sea legs. Our ship's physician has handed anti-seasickness tablets like they're M&M's and there's heavy black market trading in ginger tablets and ginger teas going on.

There have been several safety drills to prepare us for the sail, and two stowaway searches where every single nook and cranny of the ship are combed over in search of anybody trying to head off to a better life, and a lovely very $$$ fine for Mercy Ships should a stowaway be found entering Europe. Our doc joked that we can pay him for the tablets in M&M's and the captain said that if a crewmate is found stowing away a stray, the discovery will soon be followed by a Man Overboard drill - the offending crewmate having just volunteered his services! :-)

My favorite part of prepping the ship was watching the ship's jeeps being loaded onto the top deck of the Africa Mercy. It's quite exhilirating to watch a fleet of white jeeps swung through the skies and deposited onto the deck, to be parked and bolted down for the sail.