Good day to you and many greetings from Dakar, Senegal!
As many of you who our following our journey are aware, we arrived with the Global Mercy in Dakar, Senegal, on Friday, the 27th of May in the afternoon.
It was an incredible moment to sail back into the port that we had to leave so suddenly back in April 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We sailed in with a bit of a muted entrance and our flags on half mast to respect the three days of mourning that had been called earlier by His Excellency Macky Sall, President of the Republic of Senegal, in response to the hospital fire which had resulted in the passing of 11 babies.
However, to come in and see the AFM with her crew and patients cheering and waving us in, was absolutely incredible and I was totally overwhelmed with joy. It was such an emotional moment to return to this country, see this ship and our dear friends again, some of whom we hadn’t seen since they had to leave the country on such notice during the start of the outbreak. Even the oh so familiar smell of the port brought back so many memories.
Some pictures from our arrival day – click on the images to enlarge
The next few days all went by in somewhat of a blur of activities, reunions, colors, smells, tastes, sounds, and celebrations.
Before our arrival in Dakar, the “International Symposium for stronger health” had kicked off, where African leaders from different countries joined together for a Symposium on Strengthening Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthetic Care in Africa (you can read more about this here).
This seemed to seamlessly blend into our “Africa Celebration”, which was made up of the celebration of the signing of the Dakar Declaration, the Global Mercy Inauguration Ceremony and the Celebration of Hope.
The Celebration of Hope included a very moving torch ceremony, where a lit torch (real fire) was carried from the Africa Mercy over to the Global Mercy, igniting a second torch, which was then brought to the Global Mercy, symbolising the multiplication of Hope and Healing, the legacy passed on to the GLM from the AFM.
The AFM torch was carried off the vessel by Captain Djurre-Jan, handed to Managing Director Bernard van den Bosch, who carried it over to the GLM dock, where the torch held by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Gary Parker was ignited and handed over to Managing Director Joff Williams, who then passed the torch over to Captain Taylor Perez, who carried it up the gangway onto the Global Mercy (no sprinklers were set off and no ships were harmed in the process)… click on the images below to enlarge them (I am not sure why the first picture cuts Jane’s and my head off in the preview 🙂 )
Being reunited with our sister ship also meant seeing “old” friends again, which is probably one of my favorite parts of this union of our vessels. However, there are also some great things happening on board the Global Mercy while we are here, namely Medical Capacity Building courses. You can read some more about some ongoing activities of this wonderful program here.
So yeah, this is us right now, Ruben is working with his HVAC guys to keep all the heating, ventilation, A/C, refrigeration and plumbing systems running on the GLM (which is a really big job) and I am working on the Africa Mercy some of my time during the day, quarantine allowing.
Which brings me to the explanation of the title of this post (I know some of you have been waiting for it…). Nope, it’s not Covid that has put me out of office and into cabin isolation, but a nasty little gastro-intestinal infection that seems to be going around amongst the crews of both ships (sharing is caring). Oh well, I guess that’s part of the deal. But, I am on the mend and will be out and about tomorrow afternoon if all goes well and we hope to go back to some of the local places we had visited previously in 2019/2020.
Please pray for our patients and the surgical program on the Africa Mercy, the MCB program on the Global Mercy and in country, our leadership teams and also for the health of our crew. THANK YOU!
Love from Senegal, Ruben and Silke
