Hey, lovely people!

It has been an exciting couple of weeks! Wrapping up On-boarding, heading out for field practice, arriving on the ship on Friday …. and now we are finally here!!! Being back on the ship felt like coming home – there are a lot of friendly faces here that I still know. And although I miss my friends at home (especially in Hamburg) and my family – it is lovely to be back.

 

 

And I can’t express how much I missed the bustling of the ship and port and the width and breeze of the ocean. Benin is nothing like Madagascar, but the ship hasn’t changed a lot (apart from some amazing work that has been done in shipyard to enhance her beauty) so it still feels very familiar being here. Different country, same home.

So let me take you on a journey and show you some impressions from the last couple of weeks to get you up to speed 😀

 

On early Thursday morning, October 20th, we headed out from the ISC in Texas to begin our journey to Benin.

 

 

Arriving at the airport we were told that our first flight was delayed and we had to be re-routed, or we would miss our connecting flights. Thanks to the change of plans, the majority of our group got upgraded and traveled in Economy premium (with a lot more legroom and a lot of free seats in between) on our first long flight to Brussels – YAYYY GOD!

The rest of the travels also went quite smoothly (a couple of bumps in Brussels, where all of a sudden we didn’t have boarding passes for connecting flights because they weren’t expecting us due to the re-routing – but it all turned out well) and we arrived in Cotonou, Benin on Friday night.

We were being greeted by a friend of mine who picked up half of our bags to bring them to the ship, which was a very pleasant surprise. This friend, Doug, would be leaving the ship soon after to go back to the U.S. to be with the lady he fell in love with this summer – so CONGRATS, Doug – but still a little sad to not have you around! And we also met Daslin, a former Mercy Shipper, who is running a children’s home for orphans, in which we would be working for the next two weeks.

After spending one night in a “hotel” (with “cold-bucket-shower”) and sharing a bed for the night with my on-boarding friend Angie, we left the next morning and headed up to Abomey, which is three hours drive up-country from Cotonou.

 

 

Since it was Saturday, we had a little time to get settled in, go to the “House of Hope” (which is the name of the children’s home) and get an idea of what would be some of the work that needed to be done the next weeks and meet some of the kids. We spent both of our Sundays attending the church service in the House of Hope, celebrating God’s love with the kids. It was amazing to see the church service basically being led by the kids (there were some “older” ones, about 13-15 years of age, that led through worship and prayer time) and experience the joy of the community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday morning we started the practical work in the children’s home. Some of the work included painting the outer walls of some of the buildings (which involved getting the paint mixed at the local market and debating about the price in french, which was very… unique 😀 ), helping carry sand and gravel for the mixing of the concrete, carrying concrete buckets to help build a wall through the property, doing some electrical work, mounting and installing twelve ceiling fans, fixing broken cabinets and so on. Have a look for yourself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all it was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. I got to know my teammates (and myself) better and it was always great to spend time with the kids. On the second weekend after arriving, we planned “Olympic games” for the kids, which included “Waterballoon toss” and “Hula Hoop Huddle”, “English BINGO”, “Precision Soccer Shootout”, “Watterbottle Bowling”, “Obstacle race” and the “Bananamania race” (I don’t think these were the official names, but I guess they describe the games quite well). We all had a lot of fun, as you can see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

During our time in Abomey we worked closely with Pauline, our translator, and Andre, our driver – who taught us a lot of interesting things about the local culture and commodities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So after our field practice portion was finished and we all said our goodbyes, we left for the ship on Friday, November 4th and arrived at noon. The roadtrip was fun, and we got to see a lot of bizarre, colorful and interesting things!

 

 

 

 

Entering Cotonou again, it became very clear to me, that this was going to be a whole new experience. Abomey was a small city with a huge market, but Cotonou is one of the largest and busiest cities in Benin.

Check out the short video I recorded on out way into the city:
cotonoudrive
There are so many more stories to tell and impressions from the field practice to share, but I think I will leave you with these for now, although I might get back into some more details later.

Tomorrow morning I will take up my work in anesthesia and I am very excited to be back, although also a little bit terrified, because I haven’t been doing any anesthesia for three-and a half months now – let’s hope it’s like riding a bike 😀
I hear the last couple of weeks have been very challenging due to a lot of complicated cases, so prayers are very much appreciated these days!

I would love to hear from you! Thank you so much for supporting me!
Love from Westafrica!!!

Silke