Thursday, November 6, 2014

Tamatave

Hello from a sailor who is very, very happy to be done sailing. :) And I don’t think I’m the only one. The whole crew is so, so happy to finally be here!


Madagascar was a French colony at one point so all of the cities have two names--a Malagasy name and a French name. Tamatave is the French name and Toamasina is the Malagasy name for where we are at. In the picture above, you can see that the welcome sign driving in to town says "Welcome" in Malagasy and French. So if I refer to both you'll know why. :) 

I really enjoyed the summer but I don’t think I realized how ready I was to be in field service mode. All day long last Monday (the first work day we were here) I kept seeing things and thinking, “Wow, I haven’t seen that in five months!” It’s just pretty awesome to finally see nurses in scrubs and big pieces of equipment not tied up in a corner waiting for the next sail. 

After the President’s visit, we still had lots to do! The ship needed to move berths--we arrived to the first berth because it was big enough to host the President’s party. But we’re really exposed in this port and the ship was moving quite a bit so the captain wanted to move as soon as possible. But first the deckies (deck department) had to take some depth readings to make sure the other berth was safe. Jordan got to spend all day in the rescue boat zipping around the port taking depth readings. He came home happy but tired! 

Putting the yokohamas in place for the ship to rest against the new dock.

Tamatave so far has been fantastic. It’s the smallest town we’ve been in so far and the small town feel of it really reminds me of Mamou, the town in Guinea that I grew up in. I love it! The port is clean with clearly marked sidewalks all the way to the gate, which is only a 10 minute walk. So nice! There is a GORGEOUS white sand beach that is very inviting--unfortunately, the sharks are the ones doing the inviting! So we are not allowed to swim but hey, it’s beautiful to look at! But every day I look over the edge of our dock and there are sea urchins and brightly colored fish and puffer fish and jelly fish and last week there was an OCTOPUS! It’s like living in an aquarium; so, so cool! 

View from the gangway.


Looking off the gangway on my way to my cabin from work.

Part of life returning to normal was welcoming this year's day crew! Each year, Mercy Ships hires approximately 200 local day crew and we honestly could not do ANYTHING that we do without them. We hire translators, deck hands, housekeeping, galley, and dining room crew, drivers for patients, mechanics--the list goes on and on! Papanie Turay is my housekeeping supervisor and him and I went on Monday, October 27th to pick up our day crew. 


Papanie and I going to pick up our day crew. 

We are loving our day crew in crew services!! Every morning they sing a hymn in Malagasy and pray together before going to work. I'm so looking forward to getting to know each one and learning about Malagasy culture from them. 



Prayer in the morning.

Hospitality & Housekeeping Crew! I love this team!

I will hopefully get some more pictures of around town in a later post; I haven't been off the ship all that much yet as we have been so busy getting ready for patients to come on board! But I will just show one picture of local transportation that is VERY different than West Africa: The pousse-pousses and tuk-tuks. I have to say, I love them but my first experience felt a bit surreal! Here's a picture:




The pousse-pousse is the bicycle with the carriage on the back. The tuk-tuk is the yellow tricycle looking thing. Picture a motorcycle with a roof and walls. Pay $1 for a pousse-velo and $1.20 for a tuk-tuk and off you go into town!! There are minivans, taxis, big busses, regular cars, scooters, and motorcycles all going varying speeds and everyone makes way for everyone else! I have only driven in town once but it was quite the experience dodging 6 different forms of transportation! The basic rule is: whoever is the biggest goes first. 

And now: the reason we are here! To bring hope and healing through free surgical care! This year we are doing something a little bit different; instead of having one big screening day with lots of smaller follow-up screening days, we are doing medium-sized screenings every Monday--Friday for a month. They started this Monday and things are going well! As of Wednesday, here were the statistics: 






Now to explain. :) For the first two days, roughly 2,000 people showed up each day. The line has gone down in the days since then but there are still a lot of people showing up each day. Out of all of the people that have shown up each day, we have pre-screened 1960. Out of those people, 492 were let through the gate into the compound for further screening. Out of those, 355 people have appointments. This process will continue for 3+ more weeks! The first patients will come on board on Monday, November 10 and the first surgery will be the next day! Would you pray for those patients--pray for no anxiety for them and that their recovery will go smoothly. Pray for the screening team that is examining hundreds of people each day--pray that they will have wisdom to know which questions to ask and know who and how we can help! 

We are so excited to bring physical healing, but Tamatave is a city that also really needs Jesus. There are approximately 180,000 people in this town and there’s an estimate that 30,000 of those are sex workers. IN ONE TOWN. Evidently there’s a good number of French military men that get their pensions and retire here--mostly for the prostitutes. Then there is a big mining company that came 5-7 years ago and since they arrived, the numbers of night clubs and brothels have risen drastically. It’s a problem all over the country but especially in this city for some reason. 

A missionary from town here came to speak to us about the culture in town and one thing she mentioned was how excited she was to have a ship with 400 volunteers who love Jesus roll into town--there are only 7 missionaries here. She also reminded us that even though we are here to minister to the Malagasy, there are tons and tons of expats that are here fueling this problem of prostitution and to please remember that those people need Jesus too. 

Here’s the ironic/really cool thing: Toamasina & Tamatave means “like salt” or “salty”. Sound familiar?? Satan has worked hard to have a stronghold in this town. Please join us in praying that we shine for Jesus and let nothing mar his love for these people!