Service in West Africa...

Graduation Day-Administrative Training Program…

Three months with Françoise, one of several from Cotonou’s Bethesda Hospital, ended with graduation! Our intensive training included such things as office management, procedures, word processing, spreadsheets, leadership, conflict resolution, customer service, and filing “with purpose” (so you can find things). Graduation and celebration marked their completion of the Mercy Ships Health Care Development program.

The trainees blessed me with gifts of bright colored African cloth, and another gift of a loom-woven, village made tunic in gray, blue and green. The four trainees fed the four of us trainers well during our last days at the hospital—local fish, beef, fried cheese and fufu. I enjoyed more of the local sodas, Youki, with a new flavor, Mocka Café, a fizzy chocolate coffee flavor. I will miss our daily visits to the Secretariat office teaching this wonderful, feisty-spirited, Beninoise woman. Françoise is not only Administrative Secretary to the Director of her hospital, she is a mom, wife, has a call on her life to be a preacher and now she is my friend.

Spare Time…

I am grasping every opportunity I can for ministry or seeing what others do. In Mercy Ships, we all have a profession that consists of a 40 hour week that keeps all the medical programs thriving. My goal is to experience all that this ministry and the West African culture and community have available.

Jardin D’Edin Orphanage for Boys…

On Saturdays, a few of us from the ship get an opportunity to visit this orphanage for boys age 18 months to 22 years old. I’ve never seen better behaved boys, eager to learn, participating in the stories and the art and craft projects. Their home is on the north side of Cotonou, a few blocks from Lac Nokoué, wedged between various cinder block buildings. It is very crude, each sleeping room crammed with several bunk beds covered in mosquito netting. The kitchen is an uncovered courtyard, about the size of a one-car garage and their common area is about twice the size, with openings amongst the block walls. Here they eat, play, meet with visitors. They simply have a couple dozen resin chairs, a couple benches and tables. The language barrier of French and Fon is easily broken, sometimes by a translator, but more often through the medium of art, playing games, the songs they teach us and much laughter.

Mercy Ships Dental Team…

The dental team is amazing. I drove to their off-ship site one day in the northeast corner of Cotonou on the craziest road I’ve seen yet in this city—dirt road with large craters big enough to catch your entire tire. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were white driving through ditches of water I was sure were going to get our feet wet through the floor boards of the Land Rover. The dental team passengers kept telling me that this was nothing and that the water is often much higher and that we’d make it just fine. We did.

Once to the site I was amazed to find a line of patients waiting outside a nicely painted, gated medical building. The rented facility is retrofitted for the dental field service with sterilizer room and two other rooms equipped with nine portable dental chairs. Each chair has the dental lighting that blinds the one in the chair, plus drills and tools, all powered by a generator (thanks to several Mercy Ship’s benevolent donors). This otherwise abandoned building is a fully functioning dental clinic serviced by a TEAM. They begin their day with worship, praise, welcoming newcomers to the team, prayer, then off to work as a smooth operation, seeing many patients for cleanings, cavities, root canals, etc., all free of charge.

It’s All in the Eye….

I find more joy in using my artistic abilities than most any other venue. So when the eye field team needed drawings for their teaching manual of eyes, stages of eye development, representations of brain activity in relation to the field of vision, I asked them to let me try my hand. The author, Dr. Bob, is well pleased with what I’ve done thus far. I am glad to use this talent hidden away far too long, making pen and ink drawings for this teaching tool that will be left after our ship leaves this country for the local eye trainers of Benin to use.

I am also typing the Eye Training manuscript. My typing skills are very good stemming from mom and dad making me take a typing class in high school. Thanks mom!

Fondation Regard d'Amour (Look of Love Foundation)….

Cuddling and putting clean clothes on clean babies was the highlight of my visit to a children’s home in the town of Calavi, (pronounced “kah-lah-vee”) north of Cotonou, for about 18 abandoned and malnourished children. This very nice facility is still short staffed and I found it difficult to see many wet-diapered children lying in cribs awaiting their turn to be picked up, changed or bathed. The children, many whose mom died in childbirth, love to coo and be held. It was hard to leave having to put the babies back in their cribs. Sorry, no photos were allowed here.

More on Driving in Cotonou….

My driving for Mercy Ships started when I became the Administrative Trainer. I also can drive for personal use meaning that if a group of us want to go to the craft market or a beach, I am often the driver. With that privilege comes the high adrenalin experience of dodging hundreds of motorcycles that stream around the vehicle from all sides. Plus there are many trucks on the road doing business with the many ships in the port. Add to that pedestrians with their wares balanced on top of their heads and women with babies strapped to their backs, makes city driving a challenge. Traffic lights and lines on the road are infrequent, but if they are there, they are merely “suggestions” to the vehicles out there. Cars pass on the right and left and many vehicles turning RIGHT will be on my LEFT and cut straight in front of the Land Rover stopping me short. Pollution goes unchecked and clouds of black and grey smoke billow. I am thankful for air-conditioning in the cars that filter out the strong, smoky smells. Any ability I have to drive here I account as one of the gifts God has given me. I’ve joked with a few friends that the reason I can drive at all in Cotonou is because I have a good working knowledge of my vehicle’s HORN!

Ship Life (written July 26)…

Today is a big day for the ship. What was supposed to happen last week is happening now as I write. We are being hooked up to tug boats to be pulled and pushed to the other side of the port, just several hundred meters away, for refueling the ship. For some short-term crew, this is the only “sail” they will experience. Even with this short distance, it is a major operation—removing the mooring lines that hook us to the dock; crane lifting the gangway to the 8th deck that ceases all getting on and off the ship. We even need the port pilot to guide us in the water they know so much better than we do. As I sit to watch right now on this 8th deck, there are crowds of crew hanging on the rails, many with cameras taking pictures of the tug boats. One tug is yellow, the other black, and both have tires dotting their perimeter.

….Forty minutes later, we are at the fueling dock, after being pushed by a tug to the point of banging the rubber bumpered cement wall with a jolt. Life is indeed exciting aboard the Africa Mercy!

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As 400 crew live, work, eat and socialize in our little community, we love each other, we quarrel, we have close friends and others we know by face only.

My closest friend on the ship is Joan, my South African roommate. Other friends are Linda, now back in the U.S., Joy, from London, Irene from New Zealand, Dr. Bob from Dartmoor, England, Tracy, another of my roommates from the U.S., Cathy from British Columbia, Canada, Don and Frankie from the U.S., and now my newest roommate, Ying, from China but living the past few years in Edinburgh, Scotland.

For fun, we eat at O’Grill, a short walk from the ship feasting on skewered port and fried plantains. Yum! My all time favorite Beninese delight is Fan Milk—frozen ice cream or yogurt in a sealed plastic bag. To eat, you simply bite the corner off and squeeze the frozen delight into your mouth.

On the ship, many of us watch movies. Saturday night was the classic, “The African Queen.” Several of us play Farkle, or Pigs or Canasta Hand and Foot at Don and Frankie’s cabin, a large enough “home” for a tiny table to crowd around. Plus, the ship itself is large enough to have organized activities. I participate in aerobics, Beginning French, Toastmasters International, plus lead the Body and Soul group with my friend Joy. On Sunday mornings I attend the lively African church service on the ship in the hospital ward amongst the patients. I have the pleasant habit of making myself an occasional brunch in the crew galley, usually consisting of sunny side up eggs and toast. Food on the ship is very good using many local fruits and vegetables and other “stuff” shipped from home. Pizza, African food, Sunday Roast, barbecue ribs, spaghetti……I must be hungry as I write this right now! Time to check out what’s for dinner……

Funding…

A final word on the dreaded word “funding.” If the worker is worthy of his/her wages, then the need for support is valid. Each life that I touch while serving with Mercy Ships is funded by the gracious donations of those of you reading this blog. Please consider making a donation to Mercy Ships on my behalf. For tax deductible gift you may write a check to Mercy Ships, add to the memo line my name, Kay Olive-acct. #2392, & mail to:
Mercy Ships
Donor Services
P.O. Box 2020
Lindale, TX 75771
Or, go on line to donate with a credit card at:
www.mercyships.org, choose country,
click on “Make a Gift” tab at bottom, then “Make a Gift” at top of new page;
Drop down box to “Sponsor Crew Member” and find me under “O”
Or for NON-tax deductible gifts, you may make a check to me, Kay Olive, and send it in care of my daughter, Kim at:
Kay Olive
c/o Kim Todd
6280 Idler Grove
Colorado Springs, CO 80922
Thank you for your crucial part in this endeavor.