We'll be here for three weeks while the crew gets a break after a long outreach in Sierra Leone. We've already started enjoying what the West African crew (and any of us yovos who've been here before) call the Promised Land. It's wonderful to be in a place where the roads are clear enough that we can drive miles in minutes instead of hours, but it doesn't quite feel like Christmas yet if I'm being honest. I associate Christmas on the ship with Tenerife, with weather chilly enough for a scarf and fruit like pears and strawberries. But this Christmas is going to be an African one, complete with ninety degree weather and mangoes in big plastic buckets in the dining room. It's going to be different.
So much is the same, though. The Christmas season on the ship is steeped in tradition; anyone that knows my family knows our love of traditions. Because the crew comes from so many countries, there are little pieces pulled from all around the world to make up December on the Africa Mercy. We have cookie baking and a European-style Christmas market, complete with gingerbread and homemade snow cones, of course. (It's the closest we're going to get to the real thing!) We have a storytelling night and the Academy students put on a big Christmas musical. (It was last night, and it was amazing. A definite highlight was all the high school girls dressed up like angels and dancing hip hop. Who says that wasn't how they appeared to the shepherds?!) On Christmas Eve we all put an empty shoe outside our doors, and sometime in the night we sneak out to fill the shoes of our friends with little presents. (One of the prerequisites for this activity is feigning blindness if you happen to cross paths with one of the other elves in the middle of the night.) We all roll down to the dining room in our pajamas for Christmas brunch, and it's like being with your entire extended family and then some.
I'm going to enjoy these next few weeks. We have friends to visit here in Ghana and lots of exploring to do in Accra. Posting will probably be light, since the only real work I'm doing is in the office, and I'm pretty sure you don't need to know how the scabies policy is coming along, now do you?
