arrival

I was awake before six this morning, lying in my bed and feeling the barely-perceptible rock of the ship begin to summon the day’s familiar nausea. The tone of the overhead announcement sounded and I tensed, not quite able to shed the past year’s duties as an EMT even though I’m off the team until I come back for Benin. For those on deck, please no flash photography. It came back with a rush, then. The captain’s announcement at last night’s meeting that the pilot would be coming on board promptly at 0600 to guide us to a berth. Going to sleep feeling for all the world like I was five again and it was the night before my family started the five hundred mile drive to Toronto before the sun had risen.

I shrugged into my clothes and stepped out into the cool, damp air to be greeted not by the familiar wind and darkness, but by a fairyland of lights. I blinked, but they stayed lit, shining through the night to guide us into port. The ship began its slow crawl towards the dock, the lights beginning to distinguish themselves as houses and Christmas trees and street lamps. I saw a man standing on the end of the dock, illuminated by the headlights of his car. He stood straight-backed, a trumpet in his hands, and as we threw out the mooring lines the simple, clear notes of Away in a Manger floated back across the water to where we stood at the rail.

I had to swallow hard just then and make some offhand comment about how insane it was to actually be able to see my breath or else the whole ship would have seen me break down right there on deck seven. Because it finally hit me; I just realized that we actually left Liberia.

It seems insane, after a week of sailing away from West Africa, that I can only just now comprehend the fact that we left. I kept staring at those lights, brighter than all of Liberia, and all I wanted was to see the dim outline of the Ducor on top of the hill. And now that day has come and the mountains are draped in shadows and sun and all around me civilization grinds unceasingly on, all I want is our wide-open port, dotted with canoes and sunken ships.

It’s dinner-time, and I have yet to step foot outside the ship. Granted, that’s partly because I’m on duty and carrying the pager limits me to a pretty small radius, but the truth is that I’m scared. I’m scared that stepping onto Spanish soil will finally mean that I’m not in Africa anymore, that I’ve left Liberia forever, and I’m just not ready to do that.

I’m hiding behind the steel hull of my ship, because the longer I stay here, the longer I can pretend that I’ll look out the portholes and see my beloved third world.

Why is this so hard?

It's killing me not to have photos to share with you all, but as I haven't yet gotten my own password, I can't get my computer onto the internet. And I don't have time for the thousands of words it would take to describe what a few pictures would be more than able to. How about thumbnail sketches instead?

The ship is enormous. We easily dwarf all the other ships in port here, especially the four or five wrecks, bits of their unfortunate hulls just visible scattered throughout the harbour. My cabin is shared with four other girls (a fifth will make us an even six on Friday). We hail from England, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands and Jersey. Everything I own seems to be stuck to the wall with magnets now. The only way I know where I live is that the floor on my deck is green. When all else fails, I find a set of stairs and go up and down, up and down until I'm greeted by that familiar green. Strange to think that my cabin is just a few steps away from an ICU, because deck three is also the hospital.

Yesterday, I walked to the market with one of my roommates and a few other girls. I am eternally grateful that my first experience in Africa was in the bush, because I know that not everywhere is this dirty. Joseph was right though- I may not be in Sierra Leone, but this is war poverty, too, and it's so different from the bush. People lined the sides of the road, life for sale spread out on benches or cloths in front of them. A heavily pregnant woman paused her work as we passed, only to bend down again and continue pouring gasoline into large glass jars. Small children with impossibly large loads on their head wove their way through the crowd and piles of garbage, one hand clutching a stack of liberian dollars (LD), the other alternately waving to the white girls and gently steadying their wares. Battered yellow Nissan taxis bucked and honked, picking up passengers until their back bumpers (if they still had one) rested on the ground. Mothers wrapped in brightly coloured lappas carried small babies on their backs. The babies were bundled, presumably against the cold, although my own shirt clung damply to my back and the sweat ran down the back of my legs to form mud from the dirt on my feet. Everywhere, men called out. "White girl, you fine! I want to marry you! I will come to America!"

Today I napped because I still wasn't feeling like a real person. Hours of travel and too many new faces had combined to leave me feeling like I was in an extended dream. When I woke up, the most natural thing in the world was to join some new friends for a half hour drive in the back of a land cruiser to the beach. (Interesting side note: God must really want me here, because I'm the one who gets sick in the back of a minivan on an American highway. Today I sat sideways, looking backwards in ninety degree heat on roads so rutted that we looked drunk as we drove to avoid the potholes and felt not a touch of nausea. There's hope for me yet!) Next to the road on the way to the beach stands the shell of an old building. Before the war, it was the bustling five-star Hotel Africa. Now it's nothing but concrete, roof gone, open to the sun and rain. Heartbreaking to think that Liberia was once the gold standard, the country that all other African countries wanted to emulate.


In the midst of all this, God is so good to me. Last night we had a time of worship in the ship lounge (I'm headed there in a few mintues for a church service). We sat in a circle, again, a motley crew collected from the ends of the world. We sang and prayed together. At the end, the girl leading took out her Bible and opened to Isaiah. Chapter 58. "If you pour out your heart," she read, and I dissolved into tears. I know God wants me here. I was confident of His leading when I got on the plane on Thursday. While I'm often overwhelmed by the idea that I won't be home for a year, I am sure that this is where He has led me. So why did He give me yet another proof? Why, on my first night in Liberia, did someone read the very verse that He used to call me here? Because He loves me. Wholly and unreservedly. And I'm starting to realize that He will never tire of showing me that.

The rest of my life is going to be amazing.

I'm sitting in the internet cafe on board the M/V Africa Mercy. The floor is moving ever so slightly beneath my chair. No pictures yet, but I promise I'll give you a visual as soon as possible. I'm oddly at ease right now. No one in the goup I came with yesterday is staying as long as I plan to. I can't find my way around. I'm sleep-deprived. Nothing feels normal, nothing feels familiar.

But when I got off the plane last night, it smelled like home.