Back in Africa

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Dinner onboard for tired travelers

The trip from Texas to West Africa was long, but good. All flights were on time and my luggage arrived without problems. Two other crew members were not so fortunate; they had a delay in Chicago missing the fight from Brussels to Liberia. It doesn’t take much for things to go wrong on international flights.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the end of the civil war in Liberia. The 14 years war killed 200,000 people and displaced many others. The new pavement on the road from RobertsInternational Airport to the Africa Mercy in the port of Monrovia stopped half way; from that point on the ride is not as pleasant as it was before that point.

A Chinese firm has a contract to repair the road, but much of the work stopped because the raining season. I thing the Chinese are watching the Olympics Games like everyone onboard the ship. There are four TV scream spread in the public lounge of the ship. With more than 35 different nations represented onboard each one is tuned in a different competition event.

We planned two courses for the engineers; one on diesel engines for the Engine Ratings, and a refrigeration course for the Engineers. An instructor from MEBA School in Maryland came with me to conduct the classes. It is a great opportunity to provide training to the technical crew onboard the Africa Mercy.

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