MaritimeMercy.com

Every day the Africa Mercy crew and patients consume 60 metric tons (15,850 gal) of water. This is the equivalent to 60,000 bottles of water, one liter each. That’s a lot of water. The water-men test, treat, filter and test the water again until it is safe for drinking. Last week five deck crew and two Deck Officers attended the Basic Water Safety course. The twelve hours course was delivered by Shirley Quinn, the water engineer responsible for the water and sewage plant at the Mercy Ships International Support Center in Texas. Ibrahim Bangura, one of the course participants said, “The course expanded my knowledge and brought me to a higher level of understanding about how to treat water and make it safe to drink”. The crew who takes care of the water are called water-man, but after I saw all the tests and treatment they do to make the ships water read for consumption I’m calling them ‘Water Doctors’.

This is my second week on-board the Africa Mercy in Cameroon, Africa. To be in Africa is something special because Africa is fascinating, but one need to have the right lens to see the Africa God prepared as a gift to the world. A great Brazilian composer said that “life is not only what you see. It is a bit more”. When looked beyond the unsurmountable needs there are beautiful people, mountains, hills and rivers, deserts, savannas and forests, animals and birds in Africa. Last night someone told me that he saw in a supermarket here in Douala the biggest shrimp he has ever seem. Interesting enough when the Portuguese sailors come to this part of Africa they were so impressed with the quantity and size of the shrimp that they called the land Camarão, the Portuguese word for shrimp, and 500 years later the country is still called Cameroon, Camarão. It is raining season, so it rain every day. Yesterday I woke up at six in the morning it was raining and it rained until 11. The rai