Field trip to the USS Fort McHenry

This weekend we were invited to tour the USS Fort McHenry that has been outside of the Monrovia harbour for two weeks. This working US Navy ship is one of four Navy ships that has been participating in the Africa Partnership Station. These ships have been traveling for the past 7 months throughout West Africa providing training and teaching sessions, along with the Coast Guard and Marines.

Our rusted neighbor in port. We can actually see that it has risen
since last year as they continue to try and pump water out of the hull.

The new pilot boat that was donated to the Monrovia Port Authority.

Another look at home sweet home from the neighboring dock.

The landing craft that took us out to Fort McHenry.

The USS Fort McHenry a few miles outside of the harbor.

We stopped complaining about our halls and stairs after seeing their cabins. Our ship
looks like a floating hotel compared to these tight quarters.

The US and Liberian flags

Being away is...

We have an acronym commonly used on board: LBH which stands for let’s be honest. It is a small way of pushing everyone into saying what they are honestly feeling or, more commonly, used to prepare people that what you are about to say might be more honest than they are prepared for.

LBH: It is hard being here. So hard at times. This weekend one of my oldest friends is getting married and although we have grown apart over the years I never imagined missing her wedding. We use to talk about it and make all the little girl dreams of that special day and now that it is actually happening I am thousands of miles away. Being away is hard and frustrating.

I’ll be frustrated all this week while I wait for someone to remember me and email over some pictures. The pictures will be bad, maybe out of focus, and will hardly capture the beauty of her wedding. But I will be appreciative because what other option do I have? Being away is hard, frustrating and weird.

It’s weird being so far away from everyone that you know and love. How do you return to a life you do not know, to people you do not know? In the two years that I have lived in Africa I have missed eight weddings, six births, and three funerals. Unlike most people it is as if I live two lives, one in America and one in Africa. And it seems harder to jump back into my at home life and try to catch up. It would be easier if I could put everyone on pause! Being away is hard, frustrating, weird and scary.

Missing so many huge life moments makes the idea of going home even scarier. I am now at the point when I need to start thinking about what I will do next and that is scary. Because I have no solid idea and way too many options it seems. Staying here is my heart’s desire but will make my eventual return home even harder. Staying in the States will be a difficult adjustment and will involve a lot of changes since I will have to live with the consequences of missing two years of everyone’s life. Being away is hard, frustrating, weird, scary, and I have no idea what the future holds. Let’s be honest.

There She Blows! (Whale of a Tale Part 2 )

So guess what I did? I experienced my first (and most likely last) Faroese meal. I was sitting in the dining room during dinner and Debbie came over to say that they were going to be eating in their cabin in a few and it would be a traditional meal. So I raced up to their cabin to watch the preparation.

Let me start by explaining where the Faroe Islands are for my less adventurous readers. The Faroe Islands are an island group consisting of eighteen islands off the coast of Northern Europe, between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Iceland and Norway; the closest neighbors being the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland. Because of their location and agrarian culture most Faroese meals consist of fish, mutton (sheep), whale and potatoes, with very little vegetables. So for dinner the Joensens were having dried whale meat, whale fat or blubber, potatoes and dried fish. Jonhard explained to me that the only whale eaten is the pilot whale and that it is not hunted Moby Dick style. Since the villages are so small an entire whale is shared among the community. When a whale beaches itself trained people are called to kill the whale. They use a long wooden spike and drive it into the whale’s head. This is something that requires training and precision since they want to kill the whale quickly but also have as much whale to eat as possible. Then the whale is divided: a section goes to the village like a tax and the rest is shared among the people.

I will try to explain what everything looked like. If you are of Faroese decent and reading this please do not take offence by my outsiders opinion. Let’s start with the smell since it was the first thing I noticed. It smelled like fish. This made sense since whales swim in the ocean, but was odd because whales are mammals. The dried whale meat was very dark in colour and reminded me of venison. Jonhard was cutting the fat/ blubber into bit sized cubes. It was a light shade of pink and I think I expected it to look more like chicken fat – yellow and lumpy. But it was a solid block of light pink blubber and was at least 4 inches thick. Jonhard showed me how to prepare the blubber. Both ends are cut off first: the skin which was a dingy gray and the meat. Then the cube of fat is sliced and cut into little squares. The dried fish was laid out on a plate along with the already prepared potatoes.

Since I could only stay for this part, and had already told Debbie I wouldn’t be able to stomach the blubber, Stefan, their son, offered me a piece of dried whale meat. The taste was interesting, a combination of chewy, fishy and salty. And it was extremely nauseating. I could not believe the weird combo happening in my mouth and was petrified that I might throw up in their cabin. Luckily Debbie offered me a piece of potato, which I highly recommend if you ever decide to try dried whale meat. It has such a strong taste and is very salted that I could barely handle chewing it. The potato helped eliminate the desire to be sick but it did not remove the overwhelming fish taste (a piece of chocolate helped with that once I was in my cabin). All in all, it was an experience and a fun cultural adventure. I was able to eat half of a Faroese specialty called Grind og spik which is pilot whale meat and blubber. Yummy!

A Last Look Back

The last of my "old" pictures are finally up. They include my birthday weekends and the medical department's open house.

My birthday was celebrated over two weekends since some of my friends were in Morocco for my actual day (can you believe their nerve to make holiday plans on my day?) So I biked to the beach on my birthday (an 11km ride). Then the following week we celebrated with a small picnic in the park. Both were amazing and worth all of the road blocks!

The Healthcare Services Department held an open house down on the ward to give the crew a chance to see all of the ward before it was closed off (the ward is still accessible to crew but the OR is off limits). So they opened everything up for us to have staged operations, learn how to suture, take quizzes, go to nursing school, take eye exams, and learn how to intubate. It was a lot of fun and a behind the scenes view of our specialized surgical center...it is NOT a hospital ship!

So check out the pics to see some of our last activities in Tenerife!