An American holiday in Liberia

Holidays are low key on board - at least the American holidays. In the year that I have been in Liberia the crew from the USA have only celebrated two holidays Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. For Thanksgiving I baked apple and pumpkin pies and we sat around saying what we were grateful for. And for the 4th of July we ate our dinner on the dock and people brought dessert.

The best part was that we were able to take a photo of the American crew for the first time on the Africa Mercy (thanks Michal who took pictures that evening). Many national offices (the Netherlands, Canada, South Africa) have already asked for country specific photos but since the US office is also the International Operations Center they do not focus specifically on the American crew members and, unfortunately, we sometimes fall through the cracks.

So I arranged for a crew photo and while all 110 American crew members could not attend it was still to big of a group to fit anywhere besides the dock. We had fun and by the end of the evening a lot of the families and crew from every nation had joined on the dock.

I decided to model the desserts: the cake I am holding was pink yellow and green
(Vandi made a good attempt at red, white and blue).

Karen and Keyara draped in the flag; one day soon little Keyara
will make her debut in the States!

One of the many crew kids sporting her painted cheeks.

The sun finally peeked through the clouds right before sunset