10 days in Togo, West Africa: days 2–4

Our first full day in Togo was a Friday. Most of the ship has the weekend off, like in the United States, so days 2 and 3 were days off! My team wished we could work more beforehand; maybe we didn't feel we had earned a rest. But we were also taught that the most important part of being on a Mercy Team is to be FAT: Flexible, Adaptable and Teachable. Being flexible enough to take a break early: God's perfect timing!

Questions for today:

Think of a machete. What thoughts and feelings do you have about one?


Do you have any regrets? Anything you would do differently if you could?


Day 2, Saturday, started with Bill driving us to "the artisan market." It was a small, enclosed area with a couple dozen souvenir shops. Everything was hand-made. Most of the people knew a select group of English words, like "yes," "no," "buy," "please" and "come in."

At the artisan market, Bill introduced us to Therese, who makes batiks. (0:02)

Batiks are like posters, but made of cloth, for hanging on a wall.

Also at the artisan market, I saw a machete, similar to the one pictured above. (0:41)

This whole encounter had an impact on me, so I want to give you a good chance to see the clips before I talk about them. At the end of this post, I'll share my thoughts.

After the artisan market, Bill drove us back to the ship. Along the way, it was fun just looking out the window at life in Togo. (2:26)

There were a lot of scooters on the road; many were taxis. The road was also well paved. Bill said this was done in the last few months; other roads we drove on had potholes bigger than our tires. You can see women carrying huge bundles on their heads; it's both surprising and resourceful. Bill mentions two places to eat: a burger place called Akif's and an ice cream place. We made it to both on the following weekend.

Here's a nice photo of Bill eating ice cream on the ship. Saturday is movie night, and they also had make-your-own-sundae. Yum!

Movie night was funny. They showed "The Adventures of Tintin," a cartoon. But they were originally going to show "Titanic." At first, I heard they switched because they had lost the DVD. But later, there was speculation they had switched because of the scenes in Titanic (nude scene, sex scene, etc.). I can totally see this happening, because there are a lot of children on the ship and the ship has a code of conduct with certain "Christian" values (no alcohol, no pre-marital sex, etc.).

The Mercy Ships Code of Conduct is here, with an addendum here.

The next weekend, they were going to show "Casablanca." That day, Bill wondered if the movie's themes were appropriate. (The girl is married to one guy but is in love with Humphrey Bogart's character.) Sure enough, they didn't show that movie, either.


Day 3 was Sunday, which meant church! I don't always get excited about going to church, but we were going to a local African church, so this might be a once-in-a-lifetime event. It was called the "Fishing Village church."

Bill told us there would be a lot of singing and dancing at the church, but I was still blown away. Sadly, I wasn't able to shoot any video of the worship service. In later videos, there will be singing and dancing from other events. While those events were energetic and fun, the singing and dancing at the Fishing Village was … off the hook! (And yes, I danced, too!)

After the church service, lots of fun was still to be had. All the children came by, and they gave, and got, a lot of attention. I feel like they would literally jump into your arms if you let them. =) (3:26)


Aren't they precious? Pictures like this make me forget that we really couldn't speak to one another.





One of the girls in the video is Shauna, a dental hygienist. She wasn't on our Mercy Team, but she arrived the same day and we all became fast friends. Shauna is from Calgary, Alberta. As a dental hygienist, she went ashore each day to clean the teeth of the people of Togo. Shauna saw people with conditions she had never seen before, such as teeth completely covered in tartar.

Shauna also sponsors children with Compassion International. I sponsor one Compassion child, and sometimes I feel pretty good about that. But Shauna sponsors six! Three are from Togo(!), and Shauna was able to arrange to meet them while volunteering with Mercy Ships.

This is Louise. She's a nurse from Vancouver, and she loves to travel. (Before coming to Africa, Louise had spent five weeks backpacking through India!) Louise wasn't volunteering as a nurse on the ship, perhaps because of the timing. However, she may volunteer as a nurse in the future!

Was it a coincidence that Shauna and Louise are both from Canada? Jillian, the hairdresser, is also from Canada. In fact, the ship has a crew of about 400, with volunteers from 35 countries. The most volunteers are from the U.S., with maybe 100 people. But I think there are also about 40 Canadians. Considering that the U.S. has ten times the population of Canada (312 million vs. 34 million), it's almost sad that we have only twice as many volunteers. Mercy Ships is based in Texas, too!

Oh well. Props to Canada!

Our team, plus many children, at the Fishing Village church. The church is basically this one open-air building. Notice the holes in the back wall.

Many of my teammates loved holding and picking up the kids. I still haven't gotten used to that, but that didn't stop this little guy from attaching himself to me. =)

By the way, Togo was HOT. The air was very humid, which I'm not used to. And for church we wore our "Sunday best," then we had all that crazy dancing! So I was definitely ready to change and take a shower.

I also really enjoyed an ice-cold Coke. Though afterwards, I felt like a sell-out to corporate marketing. (4:40)


On the way back to the ship, Alison took this nice photo of me and Peter. Peter and Alison are from England, I think the southern part. They have three kids. Peter's a RedSox fan. Peter had been on a Mercy Team before, and Alison had been on more than half a dozen. We learned a ton from them, and from their example!

That evening, we got to go to church again! The regular church service on the ship is on Sunday evenings. (4:49)

I think my singing sounds a lot better in person than in recordings. Am I the only one who thinks that way? Or maybe I always sound terrible, as evidenced by the recordings, and everyone just puts up with me?

Anyway, there's something quite nice about seeing people that you've met outside of church, suddenly in church. I knew that most of the ship's crew is Christian, but I guess knowing something isn't as good as seeing something, for me.


Day 4 was Monday, so we were back to work! I was assigned to help Jim Twining, the ship's sales manager. Here's Jim playing with the locals. (5:17)

I think Jim is from Florida. He signed up to serve two years on the ship. I think about half the crew was serving for 2 years or more, which is ideal. The rest were staying anywhere from two weeks to eighteen months. Many times, I heard one of the hardest part of being on the ship is the constant change of people: making new friends, saying goodbye to old ones. It can be emotionally draining.

Anyway, Jim runs the ship's convenience store, snack shop, and the Starbucks cafe. That day, a cargo container had arrived, so we had to unload it. However, it would take some time before we were ready to do that, so I checked up on my teammates.

Christine and Gene were cleaning the Starbucks cafe, top to bottom. (5:38)

Christine is from England, I think near London. She's over 70, but she (and Gene) worked just as hard as anyone else. It was neat to be in a group that was so cross-generational: Louise and I are in our 30s, Christine and Gene in their 70s, and Peter, Alison, and Bill are in between.

Christine had a funny story about serving with Mercy Ships. She had originally wanted to serve in a different capacity onboard, either longer or shorter, and she had a physical exam as part of the process. The physical cost about 200 pounds (British money). But then Mercy Ships said she couldn't serve in that capacity. Since she had already spent a lot of money on the physical, she signed up for a Mercy Team! I might've been tempted to let the money go, but I'm thankful for Christine's tenacity!

Gene was really into cleaning the floors. We should have taken "before" and "after" photos, but I was too late. In this "in progress" photo, notice the darker squares along the top. The entire floor used to look like that.

I found Peter and Louise at the bottom of the ship, cleaning the weight rooms. (6:00)


Alison was up on deck, cleaning a rusty exercise bike. (6:09)


Then it was time to unload the cargo container. Those things hold a lot! We had only two carts for moving stuff, and we had to carry individual boxes down some stairs to the stockrooms. It was hard work, but we had a lot of help. (Besides the volunteer crew, there are about 200 local day workers on the ship. A couple of them were helping us.) Anyway, it was great to feel useful.

That evening, we had dinner in the cafeteria as usual. Then the girls practiced the djembe before our next lesson with Briggs. (6:48)


Louise and Alison enjoying drum/djembe practice.








Besides djembe lessons that evening, we got to participate in the befriend-a-patient program. The program matches crew members with patients. You can/should visit your patient once or twice a day and just make friends with them. I really like the program, since it gives non-medical volunteers a chance to know the people we serve.

Here's Bill with his patient, Tyrone. (7:01)

Tyrone said, "Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here."

From Mercy Team Alison

My befriend-a-patient patient was Augustune Binney. I think Augustune had a tumor on his forehead, but thankfully the ship's surgeons removed it.

Augustune has twelve siblings. Both of his parents are dead. Augustune works by painting and by digging wells. He likes the U.S. because blacks and whites work together. His dream is to visit there someday.

Augustune didn't speak English, but thankfully there was a translator in the ward. His name is Kodjovi. (7:17)


Whew! That was a whirlwind of new experiences: driving around Togo, church at the Fishing Village and on the ship, unloading a cargo container, and befriending a patient! But I'd like to close by returning to the questions and the videos from the artisan market:

Think of a machete. What thoughts and feelings do you have about one? 
Do you have any regrets? Anything you would do differently if you could?

Woman with a machete. (0:41)


I don't like machetes. My only context for them is from movies or the news: people use them to hack through a jungle, and when there are civil wars in African countries, people use them to hack one another to death.

However, I like the woman with the machete. She's very strong outwardly, and no doubt inwardly. She wields the machete with skill and could definitely hurt someone, but she uses it to make a living. For her and her baby. At twenty cents a coconut.

When I bought my coconut, I wanted to tell the woman to "keep the change." She didn't speak a word of English, but she probably would have understood. However, for some reason I kept my change.

Amazingly, the next weekend we ran into the woman in a different part of town. How many miles did she walk each day with a load of coconuts on her head? How far did she have to walk to replenish her stock? That next weekend, I wanted to buy coconut from her again. However, we were on a busy street and had somewhere to go.

I had a 500-CFA coin ($1) in my wallet. It wasn't the right time to buy anything, so I should have just given the woman the coin. But I hesitated, and in the end, we simply left.

I have a better appreciation for machetes now. But also a couple of regrets.