I’m trying to get caught up on my 1 photo/day blog posts but I can’t get the photos off of my iPhone. It’s being obstinate to say the least. I’ll get to it, I promise.

Life here is good. Of course it’s not without its challenges. At least the challenges are usually interesting.

For example: there’s so much trash in the water right now that we’re having massive issues on the ship. The cooling intakes under the ship, that pull water from the sea to cool the engines, are getting clogged regularly. The solution is sending divers down to clean them out.

In other countries we might send divers a few times a week. At the worst times we might send them down once a day. Right now we’re sending them down two to three times a day. It’s pretty crazy. The photo of two of our divers below gives you an idea of how bad it is. And with the rainy season it’s only going to get more crazy as more and more garbage gets washed out to sea.

Welcome to Africa.

I got to go down to observe surgery last week. It was amazing to see our surgeons and medical staff at work. I watched a number of surgeries all over the course of a couple of hours. I saw a fatty tumor removed from a man’s neck, another man’s iris stretched by hooks to implant a new lens (cataract surgery), a hernia repair (I learned you can have them from birth), and an orthopedic surgery to straighten out a boy’s feet. They’d grown in such a manner that he’s actually walked around on the tops of his feet his whole life.

The best part was having the surgeons talk to me as they operated. They showed me what they were doing, explained the conditions, and answered my myriad of questions. I’ll post some photos once I get permission to. I got some good ones.

Filed under: Personal Stories by Jay