Life in a Shipyard

There are just some places you never in your wildest dreams think you will live or even spend a night.  For the past 2 weeks, I've been living in a shipyard.  It's a hot, dirty, smelly, grimy, sweaty place. Power comes and goes, there is hammering and clanging all through the night, Gurkha's set up their security desk in the OR hallway, dozens of shipyard workers enter the ship through the area where we usually store our sterile instruments.  Trucks bring daily loads of produce, dairy, and frozen foods. Because the lift isn't working and the crane isn't operable, we form long chains of people that bring the goods from dock, into the ship, and down to deck 2 where they are stored. Classes in the academy continue on deck 6 as the ship takes on fuel. The hospital team charges ahead with planning meetings for Sierra Leone during black outs.....it's quite an interesting place!

Back in September, we sailed into the Durban Port, the largest container port in Africa...   

After most of the crew had moved to Applesbosch, the Africa Mercy was taken into dry dock. 

These are a few cool views of her before the surgery began...

Scaffolding was built by teeny little shipyard workers....

And the real dirty work began!  A hole was cut in the belly of the ship, and the old generators were removed.  The brand new German-designed, Korean-made generators were brought on, sealed up inside, and the ship was taken back out on water for the remainder of the time in shipyard.

This is the pilot's entrance (where the host port's pilot usually enters/exits the ship.)   During outreaches, the OR uses this room to store all of our sterile instrument trays, sterile packs, and other supplies.  During shipyard it is used as an entrance and exit for shipyard workers.  Hundreds of boxes of produce, dairy products, frozen meat, soda, candy bars, etc. for the coming months also entered the ship through these doors.

The Gurkha guards set up their security desk at the end of the OR hallway!

Our amazing technical crew are working around the clock to prepare the ship for the our voyage.  We plan to leave Durban on Thursday, Feb 10th.