Mr MacGregor and the Malagasy

I have fallen in love. She is beautifully formed, with a lovely personality to explore. I’m always finding out exciting new things about her that aren’t in her guidebook. She brings joy and happiness to my heart whenever I spend time with her. This weekend I had a few hours out of the heat of the day to explore her. I rode through beautiful rice paddies, along tropical beaches, through thatch and bamboo villages full of surprised villagers. Zebu were driven along the roads, and swam across the rivers. Pigs were scared of the strange white human. The road was busy in parts, but with people on foot, carrying loads and the occasional bicycle or moto. At the end of the road, far from the main road a small town bustled. A market was in full swing at 8am, and a small stage had been setup playing loud music and with one seller promoting his wares (in this case a large thermos flask) over the microphone. Pushing on there were a number of trucks, filled to bursting with lychees to take to the cities and export. Villagers come down from the hills carrying their lychees buying wares at the market in exchange. Huge lychee ships regularly leave this port. Here lychees cost about 20 pence/kilo.

Jackfruit…the largest fruit I know

Beach ride

Track to Ampasimbe-Onibe

Houses in Ampasimbe-Onibe

Local road and rice paddies

A river near foulepoint

It is easy to miss the poverty here. Tamatave is a ‘thriving’ town with the Ambatovy mine, port and even MercyShips being large employers here. The land around is green and fertile and at least when the weather allows crops there seems to be enough to eat. Living a simple life is one thing, but there are many people who do not have the opportunity to do that. Stunting and malnutrition are huge problems in much of Madagascar, with many in the central areas who grow food for the cities being unable to afford to eat well. Here some homeless people sleep in tents on the beach, having absolutely nothing. Many are sick. I don’t know why Madagascar is so poor, but perhaps some reasons are: poor infrastructure, lack of education for many (Malagasy people are bright and hard working but many drop out of school), regular natural disasters, uneven wealth distribution (I saw a Porsche Cayenne a few days ago!) and a recent history of unstable government.

Last week my students presented their science projects to the ship’s crew. I was blown away by the quality and detail in their presentations. Students from Grade 4-10 presented. You might imagine Grade 4 (9 year old) to present something short and simple, but all their presentations were detailed and clear. One Grade 4 presented his research on Exoplanets and explained in detail how we detect them, measure their atmospheres and find if they can support life. Another student mummified a fish. It’s an amazing opportunity to teach in such a small school as students in a large school would never be able to present in front of 150 people! Our mystery Year 12 alchemist (who some say serves his breakfast cereal with sulphuric acid) turned some ‘illegal’ wine into water, and copper coins into silver and gold.

Teaching on a ship still has a few surprises.The effective gravitational field strength varies from port to port, so using 9.81m/s^2 for gravitational field strength doesn’t really work here. And my digital balances need recalibrating. At least the MercyHips are less obvious here as a result.  My new science toys arrived so we have been supercooling sodium thiosulphate and watching crystals grow in real time. Thermite was a success, but not surprisingly had to be done in the dockside warehouse. Watch our video of the reaction…

Distillation of grean ‘poision’

My Grade 12 (Y13) chemists

Today was a paper cyclone drill. In the event of a real cyclone heading this way the ship will sail out of the way of the cyclone. We will need to quickly pack up the lab and classroom for sea.

I have seen a little of patients recently. I see cute babies with cleft lips being healed, kids with bone issues having treatment that will enable them to walk properly, ladies with VVF, and I hear about so many dental patients in a really bad way having their teeth operated on and fixed. Wow! But the most exciting story is the capacity building. Staff are training local doctors and nurses to train their colleagues. In a few years we can expect many hundreds or thousands of medical practitioners in Madagascar to have received training.

I left this to the end because there isn’t a lot to report. I feel pretty neutral about the social life on ship. I’ve met some lovely friends here but haven’t fully found my niche on board yet. I feel like my spiritual life is OK too. I feel most alive when riding my bicycle in the Madagascan countryside or preparing and teaching exciting science, but would love to have a more vibrant spiritual and social life.

Help!

I’d love your help if you can with a few things:

• If you feel like giving, some of my colleagues in key positions are struggling to raise the financial support they need to stay long term on ship. Get in touch and I’ll let you know more details.
• If you pray, please pray I can follow God’s calling into the next academic year. We all have to think about whether we will stay or move on about now. I’m in no hurry to know what comes next however!
• Also I’d love prayer for the areas I find hardest – balancing work, spiritual life and social life.
• We are recruiting volunteers, and you would almost certainly fit one of the job descriptions. Have a look and consider joining us for some time. Many jobs suit any faith or none, some posts would require a Christian faith.

[No news. A standard greeting is ‘Ini Vaovao’ – any news?. A bit like ‘how are you]

Hello friends,

It’s easy to forgot I have a fully operational hospital just below my feet for a moment. I often do. While I am teaching the joys of science people are undergoing life changing surgeries. I doubt our patients guess of children in class 3 decks above them.

My experiences of the hospital have been somewhat fleeting. My classes and I have visited and analysed blood, x-rayed various objects and toys and passed through on the way to visit the engine room. Occasionally I ‘bump’ into a group of patients heading for some deck exercise. They don’t look pretty, bandages everywhere and lacking the spritely nature they will develop as they recover, but are all making progress to transformed lives. Amongst them there are obscenely large facial tumors, bowed legs (from rickets), children with freshly repaired pallets or faces. This year is a particularly popular for our Obstetric Fistula program, a condition particularly prevalent in Madagascar where during a difficult birth damage is done to a woman’s bladder which leaves her incontinent. Every day we have a stream of Obstetric Fistula surgeries with the world’s leading surgeons. And the great news is we will be leaving behind a running Obstetic Fistula clinic, run by another NGO ‘Freedom from Fistula’ to continue the great world we’ve been doing.

One day I visited the HOPE centre. It’s a large renovated building in the local hospital where we house up to 250 patients who are waiting for or recovering from surgery. Many patients had an obvious need for urgent surgery with tumours, contracted burns or other issues that were obvious. Others…I would have to wonder why they were there. I played some ‘Chimney’ folk tunes in the large hallway, patients and nurses danced and the solo whistle sounded amazing echoing around the hallways.

The dental clinic continues to be a huge success story. It would be in any country in the world but here it helps those with no other option. Imagine putting up a sign ‘Free world class dentistry’. So many people have terrible toothache and have to get on with life. One patient described putting burning metal in his mouth to dull the pain of toothache.  So many people suffer from terrible toothache and just get on with life. Our lead dentist is running a program to upskill local dentists which should help them become more successful and trusted by the population. Part of what I see as our most important ministry…capacity building.

I’m much more settled into community since my last post. We’ve just had our school ‘inspection’ (my second in 12 months), which went well. Our Accreditor was wowed by his visit – he has never seen anything like us! We are one of the last schools primarily for ‘missionary’ kids, as most former missionary schools accept other students now. He was surprised at our very practical science curriculum as many schools he visits work solely from books. We’ve been doing a lot of theory lately however I’ve sill been cutting up hearts and lungs, measuring the speed of sound, performing lots of vacuum experiments, and my students science projects are all coming along well).

Biking is amazing here. The local roads are poor, there is little motorised transport, this makes for some of the best mountain biking I’ve done in years!  There are many adventures to have…in the last couple of weeks I’ve climbed the tallest lighthouse in Africa, visited a British fort that protected British ships who were refueling on the way to Brunei…(East India), seen flying foxes and giant bats in some nature reserves, etc… It’s a great place to live…but there are some significant challenges to being here.

I hope all is well with you? Do get in touch with your news, would be great to skype or call sometime.

Some things you might enjoy reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/01/madagascar-the-country-thats-poor-but-not-poor-enough-for-aid

www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34528978

https://twitter.com/MercyShips

If you like to pray please pray for:

• Health and safety for the crew. We are all healthier and safer than I would have expected however there are illnesses, accidents and other incidents at times.
• Me to settle into more of a spiritual routine.
• Give thanks for the lives that our work is transforming!
• Pray for crew raising support. Most on ship are unpaid volunteers who need to raise all their support to be here.

(Hello my lord, Nice to meet you)

Salama from Tamatave, Madagascar. I write from the deck after taking shots of the sunset, a week after arriving (I post a week later!). The view is of a popular beach in the city, and the main port in Madagascar, full of ships coming and going. The city stretches far beyond what you see, a vibrant bustling city.

Panorama of harbour from MV Africa Mercy

Panorama of beach from MV Africa Mercy

The MV Africa Mercy has been bustling this weekend too, with final preparations being made for the operating theaters to open on Tuesday and many of the wards looking ready to go.

We arrived last Sunday morning, 5 days late, welcomed by the stunning coastline of Tamatave. Unlike many cities the beaches are accessible and undeveloped with local fisherman still leaving their pirogues on the beach and the youth playing in the waves.

On departure from Durban we left and conducted successful sea trials. The mechanical issues with the port propeller and shaft have been solved, however there is still some work to do on the port propulsion system. However good progress has been made and our lady showed off her superior maneuvering capabilities upon arrival in Tamatave.

After a prayer for a safe journey over the tannoy, we took off, pitching and rolling gently. In the evening, watching Navy CSI in school we were repeatedly interrupted by our security officers searching the school. Later, somewhat spooked by NCSI and their frequent visits we saw 3 people running past the room followed shortly by our captain. Walking back to our cabins we saw two of the men, face down on the reception floor, two stowaways.

This meant we had to return to Durban, sit at anchor for a few days and return the men…they sure were lucky to be on board our ship!

Frustrated at the return to Durban, there were blessings…lots of time to get to know the crew who weren’t seasick, whales that were blowing and jumping wherever you look, and we were blessed by some beautiful time on the bow.

Eventually we were relived of our stowaways by the local police and set sail for Madagascar. The sail was great arriving ahead of schedule. I was pleasantly surprised to find my sea legs quickly despite our lady’s tub like qualities in the smallest of seas. We had some great celtic music sessions on the sail, with Chimney House music!

I teach in one of the most unique schools in the world. While sailing my classroom rolls up to 10^o from horizontal (and my electric balances refuse to work – even in dock I can’t measure with a precision of 0.01g), fire drills involve ‘mustering’, putting on life jackets and emergency teams doing drills, and I have a chemistry lab on the dockside for any work involving flames or toxic gases. For my students this is normal life, some have lived their entire life on ship. They are great students who love the practical side of science and generally do well in the academics. I’m teaching Chemistry to final year students, at a level that feels like something like GCSE and AS level with a pace that is certainly AS level, Physics to GCSE/IGCSE level and science to younger students. We have some excellent resources, less than in previous schools but I have more opportunity to use them. I’m enjoying practical work as always, some of my favourites have been video motion analysis, strobe photography, chemistry and attempting to see Saturn through a telescope!

I’ll leave you with a few random thoughts about Madagascar:

• Local people are very friendly and will always welcome you with ‘Salama’ and take interest, though the language barrier is a problem.
• Pousse Pousse (cycle rickshaw, 50p/ride), walking and cycling are king in Tamatave…though tuk tuks, motos and 4x4s are common.
• A gorgeous zebu (local cow) steak lunch costs about 22000Ar (£4.50) in a western beachfront restaurant.
• I bought a new chain AND derailleur for my bike for 10500Ar (£2). Shame the quality isn’t quite Shimano…
• Local boats are beautiful, canoe style pirogues, one sided outriggers and gorgeous little sailing pirogues with a tarpaulin sail.
• The bank notes values range from 100Ar (2.5p) to 10000Ar (£2). A homemade coconut biscuit costs 100Ar, a coconut 1000Ar and new chain and derailleur (not quite shimano quality) 10000Ar, delicious zebu steak lunch in a ‘western’ style restaurant 20000Ar, and a solid ‘local’ bicycle 200,000Ar (£40!). Coins aren’t used much though I was given a 20Ar (0.5p) coin as change…
• Telecoms are really good here, would be great to chat sometime.

If you like to pray please pray for:

• A fruitful year in Madagascar
• Continued good health
• That my friendships on board continue to grow
• To get God’s balance in my life

My next blog will explore some of the tropical surroundings and the work we are doing here.