Destination - Spice Islands aka Dutch East Indies

Friday, July 9th

We’ve been at sea the past few days, traveling from Singapore to the locations in Indonesia where we’ll do service. The past several days have been filled with attending orientation classes – both medical and cultural. We’ve had some classes on basic Indonesian, which has similarities to Tagalog. On the 7th we dropped anchor off the coast of Jakarta for loading supplies and we took on about 70 Indonesian translators who are mostly Indonesian medical students. We also received 2 patients that require surgery, but we won’t be able to do the procedures until we are docked on July 13th. The ship doesn’t move very fast – only about 15 miles/hour. We’ve had an Indonesian military frigate ship escorting us for the past several days to defend us from any rouge elements that may desire to do harm.

I’ve heard fat people are more buoyant and I think I’m drown-proofing myself in case I fall overboard. There’s nothing wrong with the food, and there’s definitely a shortage in my self control! I’m doing lots of stair walking – that’s the only option to get around, since there are no elevators. I’ve also attended a couple yoga classes. I haven’t quite found the motivation to hit the gym. There are no excuses; we have 3 different workout areas and they are open 24/7. Mike has gone several times.

Our days start about 6 am with breakfast and we muster at 7:30. We get our schedule for the day which includes our orientations. Lunch is at 11:30 and then the afternoon will have more classes. I’ve usually been able to slip in a nap somewhere during the day and I’m also able to read. Mike is playing lots of Sudoku and also reading. Dinner is at 5. We have a devotional every night at 8 that lasts about 30 minutes. The LDS people in our group are an inspiration and there are some wonderful folks in the other groups as well. I’ve been fortunate to be assigned berthing in the female officers’ area. I have 5 roommates. Four are with Project Hope (an MD and 3 nurses) and one is another LDS nurse. My roommates are great – all top notch people, no one snores, and all are considerate and neat. Unlike the enlisted berthing areas, we have plenty of showers and I never have a problem getting access.

Everyone is getting anxious to start our service work, but tomorrow will mostly be occupied with a Shellback celebration, which is a huge Navy tradition. You can Wikipedia it if you want to know more, but basically it’s an initiation/celebration for crossing the equator. We are ‘pollywogs’ until initiated. This is the first year the Navy has invited civilians to participate. We’ll let you know more what we have to do. It used to involve some pretty severe hazing, but has been toned down considerably.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Shellback initiation on the 10th was fun. Keep in mind participation was voluntary. We were awakened at 5:30 with banging and yelling to get our slimy pollywog selves out of bed. We had about 5 minutes to get ready. We wore our clothes inside out and backward. We had to crawl on hands and knees up stairs where we were put through exercises and drills determined by the Shellbacks. We had to do things like pushups, jumping jacks, sit-ups, up downs, etc. (Mike’s group had to do their sit-ups with arms interlocked). We had to crawl up the gangway (sometimes on our back) through various obstacles on the way to the flight-deck. I had to crawl through a trough filled with an ice slurry. Brrrr! Somehow Mike missed that station. We got sprayed with fire hoses, and had to perform other feats. The ‘harassments’ lasted about 90 minutes. If anyone needs suggestions on how to put someone through an initiation, we have some ideas. I am a little sore, but honored to be a bonafide Shellback. After the initiation ceremony there was a ‘steel beach picnic.’ That’s a picnic on the flight deck, complete with hamburgers, hot dogs, cookies, sodas and chips. There was music blaring and 4 on 4 basketball competitions which made for fun socializing. I must admit that thus far the trip has been more like a luxury cruise than a humanitarian mission. I guess because of the remoteness of our service areas, it was more cost effective and safe to fly us to Singapore and use this week in transit for orientations – but we’ve had lots of R&R to boot.


We met for sacrament meeting/Sunday School this morning, heard some inspiring talks and had the lesson from the Gospel Principles manual on priesthood. The ship has a small chapel that accommodates us well. We got some cool photos today of our ship being refueled while underway by the merchant marine’s tanker, Richard E. Byrd. The helicopter was used to unload our garbage to the tanker and upload mail and supplies to the Mercy. The entire operation took about 2-3 hours and was fascinating. This evening we had a cultural presentation and entertaining dances by the Indonesians on board. Our Internet service is down and we really miss it.

We will be doing our service in east Indonesia in the old spice island area, today known as the Maluku Islands. The opportunity for a limited number of guided tour/shore excursions became available and folks were chosen by lottery to go. I was one of the fortunate and will get to tour the north shore of the Island of Halmahera on the 14th. At tonight’s briefing it was reported we were in the Banda Sea, there are 1049 folks on board, 67 of them from partner nations, and 156 NGO.

Monday, July 12th

Mike attended ‘helicopter school’ yesterday to learn safety protocols for being transported to off ship MEDCAPS, or clinics on the ground. He has already been assigned 4 or 5 days to work off ship. I don’t know that I’ll get to do any work off ship, thus I’m grateful for the opportunity to get off for a tour. We’ll be docking tonight in the Maluku Sea and start seeing patients and doing about 10 surgeries tomorrow and screening about 150 more folks in Tobelo. The 18th we'll be in Ternate and the 26th Ambon. The work is about to begin. We're ready and excited!

Here are blogs from other group members if you want to see different perspectives.
http://waterloggedemt.wordpress.com

http://shaneandzandy.blogspot.com/

http://pacificpartnership.wordpress.com This is Commadore Franchetti’s, the leader of the entire mission’s blog

http://adventuresofnursesuzy.blogspot.com

http://pacificpartnership2010.blogspot.com

http://crawfysadventures.blogspot.com

http://summerservice2010.blogspot.com