Taking a Deep Breath

Stacia and I arrived in Charleston totally done with sitting in the car for hours. By this stage we’d clocked up more than 1,000 miles together driving through four different states.

Charleston is a beautiful city, despite the unrelenting heat we walked around the city enjoying the flower window boxes and the pretty British Colonial homes. It boasts being the friendliest city in America and we saw that play out one afternoon in a restaurant when a middle aged man and his adult son struck up a conversation which ended by us eating some of their food (weird I know) and him buying us another round of drinks before they left for a meeting. Quite a funny story.

My last stop was a small town called Potter Valley, two and a half hours drive north of San Francisco in California, staying with some dear friends Ben and Hannah and meeting their 18 month old son Levi. Every day we sat outside on their deck under the sun umbrella drinking coffee, eating, throwing the ball or stick for Charlie the dog, watching Levi run and play in the yard and chatting. It was a beautiful slow pace to round the trip up nicely. It was really a deep breath for me before getting on a plane back to Australia and facing the world there. We also had a few adventures which included going to Glass Beach, a place I had seen on Instagram but had no idea it was nearby!

My flight to Australia was through LA but I didn’t check my second plane ticket until I was getting off the plane in LA. When I checked it I realised it was the wrong flight number and didn’t depart until the following morning. Thinking the check-in desk has made an error I headed for the inquiry desk but couldn’t find any signs for it. After asking the nearest person I could find (who happened to be a very nice looking young male pilot) where I could locate the Virgin Australia desk, the lady at the desk informed me that the flight had been cancelled and to follow a list of verbal directions to find the shuttle to the hotel and return the following morning as my plane ticket already said. So I proceeded out of the terminal without my luggage to look for the hotel shuttle pickup spot. By this time it was about 11pm, I hadn’t eaten since 3pm, I was tired and stressed and there was so much traffic, vehicles beeping at each other and I couldn't see the shuttle I needed, that I was on the verge of tears. I didn’t want to stay overnight in LA, I just wanted to get home!

Eventually the hotel shuttle that I was waiting for turned up and I sighed a massive sigh of relief. Arriving at the hotel there was a really long line of passengers in the same situation as mine and by the time I had a room key it was past midnight. Waiting again, this time for the kitchen to make me a cold salad as dinner, I eventually made it up to the top floor. They said I was upgraded and had to use my room key just to get up to the top floor, but I only had 6 hours before I had to be out the door again and back at the airport. I certainly appreciated the massive bed despite not sleeping well, too afraid I’d miss my alarm and consequently my flight if I slept too deeply.

Arriving in Brisbane in the afternoon meant that I was able to walk into the arms of my dad and my little sister who’d had a baby boy 12 weeks ago. A couple of hours later we were driving up the range to my home town and here I am two weeks later.

In the past two weeks I have spent time with my family, cuddling the baby and playing games with the toddler as well as having real conversations with adult family members. I’ve been welcomed back by the Missions Prayer Team which was so lovely. They gave me a hamper of all things that I love which was a beautiful surprise.

I’ve seen a small handful of friends. I’ve been wishing that just for once when I returned home that I wouldn’t have to be the one contacting people asking to see them. I recognise that they already have their lives, their routines and that my return doesn’t impact their daily life, but at a time when I’m grieving the loss of my former life and trying to figure out my way forward in this one, I don’t want to be the one reaching out.

I’ve already returned to work. I survived three night shifts and was actually welcomed back heartily by the few I still knew but also by those I hadn’t yet met. It will certainly be a transition to work in the Australian system again but at least I have great colleagues to do it with.

If you are interested there is a blog called Velvet Ashes which has a post called How to Welcome Her Back. It gives some good tips for how to deal with a friend who has returned from living overseas.

And now I will turn my attention back to my cup of coffee and the Rio 2016 Olympics and how lovely it is that there is a team of refugees who are able to compete and who have been embraced by the world.

Ripping off the Bandaid

This week when so many of my friends have flown back to their floating home, I am back in Australia and I am staying.

My departure from the ship in June wasn’t really like I thought it would be. I have been the one saying farewell one hundred times over the years and it was actually nothing like I imagined.

I have gone on holidays away from the ship so many times now, that other than having to pack up ALL of the things I have bought and accumulated in the past 5 ½ years, it felt pretty much the same. Walking down the gangway for the last time felt like every other time. Hugging my friends didn’t feel different. Sure, there was an element of sadness but I also felt fairly numb. I walked away from the group of ship family standing on the dock to the waiting car, feeling nothing. The bandaid had been coming off so slowly and painfully during the past month that it was really just time to rip it off. So I moved through the motions of goodbye, waited for the others, hopped into the car, buckled up, waved goodbye and looked behind me twice as we drove off, trying to feel something. Nothing. Blank. Apparently I'm a post-griever.

Several weeks later, it still doesn’t feel real.

I flew out of Durban, through Dubai and on to Seattle. The plane from Dubai to Seattle was pretty empty and so when the opportunity to have four seats to myself arose, I jumped up, covered myself in a blanket and promptly went to sleep laying flat, a rare luxury on a 14 hour flight.

Have any of you watched the BBC series Call the Midwife? It’s one of my favourite TV shows and comes with a 50% chance of tears. Well the airline entertainment had season 5 which I had never seen before, so being overtired and already emotional I sat in my row of four seats and watched Call the Midwife and cried. Eventually I turned the show off and just sat staring at the flight plan on the screen in front of me, thinking about all that had just happened leaving my ship home and cried. Not just silent tears either. Face screwed up and nose streaming sort of tears. No one even noticed.

Arriving in Seattle I was greeted by my friend Molly, who took beautiful care of me. After a shower and a perfect cup of coffee, we hit a Seattle highlight, Pike Place Market. I took in the colours and smells of freshly cut flowers, arts and crafts, seafoods, teas and all sorts of yummy foods. We met up with another ship friend and headed out for a sushi dinner. Around that time I hit a jetlag wall of tiredness and eventually crawled into a dreamy bed and fell fast asleep.

The next day Molly drove me out to Pier 66 where I found my friend Heather and her family, along with the Norwegian Jewel cruise ship for the next adventure. With a mixed apprehension and excitement I boarded the largest ship I’ve ever been on. So many parts of living on a ship were familiar, including the crowds that you fight everywhere to get anywhere. Of course this cruise ship was completely different to the AFM (Africa Mercy). The Norwegin Jewel is 14 decks high, it is also double the length, too many restaurants and bars to count, an art gallery, spas (hot tubs), pools and water slide, a casino and carpeted almost everywhere, just to name a few differences. There are 1,200 crew and I knew none of them, although they were all very friendly. You can eat almost all hours of the day and before you are even hungry it is time to eat again. An event is always taking place and if I hadn’t already learnt how to live with constant activity around me, and fear of missing out (FOMO) I would have been a basketcase. Instead we spent most of our hours on board staring out the windows, eating, reading, eating, playing games, eating, watching shows in the evenings and did I mention eating? Our favourite time of the night was going back to our cabin (called a stateroom on a cruise) all the way down on deck 4 forward and finding our origami towel creation on the bed.

Deck 7 walkways practically disappeared from view they were so long

 

Unfortunately mid June is too early for Salmon in Ketchikan

Ketchikan's harbour

Us at the Mendenhall Glacier, outside of Juneau

Heather checking out the glacier

The train from Skagway

Skagway harbour

One of the seven origami towel creations that we found in the evenings

We visited Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway (all Alaska) and Victoria (B.C. Canada). We walked around each town looking in their local stores, learnt a little bit of history, watched the Lumberjack show in Ketchikan, walked to the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau, took the train up the White Pass and Yukon Route in Skagway and walked the streets of Victoria. It was fun and so beautiful. We saw dolphins and whales, glaciers and icebergs, waterfalls and snow-capped mountains. All the while my mind had intermittently been churning thoughts of returning to Australia and all that comes with it, but to keep my head in the game I tried to concentrate on where I was presently and focus on that.

From Seattle we travelled down to my friend’s town Medford, Oregon. Then the following day after a beautiful morning outdoor church service, different friends (Tim and Karin) picked me up and we drove back up to Portland. There we tasted some of Portland’s delicious foods, Pip’s Original Doughnuts and Chai, Salt and Straw for gourmet ice-cream, schwarmas from a street food truck to name a few. We hiked trails and drove the Fruit Loop tasting wines and ciders while catching up and talking of old times.

Chai and doughnuts at Pip's

Cider tasting at the Hood River Fruit Loop

Onward from Portland I flew to Durango, Colorado where I joined Mercy Ships friends from all over the US, Canada and even my kiwi friend who’s living in Northern Togo. We squeezed into every bed in our generous host’s house, some overflowing into tents, others in pop-up camper vans. Every day held adventures, hiking trails in the mountains (we got hailed on and froze when the temperature dropped significantly and it rained the whole walk down), soaked in the hot springs in Ouray, went white water rafting down the local river with Durango friends, a day out on a shooting range, lots of BBQs and meals together, Dutch Blitz, bocce ball and cornhole games. It was so fun to see so many friends that I hadn’t seen in years. I love it when you can just pick up exactly where you left off.

 

Ouray Hot Springs

Look at the size of this thing!

Hitting the 200yd, 300yd and 400yd targets took just 4 bullets!

The mark where my bullet hit and then ricocheted off and hit Mirm in the forehead

Soothing baby Bennett took some African mama style

The American cornhole game

 

After Colorado I flew to Virgina to see Stacia and her family. I always think it’s interesting to see where your friends grew up and all the things that are normal for them in contrast to your own ‘normal’ upbringing. From Virginia we drove through Charlotte, North Carolina for a quick stop and onward to Nashville, Tennessee where we got to join our friends Josh and Katie for their wedding! Another beautiful ship love story became until-death-do-us-part in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony in the woods of Tennessee.

 

The plan was to explore Nashville the next day and after driving around the music recording studios, walking the streets and eating lunch in a pub with great live country music, I had expired and was reduced to tears in the airport car park after dropping Heather off. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to lie down and close my eyes, but with nowhere to go and an 8+ hour drive the following day, we said goodbye to other friends in the city and knocked 2 hours off our drive for the next day, enjoying the golden hour of sunshine hitting the trees as we drove and ending up in a random town, hotel and the 12th bed I'd slept in that trip.

Do you feel tired just reading this? Yeah me too. Let’s take a break.

Let the Adventure Begin

Recently one of my sisters came to visit me and the two of us, along with a good friend, Stacia, from the ship, travelled up to northern Madagascar to explore the country.

The adventure began with a 5:30 wake up alarm, dressed, luggage up to reception, a quick breakfast, disembarked, a few hugs on the dock and into the bus and waving goodbye by 6:30am. The road out of Tamatave to Antananarivo (shortened to Tana) winds around the mountains. I mean, curving around mountains for practically 8 hours solid! Unfortunately the first 4 hours of Stacia’s journey was spent vomiting into a bag, or sitting staring out the front of the bus trying not to throw up. I stayed in my seat a few rows back, trying not to watch and sympathetic vomit into my non-existent vomit bag. It was quite the relief to eventually make it to Tana where we sat still in traffic before making it to the guesthouse and giving my sister, Sarah a great big hug!

Sarah, Deb and Stacia

Day one of adventures took us into the city centre of Tana where we wandered through the markets, soaking up the smells of dried fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, checked out the locally made clothes and pretty much anything else you could imagine.

The old royal palace

The following day we headed to the airport to make our Air Madagascar flight up to Diego Suarez, in the north of Mada. We’d heard a lot about Air Mada making a lot of changes to flights and while I’d been on the bus from Tamatave to Tana, I had received a call from them telling me both flights had moved times. So I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief that we were actually going until we were sitting on the plane and in the air.

Even though we made it to Diego, when we waited for the luggage to come out, a lady came out and said that they had left everyone’s luggage behind in Tana. They had some reason like it was too hot or too heavy, but just decided to leave it all behind, but they would fly it in tomorrow. Haha. The whole flight full of people tried to cram into a small office to leave details of the hotels and places for Air Mada to drop off the luggage after it arrived the following morning. The only problem we had was that we already had plans that we couldn’t change the next day and now that we didn’t have our things it would make it difficult. We ended up staying around until we were the last people there and after a few phone calls, one of the guys in the office printed out a form which we signed and they handed over some compensation money to each of us! The idea was that we could go and purchase whatever we needed for the next day- easy to say when you’re in a country with shopping centres! Anyway, we headed to the nearest supermarket for some toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant and water- all the essentials in life!

The funniest part was Stace going to sleep in her clothes and waking up in the morning with the alarm, flicking back her blankets, standing up and saying, “Ok, I’m ready. Let’s go!”

The essentials

We hiked up French Mountain, a 485m mountain, in our flip flops and joked the whole way up and down saying as we tripped or slipped on the rocks, “Flip flops, no problem.” We managed to get all the way up and down with all skin and flip flops intact, despite my prediction. (I did have to take them off at one point because my feet were too sweaty to stay in them!)

Diego Suarez, Diego Bay and Sugar Loaf Mountain

"Flip flops, no problem!"

A well-deserved lunch

We visited the Three Bays.

Our luggage was returned to us, much to our relief, even though they tried to give Sarah someone else’s bag! After several phone calls, a trip in the car here and there and knocking on the Air Mada office door, we eventually got her bag back.

We took a trip out to Emerald Sea, marvelling at the gorgeous colour of the water and AMAZING snorkelling!

A reminder from the coral of our time at Emerald Sea.

From Diego Suarez we drove down to Ankarana via the Tsingy Rouge.

We found this male chameleon on the side of the road.

Petit Tsingy

Tsingy Rouge

Tsingy Rouge

We walked through the rainforest to the tsingy limestone, spotting some lemurs and other wildlife along the way. Tsingy means tip-toe in Malagasy.

Driving over the roads between villages and national parks, our guide turned around and said to us, "The holes in the roads, we say in French as chicken nests, but here they are so big we call them zebu nests." So for the rest of the trip whenever we had to drive around or through a big pot hole, we'd call out, "Zebu nest!" or "Elephant nest!" for the really big ones.

Zebu walking home

 

We spent a night in Ankify at a beautiful place called Baobab Lodge where the view from where I lay in my bed was gorgeous.

A tour at a plantation that grows vanilla, ylang-ylang, pepper corns and cocoa beans taught us a lot about many different Malagasy exports famous around the world.

Did you know: Coca-Cola uses Malagasy vanilla in its products? McCormick & Co also sells and uses Malagasy vanilla.

Cocoa tree

A small cocoa pod

Inside the cocoa pod

Cocoa seeds are fermented for 6 days.

After fermentation the seeds are dried in the sun.

Remove the skin and you have 100% cocoa.

Ylang-ylang trees are cut so that the branches can always be reached.

Ylang-ylang flowers

Ylang-ylang flower

We were greeted in Nosey Be by our local tour guide who pulled out refrigerated face clothes scented with ylang-ylang to refresh us. We dropped our stuff off and walked along the beach soaking up the colours of the setting sun and our surroundings.

We watched the sun set over the ocean at Mont Passot and fill the sky with colours.

We set out for a day trip to Nosey Tanikely, exclaiming on arrival of how beautiful the colour of the ocean was and once we were swimming and snorkelling around, I was just in awe.

We snorkelled around for hours, swimming with sea turtles and pointing out to each other the different fish, so colourful and so creatively different from each other. It was like being in a whole different world. I liked to duck down and swim among the fish, watching their little bodies flit about and change direction, showing off the colour reflections from their glittering fins. There were so many colours, so many fish, so many shapes, such beauty to watch and be a part of.

After snorkelling we had an amazing Malagasy picnic lunch, where we were joined by a local lemur. We were told not to feed him, because he’s wild, but it was difficult to keep him away from the bananas!

"Look out Stace!"

We also saw the most beautiful chameleon I have ever seen!! Amazing colours!

Lokobe National Park in Nosey Be was our next adventure. We were driven to the nearest village close to the national park and then hopped into a pirogue (French for canoe) and rowed ourselves 45mins to the village where the national park is. We were taken by three amazing guides who found us the most extraordinary creatures, which were very difficult to spot for the untrained eye!

Can you see the mossy leaf-tail gecko?

Pygmy Chameleon

Boa Constrictor

The very rare Mouse Lemur

Wild vanilla

After another amazing picnic lunch we digested our food over interesting conversation about Malagasy culture and rowed ourselves back over the gorgeous green sea, through a cloud of rain, back to our waiting vehicle.

Female chameleon

Our last day we waited to hear if our Air Mada flight had changed times again- it had, but they had moved it back which gave us enough time to get back out for a half day of snorkelling. We lathered up with sunscreen and the spent the hours face down in the sea, chasing the fish, swimming with turtles and soaking up all the life under the sea that we are never able to see from above.

We spent one more day in Tana, shopping in the markets and wandering around the streets.

Adventuring means asking locals for directions.

Tana city

We loved our calendar fabric from 1985 & 1990 pillowcases at the guesthouse.

Goodbyes soon came as Sarah flew back to Australia and Stacia and I headed back to the ship, with plenty of washing to do and a million photos of the amazing things we had seen.

Have I convinced you to come and see it all for yourself?