So The Dawn of a New Day
is translated from Benin's French national anthem. I thought it was apt seeing that Mercy Ships represents new beginnings for patients and volunteers alike.
I am leaving at the crack of dawn on Thursday to embark on a new chapter with the Africa Mercy. This time around I am not packing a domestic worker's uniform but a script outline, a lot of tape stock and a French dictionary.
The day that I walked down the gangway for the last time in Liberia last year I knew without a doubt that I was going to return - over different waters.
I had had an intense quiet time the night of Easter Sunday when I realised that working on glamorous big budget features with the coolest gear and salary to match wasn't what I wanted after all. A somewhat inconvenient discovery.
I had found a means to create a tiny window to the world. This window was not wrought iron but put together with whatever I could find. And what one saw through the window wasn't exactly The Brady Bunch.
Living in South Africa is a good way to realise that audiences aren't wanting any more reality. Our lives sometimes feel like the action movies other countries pay money to see. But there's only so much of Girls of the Playboy Mansion a mind bent on mindlessness can take. Sometimes it takes seeing a harsher reality to discover that one's life is actually marvelous - and that even the little we think we have is enough to make someone else's drastically better.
This time I actually have a plan on how to build the window. What remains a mystery are the stories of the patients and doctors who'll walk in front of it and those unknowns who'll hopefully help me hold it up.
As crazy as the last months of preparation have been I am really comforted by the fact that when I know God is telling me to do something I won't give up and I know that He'll "maak n' plan" one way or another. I have been astounded by people's support to make this mission possible. Each person has been confirmation that God is faithful and He doesn't give us dreams to dream about but to live them.
(I will be volunteering to help with Mercy Ships' fundraising material and simultaneously making a documentary highlighting the story of a South African surgeon and 3 of his patients on board the Africa Mercy).
is translated from Benin's French national anthem. I thought it was apt seeing that Mercy Ships represents new beginnings for patients and volunteers alike.
I am leaving at the crack of dawn on Thursday to embark on a new chapter with the Africa Mercy. This time around I am not packing a domestic worker's uniform but a script outline, a lot of tape stock and a French dictionary.
The day that I walked down the gangway for the last time in Liberia last year I knew without a doubt that I was going to return - over different waters.
I had had an intense quiet time the night of Easter Sunday when I realised that working on glamorous big budget features with the coolest gear and salary to match wasn't what I wanted after all. A somewhat inconvenient discovery.
I had found a means to create a tiny window to the world. This window was not wrought iron but put together with whatever I could find. And what one saw through the window wasn't exactly The Brady Bunch.
Living in South Africa is a good way to realise that audiences aren't wanting any more reality. Our lives sometimes feel like the action movies other countries pay money to see. But there's only so much of Girls of the Playboy Mansion a mind bent on mindlessness can take. Sometimes it takes seeing a harsher reality to discover that one's life is actually marvelous - and that even the little we think we have is enough to make someone else's drastically better.
This time I actually have a plan on how to build the window. What remains a mystery are the stories of the patients and doctors who'll walk in front of it and those unknowns who'll hopefully help me hold it up.
As crazy as the last months of preparation have been I am really comforted by the fact that when I know God is telling me to do something I won't give up and I know that He'll "maak n' plan" one way or another. I have been astounded by people's support to make this mission possible. Each person has been confirmation that God is faithful and He doesn't give us dreams to dream about but to live them.
(I will be volunteering to help with Mercy Ships' fundraising material and simultaneously making a documentary highlighting the story of a South African surgeon and 3 of his patients on board the Africa Mercy).
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