Imagine you are the Dronning Ingrid: a rail ferry, that chugs across the Baltic Sea connecting Danish islands. You are content, your flat bottom sails smoothly across the sea, transporting your cargo. Then they build a road....a road that connects your two islands, and you're just not so popular anymore. You feel your world crashing around you, but alas someone see something in you that no-one else would ever imagine, and suddenly there is hope for you. You won't just become scrap metal, torn to pieces in a shipyard, instead you will change the world!
But before you can do this you need a major facelift, in fact not just a facelift, but major reconstructive surgery, shoving new parts inside you (deck 4) and bits on top of you (family cabins deck 6 and 7 aft). To some extent ripping out whole chunks of you, yet somehow managing to still keep the core of you alive. Years pass as people grapple with your insides until you are transformed, and out of your butchered shell, once resembling a rail ferry, emerges something unlikely, a hospital. One that looks to bring hope and healing to the world's forgotten poor.
You are now the Africa Mercy, and you are raring to serve the people of West Africa. But to do this you have to get to them. You have left the safe waters you used to operate in, but you are unfazed, and excitement fills you as you travel down to West Africa. You are braving the the Atlantic ocean to give free operations to the people of West Africa, and you are filled with joy.
But life is hard. You are no longer as young as you used to be, at over 20 years old you are way past your prime (remember you are a ship), and the toils of your work are beginning to show. You were not designed for the Atlantic ocean, and your flat bottom causes you to rock and roll so violently that just occasionally you fling your precious cargo around with tremendous force. But you were also not designed to sit in port, not least an African port for months and months at a time. Parts of you start to cease up, and parts get clogged, and generally you lose motivation to keep going. You are tired and you ache.
However, once a year you leave Africa to go somewhere else, somewhere cooler and calmer. Where people come to visit you and to tend to your aching wounds. Where you have a nice long bath (tank scrubbing and engine cleaning), and your have your annual MOT, and your safety gear is checked and replaced. And to top it off your prized possession, your hospital is given much needed time off duty to allow the various pieces of medical equipment to be overhauled, updated, and fixed; to have exciting new equipment and pressured airlines installed; and generally to clear up the mess of tired equipment left from the past outreach and prepare for the upcoming year. Really it's not much of a break for you, more like a combination of a health check/ deep cleaning treatment, with some minor surgeries, but you feel so much better for it, ready and renewed for the next adventure, back where you belong off the coast of West Africa.
But before you can do this you need a major facelift, in fact not just a facelift, but major reconstructive surgery, shoving new parts inside you (deck 4) and bits on top of you (family cabins deck 6 and 7 aft). To some extent ripping out whole chunks of you, yet somehow managing to still keep the core of you alive. Years pass as people grapple with your insides until you are transformed, and out of your butchered shell, once resembling a rail ferry, emerges something unlikely, a hospital. One that looks to bring hope and healing to the world's forgotten poor.
You are now the Africa Mercy, and you are raring to serve the people of West Africa. But to do this you have to get to them. You have left the safe waters you used to operate in, but you are unfazed, and excitement fills you as you travel down to West Africa. You are braving the the Atlantic ocean to give free operations to the people of West Africa, and you are filled with joy.
But life is hard. You are no longer as young as you used to be, at over 20 years old you are way past your prime (remember you are a ship), and the toils of your work are beginning to show. You were not designed for the Atlantic ocean, and your flat bottom causes you to rock and roll so violently that just occasionally you fling your precious cargo around with tremendous force. But you were also not designed to sit in port, not least an African port for months and months at a time. Parts of you start to cease up, and parts get clogged, and generally you lose motivation to keep going. You are tired and you ache.
However, once a year you leave Africa to go somewhere else, somewhere cooler and calmer. Where people come to visit you and to tend to your aching wounds. Where you have a nice long bath (tank scrubbing and engine cleaning), and your have your annual MOT, and your safety gear is checked and replaced. And to top it off your prized possession, your hospital is given much needed time off duty to allow the various pieces of medical equipment to be overhauled, updated, and fixed; to have exciting new equipment and pressured airlines installed; and generally to clear up the mess of tired equipment left from the past outreach and prepare for the upcoming year. Really it's not much of a break for you, more like a combination of a health check/ deep cleaning treatment, with some minor surgeries, but you feel so much better for it, ready and renewed for the next adventure, back where you belong off the coast of West Africa.
The Dronning Ingrid coming into dock in Denmark
The ‘new’ Deck 4 (where my cabin is) being installed over the rail deck (deck 3) where the hospital is.
The Africa Mercy after the conversion.
(Pictures from Mercy Ships)
