A Day in the Life

What does a little salesgirl onboard the Africa Mercy actually do? Here’s a little glimpse into my daily routine 🙂

I’m still not a morning a person so I’m a zombie until I’ve had my two cups of coffee. Thankfully most everyone has figured this out and graciously ignore me for about an hour until I’m awake. By 9am I’m the happy, bright eyed and smiley barista y’all know and love 🙂

The Starbucks cafe is open from 9-11 and on Fridays we have the highly anticipated and much loved Waffle Day! And I have learned that I do not know how to make waffles, so I stick to the coffee and conversation.

Our days pretty much revolve around when we next eat, which is about every four hours so after clean up its time for a little devotion or nap then leftovers for lunch or a grilled cheese toasty, the preparation of which I have perfected.

The afternoons we have the Ship Shop open. We spend a good chunk of our morning set up restocking the shop. Not a difficult task really but very time consuming… Our stockrooms are one Deck 2 and our Shop is on Deck 5 so that’s my morning work out carrying up boxes and baskets of food and retail product up the three flights of stairs.

The time in between our open hours include taking inventory, set up, rotating product, organizing storerooms, getting toilet paper from the container (least favorite task), labelling, cleaning, and so on. And while this might be the easiest job I’ve had in a few years, it still has its challenges, like being short staffed all summer which doubled the workload, training people who’s first language isn’t English, and the like.

But of course we have to be sail ready also so the week before we sail we secure the stockrooms and shop. It’s basically fun with plastic wrap.

When 4pm rolls around we close up the shop and cafe again, count cash and lock up for the day. Then its just about time for dinner.

Evenings are filled with outings for gelato, a drink, a little shopping, walks to the beach or park, and other adventures in town with friends.

Once we get to Congo things will change a bit, evenings will be filled with Mercy Ministry opportunities (HOPE Center, orphanages, prison outreaches, adopt a patient, etc).