The way we live in Freetown, Sierra Leone

If we think about our life’s we only remember moments, sad moments, and happy moments.

Life is about moments.

Some live in moments and some create moments.

I do both.

Everyday is a challenge and everyday is different here in Freetown on the 

AFRICA

MERCY

Able to live in a moment brings happiness. -Ville Patrikainen   

Yesterday the Bosun who is my right hand man, stopped me and told me that his girlfriend is in critical condition in a hospital. That happened around 19:00. So I offered to take him to that hospital and so we went. Here in Freetown the traffic is horrible and there are no rules, traffic lights or street lights and because of all that, is always a challenge to drive here. We arrived to our destination but it wasn’t a hospital, it was her home. She lives up onto mountains about 45 minutes drive away from the ship. Anyway we finally got there and we stepped off the car, it was pitch dark and we were somewhere in the city…We had to walk between houses, downhill, on the slippery road and it took us about 15 minutes to get to her house. We found her lying in her bed, shivering; I think she had a fever. How Bosun described me her condition was like she was dying!! Luckily she wasn’t. We prayed for her and Bosun had two bottles of olive oil with him. Yes, olive oil. First the olive oil was put on her forehead and then Bosun and she drank it. Yeap, they drank olive oil. The purpose of doing this was that his faith was in that bottle and he could transfer the power of heeling from the bottle to her. Interesting! It was really WOW. It is strange to put faith in some kind of form but I think it was a good thing. If a person really believes that something can heel her or him it will help. The power of believe can be really strong. She was working today; she is one of our day volunteers so maybe the olive oil helped!

Another interesting event happened to me on last weekend. I was riding a motorbike taxi and while riding on it I was thinking the fact that most of the drivers are ex-child soldiers, who got their bikes from the government that they could be integrated to the society! Hmmm…is it really safe to ride on those?? While I was thinking that brakes got broken and we hit a tree!! Amazing!! I got into accident in Africa, it wasn’t the first time but that is a different story. Okay we hit a tree but I managed to jump off the bike before we actually hit the tree and at the same time I grabbed and pulled the driver off the bike too so nothing really happened to us. The bike got little damage but that’s it. It was really funny at the end because I was holding that guy and he was hanging like being in a hanger from my hand. I don’t know why I grabbed the guy, everything happened automatically. It was just funny!! J

Also another exciting event happened like a week ago. I got called in the evening that there was a boat in distress; they ran out of gas, just next to our ship, we tried to call the port authorities but they didn’t respond so we lowered our rescue boat to help them. I went down with couple deck guys and we tried to tow them ashore.

We tried…

...and we tried!!! J

Our small rescue boat wasn’t strong enough to actually tow the boat so we just ended up going circles and further away from our ship!! We were useless!! J Finally the local pilot boat came to safe the day, they took over and towed the boat ashore. It was a good exercise for us. Exiting event!! A rescue operation!! J

Today another boat had problems with his engines and she was drifting next to our ship. We called the pilot and they responded promptly which is great. The pilot boat towed the boat away!! All good!!

All these events were moments, moments which I will remember rest of my life. Amazing moments! Happy moments!

We should create moments or at least see the moments as a special occasion that we could remember them rest of our lives. For me small things have been most memorable like drinking wine with amazing people in candle light, listening good music. Simple but happy moments!

                                                                         I love life, I love moments.

If I think the time here in Africa I remember the challenges and one of my biggest challenge has been the people here on the ship. For me it is hard to believe that people are people were ever I go. I am dealing same kind of issues here than I have been dealing on the cruise ships. I thought that people here would be different. No, in general they are the same. Of course here are some amazing people who are doing amazing job but still here are some individuals who behave like jackasses in the name of God. I have been having some difficulties to understand these people. Why they are here and why they are behaving the way they are? I came here with an attitude that we can change the world and I thought everybody else are here thinking the same. NO, Ville, no. Sometimes I think I am just a young kid who thinks the world is perfect and everybody is nice to each other. Again and again I found that is not the case. The world is not perfect!! Why I still believe the goodness of people? Why I still believe that we can change things? Because I want to!!!
I want to live in a perfect world. My world is perfect. The world we are living is not perfect but I love my life and it is perfect. I don’t want to become miserable old men who don’t believe in anything and complains about everything. I want to believe and I stand behind my believes. I want to live in my world which is the perfect world for me. That makes me happy. I want to believe in love, in people and in life!! I believe that there is only one life, one opportunity to enjoy all the beauty in this world. I don’t want to waste my time here, I want to enjoy!

Happiness is to enjoy the ride, ride of life. –Ville Patrikainen

RIDE ON!!!

What is happiness?

“Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of travelling” –Margaret Lee Runbeck

I am happy or am I?

I have found happiness but can I be sure that I am really happy?

Is happiness my ultimate GOAL?  

What is happiness and what I get from it?

There is no perfect life and there is no life without sadness or problems. Happiness is strength to overcome all the challenges on our way. Happiness is not a destination, is a way of travelling and to found happiness we just have to look inside us. The happiness is in us. What ever country or society we live in, we all have the same desire: to become happy.

So yes, happiness is my goal. My ultimate goal!

Buddhists believes that happiness is the ultimate freedom from suffering…I like that and I think it is true. Basic human being is to be happy, when all the bad thoughts are taken away only thing left is happiness.

Happiness is the present moment, is neither the past nor the future. Happiness is now. We can’t think that we would be happy when we get married or when we get the job we have always wanted. That is not happiness. Happiness is in that moment we are living right now, it is the way we choose to live. We make our decisions according to our happiness and the out come is the result of our state of mind.

I choose to be happy.

Happiness brings me joy, it brings me pleasure.

“Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholehearted, one directionally, without regret or reservation”. –William H. Sheldon

I had amazing weekend and it wasn’t great because amazing things happened, it was great because of my happiness. I am in the poorest part of the world and there are not so many things to do but still I enjoy every minute and every second while I am here. I find joy from small things. I find energy from people which bring me happiness.

Simple things make us happy. I had a quite routine work week, no big drama or great challenges, just work. On Friday I organized our department to get together and we went to the beach. Some of our local workers have never been on that beach!! They have lived their whole lives here but they have never gone to these gorgeous beaches!! Amazing!! So they really appreciated that day and it made them happy!! Such a small thing!

On Saturday I visited the Chimpanzees sanctuary which was really cool and in the afternoon we made few dives. It was extreme diving because the current was so STRONG!!! I got drift away so many times and we got separated few times but I did enjoy it. It was a good day.

On Sunday we just had lunch in a really nice beach restaurant with few friends.

It was a great weekend.  A beach, good company and nice food! Perfect.

Happiness is about small things.

“Happiness is something that you are and it comes from the way you think” –Wayne Dyer

HAPPINESS AND FAITH

“Happiness is a spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude” –Denis Wailey

Time here in Africa is a journey to me and while travelling in this path of happiness different feelings and emotions goes through my mind everyday. One huge thing is my faith. What to believe?

Is there a God?

If there is a God, where he came from?

What is heaven?

What is the purpose of life?

Is there absolute truth?

All these questions go around my head all the time.
This is really emotional time for me.

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and the end of human existence” -Aristotle

I have googled some of these questions and when I googled “what is heaven” I got interesting answers. One of them was that there was a war in heaven. (Rev. 12:7) and there was violence in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 11:12). Argument was: do we really want to go in the place like that?

No comments.

My point is that people just see what they want to see. Faith is like being in love. Love is blind so is faith. People see the God as they want to see, like they do with their faith. People believe what they want to believe.

So what is my faith?

I believe that we all have our own God which guides us on our journey. Why but a name for it? I feel closer to Buddhism than Christianity and I feel that my journey might take me to Tibet to search for ultimate happiness. I have been fascinated by Dalai Lama and Gandhi. I have been reading about them and studying their thoughts. I find them interesting. I am curios to see if I could be happier. The time will tell if I will end up someday searching for happiness in places like Tibet. Maybe…J

Life is an adventure and that makes it amazing.

It is good to be alive!!

Good Morning Sierra Leone

THE GOLDEN RULE!

One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself

That is the official

GOLDEN RULE.

I didn’t know that there is a rule like that but apparently there is.

Am I better than others?

How we know are we better than others? 

Who can say am I better than others?

"What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either".  Sextus the Pythagorean

There is only one world and we all live on it. Are we all equal or what separates us?

We watched a video clip about how we treat other people and there was a good point. We meet random people all the time but we treat them differently according to their position. We treat them according to their value; their value to us. The more value people have for us the better we treat them. Is that right?

Should we treat everybody as equal?  

I believe we should. I believe what goes around comes around. So how we treat other people reflect back to us, one way or the other.

Small things make a difference like saying good morning or just asking how things are can make a difference. I can see it everyday when I walk around talking to people. People smile to me when I say good morning or good afternoon. I try to treat everybody in a same way and that helps me in many ways. Every time I need something it is easy to ask because I have treated others in the same way, also every time someone smiles to me I get something from it, I get energy. A smile gives me energy.

“Smile and the world will smile back to you.” –Ville Patrikainen

Of course the world is not perfect and there are people who are always crumby and rude even if you treat them nicely but just because someone doesn't treat you like they would like to be treated don’t mean you should do the same to them.

We are all humans. We are flesh and blood. Inside we all look alike. So why there are racisms? Why blacks, yellows and whites can’t live in harmony??? What makes the black people so different to us white people? Skin color??? Sounds so stupid!!! We segregate people according to their color…We don’t do it with other stuff!! Would be silly to valuate a house according to its color or to valuate a car based on its color. But we do it with people. We treat other people according to their value, according to their color.

Funny thing is that we get value when we are tanned. The browner we are the more valuable we get. But it doesn’t work with black people. If they try to get whiter they just loose their value. J

Who can judge other people? Who can say what people’s value is? I can’t.

I can judge myself; I know what is right and what is wrong. I do my own mistakes and I learn from them. This is my life and I am the judge of it.

I follow the laws as they are guidelines for all my actions and if I break the laws I will get judged accordingly. Fair enough.  

   Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

We create our own world; we know what is right and what is wrong because we can feel it. If we do something wrong which we wouldn’t like to be done to ourselves we feel it and we know it is wrong. That is how we know what is right and what is wrong. We learn by feeling things.

We don’t want someone to steal from us. We don’t want someone to kill us. We don’t want someone to burn our house. We feel it what is wrong!! We know it inside.

EVERYTHING WHICH WE WOULDN’T LIKE TO BE DONE TO OURSELVES IS WRONG!

We feel it. We know it. So why we don’t treat other people like we would like to be treated?

It is super important to listen yourself and explore your feelings that you know what is wrong and what is right. All the answers are inside you. Just ask would you want it happen to you? Or would you like to be treated like that?

Positive people attract other people. By being positive and treating others equally you will double your changes to success in life.  

By listening people we learn, everybody has their story and everybody has made some mistakes from which we could learn but we have to listen to hear people mistakes and learn from them. Feel the stories and feel what is right and what is wrong. The more you listen and feel the more you learn and better you will get. The better you are the better life is.

Be able to listen is a valuable asset.

“Treat people like you would like to be treated and listen”. –Ville Patrikainen

Life is amazing, we feel, we breathe, we are alive. Let’s start living!!!



My sex is on FIRE!

“Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now.

When we face our challenges with faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes,

and if necessary, to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on”.

Iyanla Vanzant

Life is good.

The fire inside me has been burning heavily. All the visions, hopes and efforts regarding my work here in Sierra Leone are fading …I have been feeling more frustrated and disappointment due to different issues.

This is a hard work but I knew that before I came here. The job is sucking lot of energy from me and it has started to affect me. Everyday day is a challenge, EVERYDAY is different. I wake up every morning hoping that nothing dramatic would happen. I have been strong enough to just laugh when we face new challenges but how much can I take?

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Winston Churchill

I feel that we don’t get all the things done we could get done. People are wasting time. I don’t feel that there is a great spirit to make things better. I feel alone…

But I haven’t lost my fire.

Any small thing makes a difference.

We still have problems with water and that will never stop. Last week we were struggling to get any water and yesterday one of our water pipes got broken, so we had to shut down the whole system for a while. Also yesterday during the football match against local team; one of my guys got injured. He is still in our medical center recovering, he got a major hit to his head and he wasn’t able to respond on anything for a long time.

Garbage system doesn’t work, our garbage haven’t been picked up for a week now and normally it should happen every second day.

I lost one of my day volunteers due to misunderstanding, the normal story from the world I have been living the last 4 years, a boy meets a girl and they are from different culture, they go out together, start kissing and the girl says no but the guy think she means yes. I heard that happened many times on the cruise ships. I don’t know all the details but no one got hurt and as I understood no any official criminal actions was conducted. Just misunderstanding! Both were sent home and the case is still under investigation by the local police. These are just a few examples for all the challenges from last week. WAU!!! J

We have had lots of changes in our department and we have few more coming which is hard for all of us. We are loosing good men which are affecting our efficiency. But what can we do? We have to play with the cards we have been handed to.

 

Let’s get to the fun stuff…Wednesday salsa night was awesome. We went to the Aberdeen to a place called Atlantis which is a restaurant on the beach. We have been going there few times for salsa lessons. Our salsa teacher is ex US marine and he really doesn’t look like a salsa teacher!! J His teaching method is…interesting! It’s like being in an army!!! J How it is possible to teach salsa in military way??? My opinion, no possible!!!! We had lots of fun anyway and we all learnt few new moves!!!  

On Friday we had few beers (not on the ship!!) and Saturday was a movie day. We watched quite a few movies on that day. On Sunday we made a diving trip to a wreck. We took our rescue boat and head to the lighthouse diving site. That trip was amazing!! Good fun. Dan, our diving leader managed to get few craps which we let go later because they were so small but it was good fun catching them. In the evening on Sunday we went to this local movie theater which had a movie called The American. The cinema was quite nice but the movie wasn’t the best! J   I had a good weekend. Amazing!!



We celebrated the US independence day!



I have been filming almost everyday to get more material to our happiness project and the more I have been filming the more I have been noticing the small things in life. I have started to see different angles and those angles are the small things which make me see more happiness, like a smile or a laugh or just a child playing with a ball or anything beautiful. This filming project has been really therapeutic. Nowadays I spend more time just looking things. I am not in a hurry, I don’t stress, and I just look. Happiness is everywhere, we just have to stop and look around to see it.

Regardless all the challenges I have had and all the difficulties, I have found more happiness everyday. This journey of searching for happiness has got me deeper into to the world of happiness and I feel I am growing as a human being because of all the challenges and all the happiness around me. I have learnt many things from the people here on the ship and also from the people of Sierra Leone.

I started writing this blog in the morning and since that so much have happened!!! I am on fire!!!!! I received email from Finland. The email was replay for my request for stability program for the ship and they said YES!!! J YES!!!! How cool is that!!! We might get a new stability program from Finland!!! Amazing!!

Also another thing happened…I googled: “Finnish people in Sierra Leone”, and I found out that we are funding, we Finnish people, an education program in the near by city. So I contacted them and got invited to visit them!! How cool is that!!! Next Saturday we are heading to Bo, which is the second largest city in Sierra Leone. A road trip!!! J I am super excited!!! We are taking a government bus which takes about 5 hours and we are staying overnight there. We will visit the school and we get a tour around Bo. Wau!!!

So in the morning I was feeling that my fire is fading but it is fully on now!!! J

Last thing…My sex is on fire!! It is a song. What does it mean, my sex is on fire???? J

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. – Robert Brault

Make love not war by loving yourself!

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

I have been super busy the whole week. It has been a challenging week. I could compare my work for making a snow ball. I have been rolling it and it has been getting bigger and bigger and it has started to get so big that it is difficult to control it. At the moment it is just a perfect size to make a snowman!! J I feel that I want to do as much as I can while I am here but I have to know my limits. I can’t be doing everything and being everywhere. That is what I have been doing the last weeks and I have started to feel it. I have been tired and frustrated. Also I have been feeling slight lack of motivation due to fact that I am burning myself up. I am trying to give too much. I realize that.

Part of happiness is to have time for yourself and I have been ignoring my own needs and that is affecting me. I have been concentrating doing things for other people which is good but the most important person into the world is me. It sound selfish but it is really important to understand!  If I am not satisfied who I am, how I feel and what I do, it is difficult to give anything to anyone. How can I love someone if we don’t love myself? How can we accept people how they are if we don’t except ourselves the way we are?

So the first person you should help, if you want to help, is yourself.

We just discussed in one of our meetings that running away from home, from work; from marriage is not the answer for problems. The problem, in most of the cases, is the person himself and we can’t runaway from ourselves. We make all our problems, everything is in our heads. Wanting to make good begins from a person himself, he or she needs to be happy and in harmony with himself before he or she can help others. To find a solution to any problem, we should start looking it inside us. Most of the problems are in our head like the solutions.

More positive we are fewer problems we will have. Attitude makes a difference.

I feel that some of these people here are not with pure heart just helping other people, they are running away from themselves and that is affecting other people who are here sincerely to give help to them who are in need.

I have had lots of challenges during this week (Notice challenges not problems! J) and few of them have been relationship issues and position issues. Some people here are not happy of their position…what??? People are following the guidance of Jesus and I don’t think that HE thinks that we should put our own interests over the needs for other. We are working here, we don’t get paid and we are not looking for promotions. We are here to help the people in Sierra Leone, what does it matter which position we hold??? We should be here for one goal. One goal only, the goal to make things better but I feel that all of us are not, which is sad but we are not living in a perfect world!!

Really???  

We all have some own interests but we should concentrate working for the poor and sick people, am I being stupid to think that?

Should I also start complaining that the food is not good or the working hours are affecting my social live. Or I should be the Captain because I have the license. NO!! We are in Africa and we are here to provide hope and healing for the local people. This is not a holiday and we are not here to get glory and to have a great career with all the benefits!! Although this is a really nice place for all us and maybe it is too nice! People forget why they are here and for some of these people this is a great getaway.  Mercy ships provide such a good environment for the crew that it is easy to lose yourself from reality.

We should make time for ourselves and pursue for our own interests that we could help these people more but we shouldn’t forget why we are here!

Anyway the topic for all this was the importance to spend some time with yourself and remind yourself what you are doing and why you are doing what ever you are doing. What you want to be and how happy you actually are. It is really important to explore yourself and do things that make you happy. Have some quality time with yourself. Find all the solutions for your problems inside you. Look hard and you will find the answers in you. It is NOT important what you do, where you are or what is your position. It is important what you think about yourself and how happy you are what ever you do.

It is NOT important what other people think about you, it is important what YOU think about yourself!! –Ville Patrikainen

Big part of happiness is to have time for yourself and you have to make that time or you get unhappy and you burn out. We have to be selfish to be happy and to be able to help other people. We have to start loving ourselves to be able to give love and make love.

LOVE…what amazing thing!!

What the world would be without love?  

Nothing.

Little bit out of topic but love is good, love is everything. Love is HAPPINESS.

Let’s make love not war by loving ourselves. J

"Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure: where your treasure, there your heart; where your heart, there your happiness."
Saint Augustine

Why the world sometimes sucks?

“Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun”.-Colleen C. Barrett

It’s been a hard week. Emotionally, physically and mentally but extremely satisfying in every aspect! The harder I work the better I feel, so it is true that more we give the more we get.

Anyway, after the garbage fiasco we have encountered few other challenges like our diving operation on Friday. Wow, the divers jumped into garbage, literally. Our water around the ship was covered with all kind of dirt, dead rats, food waste and some other garbage but we had to clean our intakes. Luckily it wasn’t my turn to dive but I feel sorry for the guys who did it. Good work. 

Also I did some safety rounds and noticed some defects in our Galley which need urgent attention, so that will be next week’s huge challenge. On a ship like this which is in a place like this, the challenges just don’t stop. Everyday some new surprises appear to challenge us but I have notice that people here give up. They stop caring…During this week I have tried to get people understand that they just can’t give up, we have to keep on trying to make things better. People think here that it’s okay to work in dirty conditions with broken tools, we are in Africa. TIA (“this is Africa” from the movie Blood Diamonds). NO!!!! and NO!!! Even the Europeans and Americans think that. If we don’t show example, why we are here then? I thought that we are here to make a difference, to help these people to develop and grow. I know that we aren’t here just to live like them and accept things how they are. We are here to change things!!!!! Nothing is going to happen if we, the people who have come here to make difference, stop caring. We have to pursue for excellence in all areas. Small things make a difference and a several small things make a change.

That is how I think.

“You really can change the world if you care enough”.-Marian Wright Edelman

I have felt frustrated because I feel like I am the only one here with all this big ideas to change things. People are with me but they just don’t have the FIRE in them to make things happen. Why they are here then???? Waste time? Nothing else to do? For an adventure? Maybe, I don’t know. Or maybe they also have felt frustrated and haven’t had enough strength to do anything and they have just stopped caring.

I have noticed that some of the people here just do the minimum hours, complain how things are here and do noting about it. Wow. I don’t understand the mentality that something here is someone else responsibility and noting can be done because it has been always like that. I feel…disappointment. That mentality makes my work harder and it affects the life’s of these people here in Sierra Leone.  The less we complain and more we do, the more we will help. That is why we are here. TO HELP!

Amazing, that is the world what people are doing here so don't get me wrong. So many good things happen here everyday but I just feel that we could do more.

I am privileged to work with these amazing people but sometimes its good to shake things up and that is what I am doing, I am trying to give these wonderful people more strength to do what they do and I think and I know that they are doing amazing work!! J

“Having a positive mental attitude is asking how something can be done rather than saying it can't be done”.-Bo Bennett

Yesterday I needed a break too, so we went on a beach but before we got there we had to take a taxi or kind of local taxi, boda, boda. First we had to negotiate a price which took an hour because some of our group members were not happy about the “service” and the price. I was amazed but anyway the driver didn’t know were the beach was. That was ONE of the first issues and then of course the price. We were fighting over few dollars and we had a group of 14. Funny! How people find energy to fight over things like that but when it comes to work they are tired. J  Finally we found a solution and on our way we were. The next challenge was when the cops stopped us and the driver didn’t have a driving license. J Well, he paid the officer. And on our way we were once again…Smoke started to come from the engine which wasn’t a good sign but we continue our journey and we finally got to the beach. We had a great time there, lovely day. On the way back our driver were having lots of problems with the clutch and the gearbox but we were moving ahead anyway. Also on the way back was funny to see when the driver started drink beer while driving!!! I have never seen that before. So the driver didn’t have a driving license, he was drinking, he didn’t know the directions and the vehicle was falling apart. A great taxi ride!!! J  

I had a blast, what a road trip!!! J  

Experiences like that just give us energy, energy to help. All the challenges give me energy, especially when I get over them. Seeing the positive side of things is energy. What ever happens and if we survive from it and can laugh about it, is like a superpower which helps us to make great things.

“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill”.-W. C. Fields 

If you think that the life sometimes sucks it is because of your attitude. Life is amazing.
Positive thinking is the key to a better world. I am doing my part, what about you?