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