Ship Visiting Gone Wrong

It has been perpetually interesting, going through this service year and noting how my experiences compare with my expectations. For the most part, they scarcely line up at all: Harlem is nothing like I imagined it, living in community has yielded joys and challenges that are vastly different from the ones I foresaw, and - let's face it - nothing could have prepared me for the randomness and insanity of my job at the port.

One of the most thought-provoking reality/expectation disconnects has been how cushy my job seems in comparison to my housemates'. While they contend with hostile nursing home patients, maddeningly bureaucratic institutions, and screaming children all day long, I (for the most part, it seems) spend my days hanging out with my awesome clergy coworkers and getting myself invited to lunch on ships. Yes, of course that's painting an awfully optimistic picture. But it often seems to me that I should be encountering more institutionalized prejudice, dealing with more truly ugly situations, getting pushed more violently out of my comfort zone...you know?

In many ways, what I'm running into is simply what happens when a young white woman from the Wisconsin suburbs gets plunked in the middle of a totally different reality. Of course it's not exactly what I expected. But even within the port, it seems like I somehow go on all the easy ships while my coworkers have to deal with all the messiness and drama. My colleagues each have an arsenal of harrowing ship-visiting stories, many of them involving injuries and illnesses that went untreated for weeks and even months because the shipping companies were too cheap to provide transportation to a hospital or the necessary guards to accompany the hostile, alien seafarers.

Until yesterday, these stories were simply that: stories, tales that had nothing to do with my day-to-day comings and goings. But then I met Justado, and my outlook on the entire shipping industry was transformed in a flash. Justado is (well, was) a deck fitter on a container ship with what is, in the grand scheme of things, a company that takes comparatively good care of its seafarers. While crossing the mid-Atlantic, there was an explosion on deck, and Justado couldn't get out of the way in time. He suffered 3 broken bones in his hand and severe burns extending from his fingers to his upper arm. The ship was 3 days away from land when the accident occurred. That's 3 days with no medical attention and, worse, no painkillers. I know full well that there are far too many Americans with inadequate health care, but this brand of institutional negligence goes far, far beyond what anyone living in a modern, Western country can imagine enduring themselves.

When I saw him, he was getting ready to be flown home to the Philippines (7 months before his contract was due to end, which is an enormous financial burden on his family), despite the fact that his doctors wanted to keep him at the hospital for observation for another 2 days. The shipping company wanted him off their hands (and off of foreign soil, due to visa restrictions) as soon as possible, never mind the dangers to his health and his livelihood. For my part, I can safely say that I have never seen a human being in such visibly excruciating pain, nor have I seen a seafarer in such emotional distress.

After I had done my (highly inexpert) best to deal with the situation and returned to the office, I indignantly asked my coworkers just how badly a seafarer would have to be injured before the company would consider airlifting him out. My question was met first with blank stares, then with a chilling response: "Oh, sweetie, we've had crews come in where someone has died while crossing an ocean, and they've had to empty their freezer to store the cadaver." If someone were critically ill on a passenger ship, they would receive immediate medical attention. If an American merchant mariner were critically injured, they would be airlifted out by the military in a heartbeat. But if a Filipino man so much as dares to get himself hurt on the job, well, that's just too bad for him. He's got to suck it up and wait until the next port, and hope that someone will take pity on him and drive him to the nearest doctor.

It is rare for me to get on my soapbox about seafarers' rights, but this? This is just unconscienable. Much as I fervently wish that the whole incident had never occurred, I'm oddly grateful that I was the one who, by total coincidence, wound up visiting Justado's ship. My current state of outrage at the shipping company higher-ups makes me believe in the importance of what I'm doing with renewed commitment and enthusiasm.