Discharging a ship loaded with food aid demands hard work. You are an orchestra conductor. All your skills are utilized to discharge 50,000 MT of wheat. You remove bulk wheat and bag a million 50 kilo bags to feed the hungry. The food can feed a million families for a month.
I would supervise WFP discharges in hot Massawa, the major port of Eritrea on the Red Sea. A freezing day in Massawa would be 82 F (28C). The sun bakes. You drink water like hell.
You kept the discharge of grain from the hatches moving. You made sure that bagging machines were bagging constantly. Stevedores moved bags from the conveyor belt onto trucks. You lined up trucks to load and get them out of the port quickly.
Dealing with the ship’s captain could be a pleasure or nightmare depending upon his mood. Customs officials could pester you with their frivolous paperwork and instantaneous demands. Port officials could annoy you with extra charges and bothersome technical details. Trucking companies always had mechanical breakdowns and problems with their drivers.
An army of discharge helpers required supervision. Crane operators needed breaks. Hatch supervisors oversaw the scoop into wheat grains. Surveyors had to count correctly especially losses and spillages. Engineers were on standby to repair bagging machines and conveyor belts especially the industrial sewing machines. Another supervisor had to ensure enough WFP labeled bags from the front hatch were onshore to continuously bag. Spare parts for bagging machines were always on standby.
Despite the logistics challenges, you have to remind yourself of honorable work to feed the hungry poor. Food was scarce. Children were stick kids. Mothers sacrificed their food for their babies. Per capita income was $392 per year. Meat was a luxury. Cooking oil was expensive. Kids scour nearby bush for firewood. I gave a chicken to a roadside family I would greet when driving down to the port. They held me in high esteem. Chicken was a gift from God.
People were grateful for our aid. A donor thanked us profusely saying, you kept them from starving. We can fail to remember about the arduous journey of food from seed to mouth. Our wheat came from southern USA ports as it was USA wheat.
On top of timely discharge of food aid, you ensured safety and no injuries. Unfortunately, on a discharge elsewhere, a port worker fell into an empty hatch and died.
Wearing my hard hat, I boarded the ship and meet the captain. He was polite and offered coffee in his office salon. We discussed operations which were moving smoothly. However, my assistant port captain scurried to fetch me.
Quickly, he bought me to the side of an open hatch next to the accommodation superstructure. There were difficulties reaching the bagging units on portside with the ships’ crane. The crane operator above us was busy in his cabin maneuvering the crane. I was peering down at the deep hatch.
Without warning, the yellow crane block and hook whizzed by. We were blasted by the breeze. We were startled and frightened. It missed us by a few feet. We looked up realizing the crane operator had just seen us below.
It was a life lesson to make eye contact with the crane operator and always look upward. You never know what can hit you.