It often seems when we’re out here that we live in a different world, we’re somewhat suspended from reality and it often seems not to touch us. I’ve said before that everything is different out here, the rules are different, the morals are different, the very speed at which life moves is different. Our own personal world, so often untouched by the brutality that is the ‘real’ world beyond our plate glass windows.
Except when the real world comes crashing in all unexpected and leaves so many of our shipboard family reeling from it that those few of us who are unaffected are at somewhat of a loss what to do or how to proceed.
To clarify: our entire beverage department hails from the Philippines. That’s well over half the ship. You can imagine the pain and the devastation that these people have to live through every day while they wait to find out if the families they leave behind for months and sometimes years at a time are going to be there, whole and safe, for them to come back to.
I cannot discuss the measures being taken as far as support goes for the crew, all I am able to say is that measures are being taken – despite the many pitfalls of this waterlogged life, we take care of our own out here. And our own need us right now.
The hardest part to witness is the fact that they are still required to do their jobs, always. The guests continue to come first. On the floor, these people are as chipper and as pleasant as they have ever been, but when they come through a crew door they break down. I saw one of the women I’ve worked with for months sobbing in the elevator on her way to her shift, and you don’t really know what to do because much as well know each other on a superficial level, things like this drive home that a lot of us are still just as much strangers as ever.
My heart goes out to each and every one of my shipboard family – known or not, wherever they are in the fleet – who has been affected by what will likely go down as one of the worst natural disasters in history.