“Only days to go” were some of the last words my parents said to me during our final phone call for the next month. It will be my longest time away from home at one given period and it was a strange and emotional end to being on land. Even though we had the time on the ship going from New Haven to Halifax, this journey seemed to be THE journey.
 

All that preparation and our time at Mystic Seaport seems a lifetime away. Our first day back at sea, just like the very first, was hard or impossible to predict but of course it ended up being pretty tough. Just as many expected, a huge rush of seasickness came over many of the crew, me included. Focus your mind on something for a split second and everything’s ok, thinking you’ve been playing cruel mind games with yourself but then your stomach turns and you cannot wait for everything to end. Many, many, many people have experienced seasickness so this is nothing new or different, but it definitely feels like it when going through it. What I constantly end of asking myself is how, how HOW could the Amistad captives possibly have been able to have survived through it?! We’re here with ginger ale on a spacious breezy deck with the comforting hand on our back, still feeling the worst we have ever felt. Being on board experiencing things like this really makes you reflect.
 
What I learnt from it was that there are ups and then there are downs. It sounds simple but on land there is so much going on you sometimes forget that things will change and nearly always get better. This time last night I had my head over the side contemplating jumping in that safety boat or crawling back to my bunk to never come out again…but I got over it. These past two days have shown me how important a team has to be, especially in these kinds of situations, but also how strong a community we already are. Everyone was and is so supportive, genuinely caring and thoughtful. All of us together have only been here for about two weeks but already the students have started to refer to the Amistad as ‘home’ and as a ‘she’. So even though this past day while I was experiencing it was horrible and tough, I learnt from it. This afternoon, we anchored at Sambro Harbour with its beautiful scenery: the typical Canadian site consisting of lines of Pine trees, and we began to talk about Frederick Douglass and the books on slavery we are looking forward to read and discover. That, to me, was why its important to realize that sometimes you have to go through the bad times to get to the good.

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