It’s often the little things in life that bring happiness and joy, but when you’re a seafarer who has been out at sea for 45 days and haven’t seen your family for up to eight months, those little things can be few and far between. Source: The Southern Cross.
That’s where volunteers like Kate Driscoll and Lourdes Letherby come into the picture. As members of Adelaide’s Stella Maris Seafarers Centre, they pick up seafarers in a 12-seater bus and for the next few hours are at their beck and call. All with a smile and a laugh of course.
The day The Southern Cross joined them on the free service provided every weekday from 1-5pm, two seafarers from a Hong Kong bulk carrier contacted the Centre for assistance.
Indian seafarers Avijit and Shajahan asked if their first stop could be a fishing tackle shop and showed us photos of an impressive catch of king fish (mackerel) in Gibraltar.
Avijit has a wife and one-year-old daughter whom he hasn’t seen for eight months and Shajahan has a wife and two children at home.
Both have been working on the Sungkiang, which left Adelaide for Papua New Guinea and Fiji, where Shajahan hopes to get some fishing in.
After a visit to the tackle shop in Port Adelaide, the men asked if they could go to a supermarket to stock up on some personal items such as hair cream and clippers. Next stop was a fast food outlet where they bought hamburgers for themselves and other crew members. Lastly, they picked up some fast food to take back to the ship.
For Ms Driscoll, helping seafarers like Avijit and Shajahan is integral to her Catholic faith.
“We are modelling what Jesus wants – kindness, empathy, care, respect for others, regardless of creed,” she said.
“As the baptised we’re all disciples … It’s about attraction rather than promotion, we attract others to our way of life by how we treat people.”
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Good deeds aplenty at Stella Maris (By Jenny Brinkworth, The Southern Cross)
