Last night, I was looking out at the harbour of Kingston from an angle few have ever seen. I was standing on the dock of the HCMS Preserver, a 43-year-old Canadian “Protecteur-class auxiliary oiler replenishment” (from Wikipedia).

So why was I on this ship, surrounded by Canadian Navy, with the High Commissioner of Canada in Jamaica, Mr. Robert Ready? The story begins a few weeks ago. I had suggested the community of Mountain View (where Youth Opportunities Unlimited, the NGO I work for, has been since 2003) as a possible venue for a service club I work with to host an activity for the children there. The people of Mountain View have made great strides in eradicating violence. It now has a homework centre, active parenting club, and has not had a shooting in several years. However, logistically, it was deemed that this would not be an area suitable for the service club to work in.

Fast forward a couple weeks and a plethora of logistics, and the Canadian High Commission (who had been asking around for possible projects for the ship’s crew to work on when it docked for a weekend), along with the crew of the Preserver, are now set to work in Mountain View tomorrow to refurbish a computer centre and the homework centre and various other projects. A crew of 40 from the ship will descend on the community, along with Cuso volunteers, for this project.

The ship is in Kingston for the weekend as it is usually out at sea during hurricane season. It is the largest ship of its kind in Canada, and has the ability to refuel other ships. It is completely self-sufficient, including the ability to make its own water.

We were invited on board last night for a reception. The ship was docked on the port, a place few people ever get to go. However, the port is an omnipresent part of Kingston’s skyline, with its beautiful, majestic cranes (used to transport containers). It was magical to be there, to say the least.

But backing up a step again, yesterday morning the High Commissioner and I went to the port to collect some of the crew to do a site preparation visit prior to tomorrow. We drove right up to the ship, which is a stately, grey vessel, complete with a helicopter on the deck. It was somehow otherworldly to drive onto the port, with these Star Trek like vehicles driving around and the cranes looming above us, hundreds of feet in the air. And the containers. Thousands of trailer-sized containers, stacked like dominoes on the massive, barren concrete yard.

We then visited Mountain View to get a sense of the work we will do tomorrow. The Navy’s engineer’s spent a couple of hours determining what is needed to put in place electrical wiring for the computer centre, among scoping out information for various other tasks. As a result of protocol and safety concerns, we were accompanied by about 20 Jamaica Defence Force officers and regular police officers. The community also started to gather in curiosity.

Tomorrow should be a great day. We will get started early and will hopefully complete our tasks.