Sunflowers in the Toilet

Posted by Lisa at 11:40 PM, June 20, 2005

Johanna painted what is now known as the "La La toilet" © Greenpeace

Faye who is one of the deckhands from India woke me up this morning at 7:30. She must have known I had signed up for cleaning and perhaps wanted to make sure I didn’t conveniently forget about it. Originally I had put my name down for cleaning the mess (the eating area) but apparently someone thought it was a good idea to make two lists, which created lots of confusion and in the end I got offered the heads (toilets) to clean. For this I took a bucket and a mop, a sponge, some very hot water, some eco-friendly cleaning stuff and a spray bottle of vinegar and went around all 5 of the toilets on board and all of the showers and gave them my undivided scrubbing attention....

Things are supposed to be more dirty than usual on a Monday since the crew is let off cleaning duties on Sunday. However, it was not a difficult job at all and nothing was really nasty or smelly. I had quite a fun time, sloshing the bucket around and singing to myself…until someone told me to can it because “at any time of the day, someone is likely to be sleeping”. Although that may be true I actually think it was his polite attempt to silence the off-key noises emanating from my throat.

I opened one bathroom door and was delighted to find it had been completely painted with colourful pictures of the planet, stars, a miniature version of the ship and sunflowers all around the toilet. I stood back and admired the artwork but suddenly found myself bursting into a fit of tears. My mother passed away last month and she painted sunflowers all around the toilet in one of the bathrooms where I grew up and it reminded me so much of her. Being reminded of such a wonderful memory is a good thing but I was balling my eyes out and trying to mop the floor at the same time hoping nobody would notice and think that I was really upset about having to clean the heads!

Later on I happened to see Phil, the new bosun who has just arrived, and I informed him that a large section of rubber on one of the steps was hanging off and needed to be fixed. He took a look at it and said to me “You’ll need to take the entire piece off and get a new edge for the step” and then he looked down at his feet and said “Oh look at this floor tile, which needs some new screws, why don’t you take care of that too?”

Phil took me to the hold (a huge room, which holds the helicopter when it needs to) and pointed to some things I needed. I ended up with some screws of unknown diameter, a triangular metal thing with a handle and a piece of rubber edging for the step at which point he said “You’ll need to clean this with paint thinner first, which you’ll find on the Poop Deck.” So off I went pretending to know where the Poop Deck was and thought I might eventually find it just by looking around the ship. In the end I found the captain and asked him where it was and due to my curious mind I also asked him “Why is a Poop Deck was called a “Poop Deck?” He said he had no idea. So, if anyone knows please post the answer in the comments section (I wonder if it really does have anything to do with poo?). It appears that there is no sailor on this ship that knows the answer and I think the Icelandic campaign risks facing certain failure if we do not find the answer soon!

Faye ended up helping me to fix the step, or rather she ended up doing most of it since every time I asked her “Is this good enough?” she told me “No, all this stuff needs to come off” and I tried several different scraper things to no avail so I left her fighting the battle, because she seemed to be doing a much better job than me. I fixed the floor tile instead.

My best advice for anyone thinking about working on a Greenpeace ship would be not to point out anything that is broken unless you don’t mind being the one to fix it and possibly anything else that is broken nearby too!

L.