Abandoned Ships: Part 1
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When seafarer Mehmet Gulsen stepped on board the Kenan Mete, he thought he was signing up to a pretty standard 7 month contract, and then he'd be home in Ukraine with his young daughter and his dog. But a few months in, things started going wrong, and he ended up abandoned with his crew at a port in the Suez Canal, with no idea when they'd be able to go home.
This week on Kerning Cultures, the strange legal limbo that allows seafarers to wind up abandoned and unable to leave their ships... sometimes for years at a time.
This episode was made in collaboration with 99% Invisible. Check them out wherever you get your podcasts. It was produced by Alex Atack and edited by Katie Mingle, with additional support from Dana Ballout, Zeina Dowidar, Nadeen Shaker and the whole 99% Invisible team. Dilara Çelik provided translation support and Onur Akmehmet was the voice of Mehmet.
You can find a transcript of this episode at our website.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And one story that always kind of captures my imagination. |
| 0:07.8 | The street's lost culture. |
| 0:12.7 | And you're listening to Kearning Cultures. |
| 0:19.0 | Hey, this is Dana Balutz and you're listening to Kearning Cultures, |
| 0:23.2 | stories from the Middle East and North Africa and the spaces in between. |
| 0:27.3 | Today we have a special episode. |
| 0:28.9 | It's a story we've been working on for quite some time |
| 0:31.6 | in collaboration with one of our all-time favorite shows, |
| 0:34.9 | 99% Invisible, presented by Roman Mars, who you'll hear first. |
| 0:40.6 | Here's the episode. |
| 0:42.8 | This is 99% Invisible. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Roman Mars. |
| 0:48.1 | So just on the horizon, you probably can't quite make it out, is Sharja. |
| 0:53.6 | This is Andy Bowerman, recording himself with his phone as he stands on a cargo ship off |
| 0:58.9 | the coast of Sharjah, a city in the United Arab Emirates. |
| 1:03.5 | It's in some ways an adelic setting. It's 40 or degrees. Sea is calm. The sky is blue. |
| 1:13.1 | Andy is the regional director at an organization called Mission to Seafarers. |
| 1:17.7 | And part of his job is to deliver things like rice, blankets, water, and SIM cards to workers who are trapped on abandoned cargo ships. |
| 1:26.5 | It is literally me and typically one other member of our team on a small speedboat, |
| 1:33.3 | pulling up alongside and climbing up a 15-foot rope ladder to get to the ship. |
| 1:41.2 | In some cases, the people that Andy tries to help have been stuck on these abandoned |
| 1:45.7 | vessels without enough supplies for months or even years. |
... |
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