VIDEO: ‘What’s wrong with my mouth?’ Mafoudiya would ask her Mum. At two she was just beginning to understand the cruel words thrown at her. Mafoudiya had the world’s most common defect; a cleft lip. But in Guinea, West Africa there was no chance for help … until mercy came to town.
When Milo Falsing was a child in Denmark he would travel on an interisland ferry to visit his grandparents. After he learned the Dronning Ingrid was to be decommissioned he wrote a letter to the ferry company asking for one last trip. Recently Captain Milo took the helm of that very ship, renamed Africa Mercy, and here’s the amazing Mercy Ships journey of both man and vessel.
When a ferry became a Mercy Ship from Mercy Ships New Zealand on Vimeo.
She was still in nursing school when the Mercy Ship bug first bit Lindsey. ‘I was instantly drawn to the vision and I just knew I had to serve on board one day,’ she reflects. Did you see Lindsey featured in TVNZ’s Sunday programme?
Read more about Lindsey’s story here
Surfer, botanist, ENT surgeon. After volunteering four times with Mercy Ships in West Africa, Dr Neil Thomson says, ‘You can never be the same after serving onboard. Every time it has a different flavour.’
He is known as ‘Dr Neil’ onboard the hospital ship. The title, a unique mix of friendly and professional, perfectly reflects the Mercy Ships community where the like-minded 450-strong volunteer crew lives, works and socialises together during each 10-month field assignment in West Africa.
This is tour-of-duty is a stand-out one for Dr Neil. He is once again presented with cases that stretch him to the limit professionally – for many cases the removal of huge, complex, benign yet life-threatening tumours from the face and neck. His patients had no hope of accessing life-saving surgery until Mercy Ships came to town offering free care. But this time Dr Neil hopes for the opportunity to visit one of his former surgical patients, a young boy named Alya. Can they find him five years later in post-
Ebola Guinea? Did the free surgery on the Mercy Ship save and transform the eight-year-old’s life? Dr Neil has many questions as he and Janine Boyes, the ship’s Purser from Matamata, travel to the village where they heard Alya is now living with his family.
The father of a son himself, Dr Neil is hugely impacted by meeting Alya again. ‘He engaged my eyes and didn’t let go! That’s a powerful thing for a 12-year-old boy,’ he reflected. ‘Alya is an intelligent and sensitive boy who had looked death right in the face.’
Read Alya’s story
To the long term crew onboard Robyn is affectionately known as a ‘repeat offender’. This Guinea field service was her eighth self-funded, three-month trip volunteering on the Mercy Ship providing post-operative surgical care during the field services the hospital ship was docked in Congo, Benin, Madagascar, Cameroon and Guinea.
‘I normally nurse adults,’ Robyn explains, ‘but looking after children here adds to the best part of it. They just become part of you and I miss them terribly when they are discharged from the ship wards.’ Her work in Guinea included the care of children like Sema, who received major surgery to correct his extremely bowed legs. Sometimes she was assigned to the ‘burns’ ward where both children and adults recovered after surgery released joints previously immobilised by deep scars resulting from horrendous burns. Robyn’s early work onboard also included the care of girls and women receiving restorative surgery after traumatic birth injuries. In each ward, Robyn treated and ‘loved-on’ the patents in a way that is uniquely Mercy Ships.
See Friday’s TVNZ BREAKFAST interview with Robyn here
At home she’s a commercial pilot and flight instructor, onboard she works in reception where, under the oversight of the Captain, she helps staff the essential communications hub of the Mercy Ship 24/7.‘I am volunteering with Mercy Ships because my heart is to help people in whatever capacity I can,’ explains the 24-year-old. ‘Our aim is to bring some aid and to strengthen, and train their health care providers and systems. We can help path the way for Guinea to heal itself. Unless we do, when we leave nothing will change.’
While not on duty, one of Esther’s favourite things to do is be a ‘buddy’ to one of the paediatric patients onboard for surgery. Five-year-old M’Muh, pictured here with Esther, had a long recovery after free surgery removed the benign growth that drooped over her forehead like a sack and was beginning to dislodge her eye. In the weeks following M’Muh’s operation, Esther’s TLC and fun-loving games worked alongside state-of-the-art medical care to see the little girl emerge from her shell of rejection and meet the world with a grin.
Read M’Muh’s story here
‘The work that Mercy Ships is doing is of insurmountable importance,’ reflects Esther. ‘The ripple effect that Mercy Ships has on the nations we visit is immeasurable. When people receive aid from the ship, they don’t keep it a secret. They tell anyone and everyone, and it spreads joy and hope. And hope is one of the most powerful things a broken nation can hold onto.’
Since the Sunday team was on board, Esther took up a new role in the ship’s housekeeping department. She totally loves the fun working with her international crewmates swabbing the decks and keep the ship in, well, ship-shape.
Miriam White heard about Mercy Ships during her training as a radiographer. She dreamed about volunteering for five years before the opportunity finally came her way in 2018. ‘The stories I read about patients they’ve provided surgery to touched my heart. I wanted to use my professional skills to make a difference and offer hope to people in need.’
In November Miriam packed her bags and made the long trek from Auckland to Guinea, West Africa for her seven-week tour-of-duty. She worked alongside another radiographer onboard. Miriam’s tasks included performing x-rays on the Mercy Ships patients as part of their pre-surgery assessment, sometimes during their stay, and before they were discharged.
Miriam attended Sema at ‘week 4 post surgery’ as his major orthopaedic surgery required monitoring. ‘I loved taking the discharge x-rays for the children who had received osteotomies (corrective surgery on their legs). It was exciting to see them standing straight for the first time.’
Nabinti had a CT-scan performed by Miriam on her first day at work on board! The images were a vital part of her assessment and treatment plan. Normally there is only one CAT scan for the entire population 12 million people in Guinea, West Africa and accessing the service at $250 a time is well beyond the reach of the vast majority. Miriam’s services doubles that capacity and, as with all mercy Ships services, it is provided free to charge to the patients.
As a sports therapist with 17 years’ experience, Emma has many high profile clients including an impressive list of All Blacks. What is equally impressive is her commitment to give her best, personally and professionally, to people in extreme poverty in West Africa.
This is Emma’s first experience with Mercy Ships. She read about the charity in various magazines and thought the concept of using her skills in sounded ‘amazing’. Emma worked extensively with Sema after surgery straightened his legs. It was her job to reteach him how to walk.
‘I greet, hug and ‘high five’ each patient numerous times each rehab session,’ shares Emma. ‘Asaqui’ (high five or put it there in Susu) was the first word I learnt here in Guinea.’
‘I tell each patient and their caregivers how awesome they are, how proud they should be of their son/daughter/niece/nephew/neighbour, and how well they are working at doing the exercises.’ Emma works hard to communicate through her translator to each child that she understands how tough the operation was, and how tough the exercises are. She reminds each patient that they are incredible and unique. 
The rehab team perform their roles to the highest possible standard by using clinical reasoning, discussing each case, and by working hard to put energy and expertise into every child. ‘We want to ensure each patient has the best possible outcome after surgery.’ Emma believes the work of Mercy Ships is extremely important to the nations the NGO serves. ‘There are no orthopaedics surgeons, nor rehab teams nor physios who provide this treatment in Guinea. This means all the lower limb deformities the children here have would go untreated and worsen as they grow – therefore affecting their quality of life, their family’s quality of life, including their opportunity for education and marriage.’
‘I turn up to work each day and can’t wait to work and play with these amazing, tough and beautiful humans. My job is most definitely one of the best on the Africa Mercy.’
We meet Janine as she drives Dr Neil Thomson from the Mercy Ship to Alya’s village. She had worked a lot of overtime this week in her role as the Mercy Ships Purser, but she is happy to negotiate the ship’s 4WD through the hectic, erratic traffic of Conakry in order to find the little boy who had surgery onboard five years ago.
Janine is the longest serving of the Kiwi crew with seven years of volunteer work and ten nations under her belt. She works directly under the Captain and deals with many of the ship’s legalities including immigration and customs. Imagine transporting medical supplies and food stores for a hospital and 450 crew members a world away – the details and headaches are all part of her job that strategically undergirds the ability of this vessel of mercy to serve the surgical needs of Africa’s poor. ‘I am forever changed,’ she says, ‘mostly for the better I think. It has opened up my eyes and given me a thirst to learn more about who I am and about who God is. Also, I am more prepared now to be pulled way out of my comfort zone – way more than when I first came to the ship.’
While Janine’s role deals primarily with the legalities of bringing a ship, a crew and supplies in and out of port, she reflects on the ‘little things’ that stick in her mind as meaningful moments; ‘The DHL delivery guy that I laugh and joke with every few days, the local people that are employed to work in my department that are real prayer warriors, our Gurkha who brings me a cup of Chai when I am standing on the gangway watching for a delivery truck to find its way to us, the albino African guy that always says hello and shakes my hand when I am waiting for new crewmembers to arrive inside an airport. It’s the little things that I tend to remember and they always involve people and their hearts. The people of Africa are just like you and me – they just want the opportunity to work hard to provide for their families and they want to be loved.’
Steph’s previous experience serving onboard the hospital ship as a ward nurse paved the way for her to return into the role of wound care coordinator – an extremely demanding and highly skilled role. It’s the job of Steph and her team to change the wound dressings for patients post-surgery.
Particularly for the patients who have had skin grafts reconstruction after surgery to release burn scars, this can be a painful ordeal. The wound care team have learned to synchronise their work, particularly with their youngest charges; one entertaining and distracting the patient with songs, games and surprises while the other dresses the wound. Steph’s gentle, fun manner and huge smile means even the smallest children develop a level of trust that enables them to undergo this tough procedure to bring about complete healing.
The couple are on board this time for the entire 10-month Guinea field service.
Initially volunteering as an IT specialist, Jonathan’s experience in the Health Care IT sector saw him recently transfer into the development and maintenance of the onboard hospital’s information systems. As planning and measurement are an increasingly important part of the implementation and evaluation of the services Mercy Ships provides in each field service, this hidden role provides much of the data required to effectively measure the impact of the work Mercy Ships does- and to dream and accurately plan for future field services. Read more about Jonathan’s tech work in ITBrief