i want to be a nurse in africa ... or a ballerina




Sailing


posted by Jenn

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Saturday morning, I woke up before my alarm. Unlike most days, I didn't need to lay around for 20 minutes willing myself to get out of bed and embrace the day. Before 10:00 I had already gone to the gym, showered, eaten breakfast, spent a few last precious moments on the dock, watched the crane lift the remaining items onto the ship, mulled with the rest of the crew about when we might actually leave, and secured every mobile object in our cabin to the floor.

Saturday was sailing day.

Now, for all the time I have spent on this ship, I have never accompanied it onto the open water. I have known this ship in three different countries, through various stages of my life, but I have only ever known it to be stationary.

Which was why I was so excited on Saturday morning. Excitement - a sentiment I seemed to share with the other 275ish crew that are currently sailing somewhere off the coast of West Africa - was the overall vibe of the morning. It really felt like we were a family, all getting ready to set out on some big adventure together.

And, it seems that all of the anticipation was well-deserved.

This whole sailing thing has been incredible for me thus far. Highlights are as follows:

- We saw dolphins yesterday. Hundreds of them. Apparently there is something about swimming alongside the ship that makes life easier for them so they seem to hang around us a lot. Which is fine by me.

- It really IS like we are a tight-knit family on a vacation together. Sure, people are working and getting the essentials done, but everything just feels a little bit more laid back. That, combined with the uniqueness of a smaller crew on-board, with no one coming or going, makes for a very cozy-like atmosphere.

- The air is AMAZING! I tried to think of the last time I breathed air so clean and pure, and my conclusion was clearly.....never!

- Sunsets and full orange moons and stars. How anyone can experience such things and not be blown away by the magnificence of creation is beyond me!

I am sure there are more. However sailing does have it's downfalls and sitting in front of a computer screen for too long and causing seasickness is one of them, so this session of counting my blessings shall conclude for now. But, I am left feeling overwhelmingly blessed and romanced by a very powerful God.

Hospital Ship


posted by Jenn

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It’s a fairly common debate around here: Are we a ship that happens to have a hospital on it? Or are we a hospital that happens to be located on a ship?

The majority of the time, my answer would be “B”. It generally feels like a hospital to me. Despite the added bonuses of fire drills, overhead announcements about fuel bunkering, the constant white noise of generators, the lack of candles, and the pleasure of trying to explain to people that “yes, in fact, I do live on a boat”, my life here typically revolves around the fact that I am a nurse...in a hospital...doing typical nurse activities. Therefore, I have grown a strong affinity for the hospital-located-on-a-ship philosophy.

Every so often – this week being one of those times - I get swayed to the other side. Surgeries are over, all the patients (and a large proportion of the nurses) have gone home, and now all that is left to do is bleach and pack up every supply and piece of equipment that is required for a hospital to function and get the place ready for the sail. Sounds simple enough

Now, I have never sailed on the Africa Mercy, but, thanks to Discovery Channel Canada, I have seen a computer animation of what happens to our vessel when out on the open sea. It rocks. That being said, everything we store away in the hospital also has to be packed tightly and well secured to some sort of stable structure in order to prevent damage when we head out into the ocean.

These are the times when I am starkly aware of our shipness.

Late Tuesday afternoon, I was standing in the middle of B ward with a fellow nurse. A nurse who is incredibly competent at reading a cardiac rhythm, giving IV antibiotics, drawing venous bloodwork, doing an assessment or suctioning an intubated patient. Those skills proved to be highly useless to us when faced with a ward full of benches that needed to be secured to the ground with some strappy-clippy-tie-things that we couldn’t even begin to figure out how to use. We threw the straps around the ward for a couple minutes, with no particular aim, but hoping that upon manipulation of said ties, we might be inspired as to how the integrity of the benches might be preserved by them.

The answer never came.

We really are a ship, and such tasks are best left undone by folk such as us. Thank goodness for Maike, the one member of our nursing team who knows what she is doing and had the place whipped into shape in about a quarter of the time it would have taken us to pretend to do it.

I guess we all have our strengths. The rest of us spent the week scrubbing and waxing floors. Again, a trade not particularly within in our scope of nursing practice, but one that is at least straight forward enough for us to master within a try or two.

This week, we are definitely a ship.

The end


posted by Jenn

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It’s almost done.

The last lips were repaired last Thursday. Tuesday morning at 5:30am, six of the last pikins (“children” in krio) and their respective caregivers and siblings got on a bus that will start their journeys back to villages all over West Africa. We repeated that potential gong show nearly glitch-free again yesterday morning. By 11:00 this morning, the wards will be empty.

For the first time in over nine months, the wards will be completely still and silent. All the joy and pain and tears and laughter that have flooded those wards will be scattered throughout this country that we have been so blessed to serve this year.

And, I got to catch a glimpse of it.

I walked into this outreach as it was already on its last legs. When the crew of the Africa Mercy had already been stretched and tried. I walked in and got to be a part of it. And, I walked in and got to experience something that I have never been a part of here...the end.

The other night, we rounded the wards, sorting out medications, dressing supplies, transport money, personal possessions, border letters, nutritional supplements, and photos for the remaining fourteen patients. It was obvious: This was all coming to a close. I couldn’t help but notice that last night of camp feeling in my heart.

I started thinking about endings. I’ve experienced a couple of beginnings here. They are exciting and everyone has boundless energy. But, this is my first conclusion. And, I think I might like it even more.

Yesterday morning, as I did my last charge shift of the outreach, we had an amazing time of worship on the ward. Everyone was cognizant that this would be our last one, and as a result, it was no “check it off the list” worship session. We sang and danced and beat on drums and I am pretty sure the phone rang a couple of times but no one could have heard it even if they wanted to. I looked over at Grandma Groundnut at one point and saw tears streaming down her face. She knows she will leave the ward that has been her home for the last number of months and she is sad “to see her family go to another country while she stays here” (in her words). Grandma Groundnut and I spent the rest of yesterday’s worship time with our arms wrapped around eachother - singing, praying, crying a little. Aware that this was goodbye. But, for me at least, aware that saying goodbye means that a good work is complete. That finality only has its bittersweet sting because of the highs and lows that were encountered along the way.

Coming in for the last leg of the race has been a blessing to me. We care when something ends because of the significance it had throughout its course. And, as it turns out, experiencing the end of something significant can be just as moving as being part of its beginning.

My Ami


posted by Jenn

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It seems that every outreach, one individual child steals my heart. This time, Aminata has, hands down, taken the cake.

Oh, there have been other children, of course.

Like Bed 11 from last week: the 4-month old whose name I can’t even remember because his mother referred to him exclusively as Duck. Duck had an incomplete cleft lip, on the left side that Dr. Gary repaired. Conveniently, this is the same diagnosis and location of my own infantile malformation – which, to Duck’s mama, clearly meant that we were to be married. And thus, Duck & I are in love.

And then there is Kadia, who you have to tickle fight to the bed, in order to get her situated and stationary enough to start her NG feed. At which point she screams at you for a couple of minutes. Then chatters on about what I can only assume is a consideration of how many stickers she currently has plastered to her forehead and what strategy she should adopt to get more out of us.

And, of course there is Sia – our “almost too late in the outreach, but God seems to always provide the way” Burkitt’s Lymphoma kid who is literally a walking wonder. She and I were on a little walk the other day, hand-in-hand, her chatting away, again in some unknown language about who knows what, and I was struck by how blessed I am to get to participate in something that, in any other context, would be a once in a lifetime kind of miracle. And it happens here every day.

But, when all is said and done, it’s Aminata who I hold most near and dear to my heart. When we get up to deck 7 at the end of day shift to allow the patients some “fresh” air time, it’s Ami that I look for. It’s Ami that I will do any amount of running up and down the deck in Sub-Saharan African heat to make giggle. It’s Ami who brings me exceeding joy, watching her take little baby steps when she used to be barely able to sit up. It’s Ami who reminds me of God’s work in all of our lives when I watch her play with toys, not just stare at them, and know that her brain is now nourished enough to allow for close to developmentally appropriate mental processing.

The story for Aminata is far from over. She has a long way to go. More surgery needed. Money needing to be raised to get her to wherever that surgery will need to happen. Her body needs to clear itself of the infection that seems to stick around regardless of the assorted cocktails of antibiotics we have pumped into her. Her mama needs to learn how to treat whatever related mild ailments may surface, as they seem to be having the habit of doing. She actually has a lot to figure out in the next week, before the hospital gets packed up and the ship sails away.

She is by no means home free. But now she has a host of people praying and wholeheartedly invested in her ultimate well-being. That should serve her as well as anything else could.

When your driver hands you a screwdriver...


posted by Jenn

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I don’t know that the why I love Africa post will ever grow old for me.

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to spend the night as part of an Eco-Tourist Community at John Obey beach, which is located about 80km outside of Freetown, where the ship is located. (http://sierraleone.tribewanted.com/). While we didn’t take part in the whole Tribewanted week-long experience as community members, it was an interesting concept to catch a glimpse of, and it provided us with a lovely way to spend the Saturday night of our long weekend. A small group of friends and I ate 3 tasty meals of African food, had a campfire, spent the night in tents, woke up to the sound of crashing waves, played beach volleyball, swam in the ocean, lazed around in hammocks, and enjoyed the serenity of not being on the ship for 24 hours. However none of these things provided my true why I love Africa moment.

It didn’t happen until we were on our way home. Six of us were packed into our second taxi of the trip (which, to be fair, is actually a comparatively decent occupancy). The rains started to come down. It seems to still be rainy season here, which I had always assumed would finish itself up somewhere in the middle of September. Apparently basing all of your big life decisions on what Wikipedia tells you can be misleading. But anyways, back to the point…

We’re in the taxi. The rain starts, and naturally starts coming in the windows. The driver hands us a screwdriver.

There is no explanation provided. Not a person in the vehicle bats an eyelash. Jeff, who had the honour of the “aisleseat”, so-to-speak, just went about the business of jamming the screwdriver into the hunk of metal on the door where the window crank must have lived at some point in the taxi’s life, and starting the process of doing up the window.


Perhaps the thing that truly made this moment for me was the fact that the taxi driver felt no need to tell us what to do with the screwdriver. That he didn't think to apologize for the fact that a screwdriver would be necessary to keep the rain from pouring in the window. That the whole thing happened just so seamlessly and naturally.

We looked around at one another. Smiled. Loved it. Knew without saying any words that it is moments like this one that keep life interesting and keep us coming back for more.

Saturday morning, I woke up before my alarm. Unlike most days, I didn't need to lay around for 20 minutes willing myself to get out of bed and embrace the day. Before 10:00 I had already gone to the gym, showered, eaten breakfast, spent a few last precious moments on the dock, watched the crane lift the remaining items onto the ship, mulled with the rest of the crew about when we might actually leave, and secured every mobile object in our cabin to the floor.

Saturday was sailing day.

Now, for all the time I have spent on this ship, I have never accompanied it onto the open water. I have known this ship in three different countries, through various stages of my life, but I have only ever known it to be stationary.

Which was why I was so excited on Saturday morning. Excitement - a sentiment I seemed to share with the other 275ish crew that are currently sailing somewhere off the coast of West Africa - was the overall vibe of the morning. It really felt like we were a family, all getting ready to set out on some big adventure together.

And, it seems that all of the anticipation was well-deserved.

This whole sailing thing has been incredible for me thus far. Highlights are as follows:

- We saw dolphins yesterday. Hundreds of them. Apparently there is something about swimming alongside the ship that makes life easier for them so they seem to hang around us a lot. Which is fine by me.

- It really IS like we are a tight-knit family on a vacation together. Sure, people are working and getting the essentials done, but everything just feels a little bit more laid back. That, combined with the uniqueness of a smaller crew on-board, with no one coming or going, makes for a very cozy-like atmosphere.

- The air is AMAZING! I tried to think of the last time I breathed air so clean and pure, and my conclusion was clearly.....never!

- Sunsets and full orange moons and stars. How anyone can experience such things and not be blown away by the magnificence of creation is beyond me!

I am sure there are more. However sailing does have it's downfalls and sitting in front of a computer screen for too long and causing seasickness is one of them, so this session of counting my blessings shall conclude for now. But, I am left feeling overwhelmingly blessed and romanced by a very powerful God.

It’s a fairly common debate around here: Are we a ship that happens to have a hospital on it? Or are we a hospital that happens to be located on a ship?

The majority of the time, my answer would be “B”. It generally feels like a hospital to me. Despite the added bonuses of fire drills, overhead announcements about fuel bunkering, the constant white noise of generators, the lack of candles, and the pleasure of trying to explain to people that “yes, in fact, I do live on a boat”, my life here typically revolves around the fact that I am a nurse...in a hospital...doing typical nurse activities. Therefore, I have grown a strong affinity for the hospital-located-on-a-ship philosophy.

Every so often – this week being one of those times - I get swayed to the other side. Surgeries are over, all the patients (and a large proportion of the nurses) have gone home, and now all that is left to do is bleach and pack up every supply and piece of equipment that is required for a hospital to function and get the place ready for the sail. Sounds simple enough

Now, I have never sailed on the Africa Mercy, but, thanks to Discovery Channel Canada, I have seen a computer animation of what happens to our vessel when out on the open sea. It rocks. That being said, everything we store away in the hospital also has to be packed tightly and well secured to some sort of stable structure in order to prevent damage when we head out into the ocean.

These are the times when I am starkly aware of our shipness.

Late Tuesday afternoon, I was standing in the middle of B ward with a fellow nurse. A nurse who is incredibly competent at reading a cardiac rhythm, giving IV antibiotics, drawing venous bloodwork, doing an assessment or suctioning an intubated patient. Those skills proved to be highly useless to us when faced with a ward full of benches that needed to be secured to the ground with some strappy-clippy-tie-things that we couldn’t even begin to figure out how to use. We threw the straps around the ward for a couple minutes, with no particular aim, but hoping that upon manipulation of said ties, we might be inspired as to how the integrity of the benches might be preserved by them.

The answer never came.

We really are a ship, and such tasks are best left undone by folk such as us. Thank goodness for Maike, the one member of our nursing team who knows what she is doing and had the place whipped into shape in about a quarter of the time it would have taken us to pretend to do it.

I guess we all have our strengths. The rest of us spent the week scrubbing and waxing floors. Again, a trade not particularly within in our scope of nursing practice, but one that is at least straight forward enough for us to master within a try or two.

This week, we are definitely a ship.

It’s almost done.

The last lips were repaired last Thursday. Tuesday morning at 5:30am, six of the last pikins (“children” in krio) and their respective caregivers and siblings got on a bus that will start their journeys back to villages all over West Africa. We repeated that potential gong show nearly glitch-free again yesterday morning. By 11:00 this morning, the wards will be empty.

For the first time in over nine months, the wards will be completely still and silent. All the joy and pain and tears and laughter that have flooded those wards will be scattered throughout this country that we have been so blessed to serve this year.

And, I got to catch a glimpse of it.

I walked into this outreach as it was already on its last legs. When the crew of the Africa Mercy had already been stretched and tried. I walked in and got to be a part of it. And, I walked in and got to experience something that I have never been a part of here...the end.

The other night, we rounded the wards, sorting out medications, dressing supplies, transport money, personal possessions, border letters, nutritional supplements, and photos for the remaining fourteen patients. It was obvious: This was all coming to a close. I couldn’t help but notice that last night of camp feeling in my heart.

I started thinking about endings. I’ve experienced a couple of beginnings here. They are exciting and everyone has boundless energy. But, this is my first conclusion. And, I think I might like it even more.

Yesterday morning, as I did my last charge shift of the outreach, we had an amazing time of worship on the ward. Everyone was cognizant that this would be our last one, and as a result, it was no “check it off the list” worship session. We sang and danced and beat on drums and I am pretty sure the phone rang a couple of times but no one could have heard it even if they wanted to. I looked over at Grandma Groundnut at one point and saw tears streaming down her face. She knows she will leave the ward that has been her home for the last number of months and she is sad “to see her family go to another country while she stays here” (in her words). Grandma Groundnut and I spent the rest of yesterday’s worship time with our arms wrapped around eachother - singing, praying, crying a little. Aware that this was goodbye. But, for me at least, aware that saying goodbye means that a good work is complete. That finality only has its bittersweet sting because of the highs and lows that were encountered along the way.

Coming in for the last leg of the race has been a blessing to me. We care when something ends because of the significance it had throughout its course. And, as it turns out, experiencing the end of something significant can be just as moving as being part of its beginning.


It seems that every outreach, one individual child steals my heart. This time, Aminata has, hands down, taken the cake.

Oh, there have been other children, of course.

Like Bed 11 from last week: the 4-month old whose name I can’t even remember because his mother referred to him exclusively as Duck. Duck had an incomplete cleft lip, on the left side that Dr. Gary repaired. Conveniently, this is the same diagnosis and location of my own infantile malformation – which, to Duck’s mama, clearly meant that we were to be married. And thus, Duck & I are in love.

And then there is Kadia, who you have to tickle fight to the bed, in order to get her situated and stationary enough to start her NG feed. At which point she screams at you for a couple of minutes. Then chatters on about what I can only assume is a consideration of how many stickers she currently has plastered to her forehead and what strategy she should adopt to get more out of us.

And, of course there is Sia – our “almost too late in the outreach, but God seems to always provide the way” Burkitt’s Lymphoma kid who is literally a walking wonder. She and I were on a little walk the other day, hand-in-hand, her chatting away, again in some unknown language about who knows what, and I was struck by how blessed I am to get to participate in something that, in any other context, would be a once in a lifetime kind of miracle. And it happens here every day.

But, when all is said and done, it’s Aminata who I hold most near and dear to my heart. When we get up to deck 7 at the end of day shift to allow the patients some “fresh” air time, it’s Ami that I look for. It’s Ami that I will do any amount of running up and down the deck in Sub-Saharan African heat to make giggle. It’s Ami who brings me exceeding joy, watching her take little baby steps when she used to be barely able to sit up. It’s Ami who reminds me of God’s work in all of our lives when I watch her play with toys, not just stare at them, and know that her brain is now nourished enough to allow for close to developmentally appropriate mental processing.

The story for Aminata is far from over. She has a long way to go. More surgery needed. Money needing to be raised to get her to wherever that surgery will need to happen. Her body needs to clear itself of the infection that seems to stick around regardless of the assorted cocktails of antibiotics we have pumped into her. Her mama needs to learn how to treat whatever related mild ailments may surface, as they seem to be having the habit of doing. She actually has a lot to figure out in the next week, before the hospital gets packed up and the ship sails away.

She is by no means home free. But now she has a host of people praying and wholeheartedly invested in her ultimate well-being. That should serve her as well as anything else could.

I don’t know that the why I love Africa post will ever grow old for me.

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to spend the night as part of an Eco-Tourist Community at John Obey beach, which is located about 80km outside of Freetown, where the ship is located. (http://sierraleone.tribewanted.com/). While we didn’t take part in the whole Tribewanted week-long experience as community members, it was an interesting concept to catch a glimpse of, and it provided us with a lovely way to spend the Saturday night of our long weekend. A small group of friends and I ate 3 tasty meals of African food, had a campfire, spent the night in tents, woke up to the sound of crashing waves, played beach volleyball, swam in the ocean, lazed around in hammocks, and enjoyed the serenity of not being on the ship for 24 hours. However none of these things provided my true why I love Africa moment.

It didn’t happen until we were on our way home. Six of us were packed into our second taxi of the trip (which, to be fair, is actually a comparatively decent occupancy). The rains started to come down. It seems to still be rainy season here, which I had always assumed would finish itself up somewhere in the middle of September. Apparently basing all of your big life decisions on what Wikipedia tells you can be misleading. But anyways, back to the point…

We’re in the taxi. The rain starts, and naturally starts coming in the windows. The driver hands us a screwdriver.

There is no explanation provided. Not a person in the vehicle bats an eyelash. Jeff, who had the honour of the “aisleseat”, so-to-speak, just went about the business of jamming the screwdriver into the hunk of metal on the door where the window crank must have lived at some point in the taxi’s life, and starting the process of doing up the window.


Perhaps the thing that truly made this moment for me was the fact that the taxi driver felt no need to tell us what to do with the screwdriver. That he didn't think to apologize for the fact that a screwdriver would be necessary to keep the rain from pouring in the window. That the whole thing happened just so seamlessly and naturally.

We looked around at one another. Smiled. Loved it. Knew without saying any words that it is moments like this one that keep life interesting and keep us coming back for more.