In April, I left the ship in Douala, Cameroon and headed to Conakry, Guinea. That’s Guinea, not Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, or Papua New Guinea…just beautiful, wild Guinea. Here, I would spend the next 3 1/2 months preparing everything for the arrival of the ship mid-August. This includes building relations and working to set up processes with the Ministry of Health, local hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centers, NGOs, and other medical partners such as the WHO, UNFPA, JHPIEGO, and EngenderHealth. These kind of experiences have been so stretching for me, professionally and spiritually. I would have never imagined that I could do something like this! How on earth did I get here?! What else can I do?? God was so faithful throughout this whole time and I have many stories to share with examples of His faithfulness so if you would like to hear some, just ask sometime!
I didn’t do this job on my own, I had 9 other amazingly strong teammates who each had their own tasks set before them. My role covered Hospital Programs. Then you’ve got the Port, Operations, HR, and Medical Capacity Building. It’s not easy to go to a new country with people you don’t know very well and live, work, and do life together with high stress jobs. We didn’t always get along but we worked together and made it through with many laughs along the way. By the end we were family, with a respect for one another and common understanding of what each other experienced, knowing that you weren’t alone.
I am thankful that the ship is here and that the Advance job is completed. I felt honored to have been able to welcome the ship into its new home again! It’s a moment that builds up over the course of those 3 1/2 months. With all of the hard work put in, the anticipation peaks as you see the ship appear far off in the distance…or at least that is what I was expecting on arrival day. We had been praying for months that it would not rain on arrival day, you see August is the start of the “big rains” during the rainy season here in West Africa. The early morning was clear and we had high hopes that the rain would stave off for at least the next couple of hours. However, it poured. I’m not kidding, for like the hour surrounding the arrival of the ship, the rain dumped on us. As we were taking cover from the rain inside a shipping container, the ship just appeared, like right there! Due to a neighboring ship that was blocking our view, no one saw the ship coming until it was at our dock! We ran out into the rain dancing and waving to old and new friends alike. It was almost a bit anticlimactic but a joyous reunion all the same. As soon as that hour was up though, the sky cleared again and we had sunshine the rest of the day. It must have been in God’s plan for the rain and it definitely made for a memorable arrival!
Crew members wave their flags as the Africa Mercy arrives into the Port of Conakry.
Almost as soon as I arrived back on-board, I started my new role as Field Screening Coordinator. Working with the patient screening team was not something I anticipated wanting to do with Mercy Ships until God put it on my heart at the end of 2017. I have loved the team and the challenges that come with doing something new. Our first big patient selection was going to take place just 9 days after ship arrival. This required a lot of planning during Advance, a lot of meetings once the ship arrived, and a big dress rehearsal a couple days before the screening. On the day of the patient screening, over 6,000 people come through the gate to be seen by our screening team. Our surgical specialties are very specialized and we are not a medical treatment facility. For these reasons, we had to say “no” to thousands of people. We advertise what we can do and try to make it very clear, but people are desperate for help and seem to come anyway, just in case. I was nervous for this day. Could I do it? Do I know enough to not say “no” to the wrong person? How will I react with having to turn away hurting people? Will I cry? Will I be able to hold it together? Will I let someone in that isn’t a good fit for Mercy Ships, which could then take the spot of a person later in the line who now misses out or is a more severe case?
We had less than a minute with each person to make a quick assessment and either give the person a “yes,” which is an invitation for a further health evaluation, or a “no,” which is the end of the line with Mercy Ships. For many this is their final hope for treatment of their condition. Interestingly, when I would have a person with a condition that they’ve had for a while, come to be assessed by me but didn’t fit our surgical specialties, they would take the “no” easily whereas their companion wouldn’t and would sometimes plead with me on their behalf. It was heartbreaking. The person with the problem had been told “no” so many times before that they didn’t even really have hope with us. I hated these moments. It wasn’t though until the next morning, when the faces of the people I said “no” to were recalled to mind. I think as nurses, we learn to separate ourselves from our emotions when we are doing medical work. It’s the only way to be able to get through parts of our job. So as I left our big patient screening I was chatting with another screening nurse, both of us feeling a bit heartless because it wasn’t as “difficult” as we thought it would be. Make no mistake, though, I felt each “no” personally. As I awoke the next morning, the previous day played through my head. I saw each of their faces full of question and desperation, knowing that I was the decider of their fate in a sense. It was hard and came with a burden I never knew I would hold.
Mirjam Hamer, Screening Nurse, talking to a potential patient at the mass screening at Palais du Peuple.
People lined up inside the Palais du Peuple during the mass screening.
The hardest people to say “no” to were the people who came at the end of the day. There were many people who had a surgical problem that we could treat that we had to say “no” to just because our surgical schedule was full for that specialty. Due to the mass amounts of people that showed up that morning, we had to change the opening gate of where to let patients into the compound to line up. We strategically changed the location to protect the people, crowded and pressing in at the front gate, and our security crew. Changing the gate meant that the patients who were in the back of the line were now at the front and the people in the front of the line, who waited all night to be seen, were now at the back. So these people whom we were seeing at the end of the day and saying “no” to, we could’ve possibly said “yes” if everything had gone smoothly from the start. That was heartbreaking! How is that fair? I don’t have the answer but I have to trust that God knew all of this beforehand and that in His sovereignty, we selected the patients He meant all along for us to come to Guinea to help.
I did get to say “yes” to many people too. Those were really good moments. There are 2 men that stand out in my mind that I assessed, both with burn wounds on both legs that had contracted at the back of their knees, leaving them unable to stand upright or stand at all. One of the men had 2 people with him, carrying him in a chair. They carried him all day, standing in a line that moved inch by inch…all day! The other man was just there by himself, he dragged himself using only his arms and swinging his legs by his hips. When I heard that the first man, Ibrahima, was in the hospital now and already had surgery, I was elated! He was able to stand up for the first time since the fire! He was one of my yeses! It felt somewhat personal, like even though I was just the first stop in a long line of checks to be able to receive surgery, I was part of the process that led to his surgery! On Friday afternoon I went to the hospital to see him. I reintroduced myself, telling him of my first memory of him and his brothers. I told him how deeply happy I was that Mercy Ships was able to help him. He was all smiles and so thankful even though he knows it is still a long road of recovery from here with months of rehab to follow. The other man (I am forgetting his name at the moment) is also planned to have surgery in the coming weeks. It will be a beautiful moment when he no longer has to crawl on the ground but can stand tall again.
Ibrahima, plastics patient, being carried by his brother before surgery.
Maybe in my next blog I will tell you more about my new job and all of the responsibilities that come along with it. Responsibilities don’t sound fun but these ones will make for quite the adventure! I will be traveling around Guinea with some of my team for more patient selections. Please keep me and my team in your prayers as we continue to have to make hard decisions. May we be streams of living water in a parched and dry land.
This Wednesday, I will fly home to Nashville, TN, for just over a week, to see my brother marry his sweet bride. I cannot wait to see family, snuggle with my dog, and get my fill of Mexican food 🙂
This has been a long update and if you’re still reading, thank you. Thank you for being my support and for cheering me on in this journey. I may say this a lot, or I might not say this enough, but I really could not be here or keep doing this work without you! Whether you support me by sending me little encouraging messages, phone chats, ‘likes’ on my photos/blog, sending me coffee, financially, or through prayer, I am very grateful. It’s nice to know that even as life goes on for you and for me, though on separate continents, we can still be there for each other.
Until next time.
justlizharter 