Kiwi Crew Perspectives
Mercy Ships is very proud of and grateful for the service of New Zealand volunteers. Here is what some of them have to say about their experiences with Mercy Ships.
Perspective of Nicholas
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Nicholas Booth says Sekou is a likeable guy and they developed a rapport.
Nurse Nick cared for West African people who suffer from terrible living conditions and difficult access to health care; nursing in a nation of ‘Have-nots’. Sitting in the lounge of his Hillsborough home, nurse Nick Booth is modest about time he has spent in poverty-plagued Liberia.
Aboard a three-month Mercy Ship mission, Nick cared for West African people who suffer from terrible living conditions and difficult access to health care. "I saw pretty quickly that Liberia was a country that has been wracked by civil war for 14 years. It was clear I had come from the land of ‘haves’ to a country of ‘have-nots’," says the 46-year-old. "They endanger their lives to try and scratch out a living."
Mercy Ships is a charity hospital ship organisation manned by volunteers. Nick first heard about the missions as a teenager but never imagined he would become involved. A qualified engineer, he retrained as a nurse when he was 34, seeking a more meaningful career. "I have had my own family health crisis and both of my parents died of cancer," he says.
Nick served aboard the Africa Mercy, a ship with four wards, 78 beds, six operating rooms, a pharmacy and x-ray facilities. "I witnessed first-hand areas of squalor and many children playing in muddy streets, simple and piecemeal structures for houses, dogs and chickens running around, people doing very little," he says.
In recent years Mercy Ships has focused efforts on west Africa – visiting Liberia in 2008, Benin last year and bound for Togo this year.
"Health care is a bit of a Band Aid," says Nick. "You can’t fix some of the problems that lead to the health issues."
One of his patients, Sekou, suffered extensive burns after a horrific accident at the age of 11. Sekou was filling a generator with gasoline when someone accidentally walked into the room with a naked flame. He was lucky to survive the explosion. Nick says similar burns are often the result of lamps being filled with petrol instead of white spirits, because it is cheaper.
"Life’s so hard. There’s a whole lot of deception and deceit."
Sekou suffered third degree burns to his face, chest, arms and most of his upper body. Nick helped the young man through his recovery and after successful surgery and skin grafts Sekou has been able to return to school. He noticed a change in Sekou’s demeanour from a withdrawn, overwhelmed child to an adult who could laugh and cry.
Nick says while working in Africa, it was satisfying to see tangible results. "It was very special to visit a couple of children in their home environments to see the difference that had been made in their lives because they received medical care. "One boy came because he was essentially crippled. He needed help with everything." Nick got a chance to see the same boy later after surgery and treatment when he visited a rehabilitation centre and an orphanage. He says there was a huge improvement – the boy was walking by himself, interacting with other children and had a new lease on life.
Nick says other Liberian people who have been blind can have a 5-minute operation to remove cataracts, suddenly restoring their sight.
Perspective of Kerry
Kerry visiting patients in the ward at 6 years old
My name is Kerry, I’m 16, and I’m sharing my experiences with Mercy Ships. Mercy Ships is an organisation which brings help to countries in need, using hospital ships. In 2001 my family joined the M/V Anastasis and became part of the 300-strong crew that lived on board. While I lived on board the Anastasis, we visited a beautiful west African country called Sierra Leone. It is officially the poorest country in the world.
Imagine if we lived in Sierra Leone. One quarter of us would not be here today, because we would’ve died before we reached the age of 5. Almost 3 quarters of us wouldn’t have access to fresh drinking water. So Mercy Ships brought everything they could to the people of Sierra Leone. We brought:
Friendship
People often ask me what I personally did when I lived on the Anastasis. I was only 6, so I couldn’t do what the other crew members did .Instead, us children who lived on board just did what we could; we’d go down to the ward and sing to all the patients there, make cards. I guess it taught me that there’s always something you can do to help people.
Healing
The movie Blood Diamond, with Leonardo di Caprio in it is about Sierra Leone. I remember thinking I’d enjoy it, except in the opening scene it shows some rebels cutting off a boy’s hand. I couldn’t watch the rest of it, because there were so many people I saw there who’d lost limbs during the war. We tried to help these people, but there’s only so much you can do. Sometimes all we could do was provide comfort and support so that healing could begin.
Hope
Another part of Mercy Ships was the “New Steps” programs. New Steps, originally called “Operation Sea Legs”, was a program to help amputees or people who couldn’t walk. We’d supply prosthetic limbs, and train them in an industry such as woodworking, so that they could have their own independent lives. So as you can see, Mercy Ships isn’t just about surgeries; it works in many different fields.
Love
There was a lot of work with babies. A lot of surgeries were cleft palate surgeries. It’s something that most of us will never have to deal with, since if you are born with a cleft palate here in New Zealand, it’s repaired at birth, but many babies were abandoned and left to die, and called “demon babies” just for having this deformity. A lot of love was needed for these babies, and most of the crew were happy to supply.
Redemption
Of course, the main focus of Mercy Ships was the surgeries. For many of these people, though, it’s not just having a tumour removed, or getting a club foot fixed. It’s about being accepted. These people have always stood out with their deformities, and now they’re finally getting the chance to live a normal life.
Laughter
As you can guess, these people haven’t really had a lot to laugh about over the last few years. However, the spirit of the Sierra Leoneans is amazing. I remember once seeing a little girl who was my age or a bit younger, playing happily with an empty yoghurt container tied to a string. I used to feel guilty, for having so much nice stuff and living on the ship – because no matter what, at the end of the day they’d be going back out to Sierra Leone and I’d be going back to New Zealand – but now I know that having stuff isn’t wrong, but we have to use what we have to go help other people.
Acceptance
Finally, there was acceptance. These women here were on the ship for vesico vaginal fistula repairs, or VVF/Obstetric surgeries. Many of you won’t have heard of a fistula; it’s a hole in your vagina, that can occur through childbirth, if your labour goes wrong, or in a case of violent sexual abuse. My special ward patient, called Bintu, was on the ship for a VVF. When she was nine, she was taken to be the wife of a rebel warlord and during this time had developed a fistula. For these women who’d had the VVF surgeries though, the best thing was the acceptance. These women were ostracized from society since the fistulas cause you to leak urine and faeces. They were finally free of this burden.
The Anastasis was the oldest Mercy Ship, and has been replaced with the Africa Mercy doing the same work in western Africa.
So that was the work that my Mercy Ship, the MV Anastasis, did while we were in Sierra Leone. This is only scratching the surface though; we built churches, wells, classrooms; teachers taught young Sierra Leonean students.
So, now that you know what Mercy Ships is all about, I hope that you’re all keen to get behind them and make a difference; bringing hope and healing.
Perspective of Miriam
Miriam Tillman is living her dream. The 27-year-old pharmacist from Christchurch is currently serving the sick and disabled of Sierra Leone, West Africa – one of the poorest nations on earth.
Miriam recalls, “I have wanted to go to Africa ever since I was 12 years old. I have been a Christian ever since I can remember and one day I was talking to God and was trying to figure out what was the point of life if I already was a Christian and knew I was going to end up in Heaven, so what was I meant to do between now and then? Well, God knew and he told me that He wanted me to be a missionary in Africa. I was totally stoked that God had a plan for me and that is what I have been aiming for ever since.
When I was 15 years old, I used to sit in class with my friend Rachel and we would draw pictures of this truck with a surgery in the back trailer and plan how we would drive the truck around Africa. We would set up a tent and have a clinic where we would decide who needed surgery and then perform it in the back of the truck. Well God has bigger and better plans for me. Instead of a truck it is a ship and instead of a tent there is a football stadium full of people hoping to be given the chance of life changing surgery. Lucky for them I won't be doing the surgery but at least I will be a part of the process and will be able to use my skills as a pharmacist to make sure they get medical care that they otherwise would have been unable to dream of.”
When asked about the most impacting of her experiences after her first two months in Africa, Miriam referred to the screening day for people hoping for surgery onboard. “We got to see the people we would be able to help over the next 10 months. It was great to see the different ages and different conditions that we would be able to help all together and it gave me a real sense that we were going to make a difference in the lives of the people of Sierra Leone.” Miriam’s role in providing the best available medical care to those least able to ask for help is, indeed, her God-given dream made reality.