Dance Team Partners

I will not claim to know much of anything about international community development. I have lived a cozy, sheltered life in one of the planet’s most prosperous nations and will not get on any soapbox about how that prosperity has actually become a disease in many of our lives, the disease of affluenza. I am actually very grateful for the goodness of God in allowing me the wonderful gifts I have received from His hand. I do have a sense though that the “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime” adage is right on. Mercy Ships is here in Africa not just to “give a man a fish.” I have been so impressed with the far reaching influence of this ministry and actually feel privileged to have had a “small, small” part in the actual “teach a man to fish” aspect of that influence. I really had no idea when coming here that Africa Mercy’s hospital is, in fact, a “teaching hospital.” Yesterday, working on the ward, I was the preceptor for one of the nurse midwife students who are here for their practical training in the care of VVF patients. Currently, Africa Mercy has three women on board doing this training, and when they complete their practicum here, they will become caregivers, within their scope of practice, in an outlying hospital four hours drive from Monrovia. I was really impressed by the skill and caring that I saw from “Nyamah’s” hands. (I am including a photo again. It is actually of another dress ceremony, held today, but I include it so that you can see “Nyamah.” She is the only person in scrubs in row two, on the far right.) It was great to hear from her and her fellow students how impressed they were by the teamwork they observed while working with us. Teamwork really is the operative principle in the success of Africa Mercy’s venture. The Apostle Paul actually referred to it as “body” (I Corinthians 12) and each part doing that which it was designed to do.

Another aspect of this teamwork is carried on by Carlos. Carlos, a Brazilian, is Africa Mercy’s biomedical engineer. It was so exciting to listen to his story and to know how he is making the connection between giving men fish and teaching them to fish. We westerners have donated many of our pieces of outdated medical technologies to the rest of the world, and they may have worked for a time, but then when breakdowns occur, these pieces of equipment become useless piles of junk. Carlos is resurrecting these pieces, and training biomedical technicians in the hospitals of West Africa to put these technological devices back into useful service. They are networking with one another, finding spare parts and sharing expertise to keep this equipment in service to physicians and nurses for patients in the local hospital settings.

This evening, I learned that eye care teams are coming from the rural townships of South Africa to understudy with the physicians here, the special techniques that have been developed to perform much needed eye surgeries in a way that does not require sutures. In the west, we don’t think twice about sutures as part of the course of surgery, partly because if there is a small risk of infection, it is usually treatable with antibiotics. However, here in Africa, the risk of infection increases exponentially, and the possibility of having antibiotics to treat such infections is minimal. So learning operative techniques that eliminate the need for sutures is critical.

Together, each of these partners in the dance is part of the widespread influence of the ministry of Africa Mercy.