The Nine to Five Routine

Some of you may be wondering what fills my working hours.  Well here on the ship I work in Human Resources. I am in charge of processing the applications for all those that work in surgical positions like OR nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists, and all those that are considered part of the “general” crew – people who work in finance, PR, the Mercy Ships Academy (our pre K-12 school onboard), housekeeping, etc. We really are a whole little community here on the Africa Mercy!  When someone is accepted to Mercy Ships their application gets scanned into the system in TX (at the world headquarters) and then we print everything off here in Africa and make a hard file for them. I facilitate part of the weekly orientation that occurs for all the newbies, which is a general overview of what life is like on the Africa Mercy, and lots of signing of forms for purposes of maritime law. It’s nice because I get to meet all the new people that come through Mercy Ships. I also prepare licensure documents for the Ministry of Health and communicate with everyone coming to welcome them and explain what happens with their initial orientation. Amidst all these desk-type tasks, someone probably comes into the office at least once every five minutes with a question about taking a vacation or to drop off evaluations or something else along those lines. So the constant flow of people helps to keep things varied. Here are the fabulous people with whom I work:

From left to right: Brenda and Anne, both from the UK, Beth and Christine, both from South Africa, Jo from the UK, and me - the only American!  Agnes is missing.  She is from Ghana and provides a little African perspective for our group. 

I also get consults to see kiddos in the ward and help out from the nutrition end. So far I’ve been helping out primarily with the Baby Feeding Program. This involves all the underweight babies that are scheduled for cleft lip and palate repairs and ensuring that they take in enough calories to gain weight to get them ready for surgery. They often come in malnourished because they have problems with their suck due to their cleft lips, or most recently we have one little guy who is a premie and has a cleft palate.  He came to us at 3 1/2 pounds. This is a photo of one of the little kiddos named Anicette with whom I’ve been working. When I came in August, she was severely malnourished and not gaining any weight despite taking in massive amounts of formula well over what a normal baby her size would need. This is a before shot - look at those tiny arms!

From the supply end, Mercy Ships relies heavily on donations. When I first started it was a process to figure out what kind of formula was available. I’d write up this whole note with a detailed recipe and specific directions on how to mix the concentrated formula, only to find out they’d switched the kid to a new formula as they’d run out of the previous one making all my work irrelevant. I’d then have to re-work my plan with the new formula which was a lot of calculating.  This happened three times before I learned my lesson!

They do have a really great donation program set up with a major US formula company well known to me which has been helpful for some of the more complex kiddos. Within a week we were able to get Anicette a different formula shipped right from the states that is more easily digested, and since then she has been gaining weight like a champ. Here she is with a little more weight gain on her.  She will get her cleft lip repair next month.

I’ve also helped out with writing nutrition education materials and consulting on other general nutrition issues as they come up. Most recently yesterday they asked me to come downstairs and see a little girl named Gisele. Gisele, her mother and sister had come the day before from Nigeria. Gisele has cataracts in both her eyes so she sees minimally. When the doctor saw them in the morning, she told Gisele’s mother that because she was so emaciated and had some unspecified liver and heart problems they didn’t think her body would be able to handle the stress of the surgery.  They were sending her home. They called me down to talk about high calorie African foods in hopes that if she put on more weight, perhaps she could come back next year, should she be in an overall healthier state.  Although in all honesty the doctor didn’t know if she would make it. She weighs about 20 pounds and is 5 years old. In comparison, a healthy five year old girl should weigh about 40 pounds. Her diet consists of just beans, rice and water.

Gisele’s mother wouldn’t even look at me when we were talking.  She was so devastated. Here was this mother who had traveled across the country with the hope that her daughter would now be able to see again, only to have her joy crushed due to the resulting complications of her socioeconomic status. I felt helpless as I sat there talking to the family. Often it’s not so much a matter of educating these families on high calorie/protein foods and variety, but rather finding the financial means available to feed them. You can only send someone home with so much Pediasure.  Someone here recently said it's a sad reality when you realize that where you are born so often determines how you will die.  Please pray for God’s provision in the coming months as Gisele and her family return to Nigeria. Please pray that they would have the financial means available to them and that Gisele would gain weight.  Pray that her body would return to its previously healthy state and that she would be able to return to us next year.  Please pray that God would bring them peace.