Mercy Ships: Celebrating with Our Patients
This week I was able to attend my first dress ceremony, and it will probably be one of my favorite moments of this trip. The dress ceremony is held every other Friday at the OBF clinic where all of the discharged VVF ladies get dressed up to celebrate the success of their surgeries. This week […]
Mercy Ships: Seeing the Results
“You can’t change the whole world but you can change the whole world for one person, and the next one, and the next one.” Dr. Gary Parker The number of patients began to increase this week, which meant my ward had to take patients from other wards. We had general surgery patients along with other […]
Mercy Ships: A Healing Touch
One morning at 6 a.m., a patient of ours noticed that I looked very tired. This was correct since I had just worked a 12-hour night shift. She then came over and proceeded to give me a 20-minute back massage, right up to the time when we heard the car with the day shift crew […]
Mercy Ships: The Start of a Great Adventure
On January 3rd, 30+ volunteers met at a guest house in Antananarivo, Madagascar to finish our journey to the Africa Mercy. Many of us had issues with our last connecting flight to get to Antananarivo (Tana), so we were all eager to finally get to the boat. The last leg of our trip was an […]
Mercy Ships: Their Stories
Every morning when I go to work there’s one patient that gives me a giant smile and says, “Good morning, Hannah,” with the most proper English pronunciation. English was so foreign to her and nearly all of our patients in the beginning, as they only speak Malagasy when they come to the clinic. This particular […]