On 30 December, I flew out to Conakry, the capital of Guinea, and boarded the Africa Mercy hospital ship to live and work aboard for three months. The ship and its crew arrived into port in August and opened the hospital in September, so I am joining them part way through their ten month stint in Guinea.
Having been here a few weeks now, I am updating this page with a little background about Mercy Ships and Guinea. You can read my blogs from my time on board by scrolling down to “Guinea” on the sidebar to the right.
A couple of friends have blogs which I can recommend: April is a physio from Australia and is great at reflecting on things, and Jasmin is a lab guru and gives very detailed, insightful weekly updates.
Who are Mercy Ships?
Mercy Ships is an international organisation which deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries in the world to deliver free surgery. The Africa Mercy is the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world and spends 10 months docked in one country at a time around the coast of Africa and performs life-saving surgical operations.
Conditions requiring surgical treatment kill more people in low-income countries than HIV, TB and malaria combined. Globally, five billion people have no access to safe, affordable surgery when they need it (The Lancet Commission).
The charity has been running since 1978 and has been in more than 70 countries. It has performed just under 100,000 operations over 41 years. It is staffed by volunteers from around the world. In 2018, there were 1204 crew from 46 nations.
You can explore their website here. Below is an example of one of our orthopaedic patients:
Fundraising
All crew on the ship pays to be here. The monthly crew fees decrease the longer you have been serving. Since this is my first field service, I have to pay $650 a month, which covers food, accommodation, ship maintenance and many more things, of which I am not even aware. On top of that, we pay for flights, travel insurance, medicals and vaccinations etc. Since I have spent most of the last year or so volunteering, I have tried to fundraise to cover these costs. I have been blown away by people’s generosity!
My goal was to raise £2,750, and donations have exceeded this! People have been ridiculously generous. This has worked out well, because it turns out the other hospital physician has to leave early and they needed someone to fill a gap. So I am extending by two weeks which will cost an extra $325 in crew fees.
THANK YOU SO MUCH to all those who have kindly donated their hard-earned cash. Your money is being used wisely, efficiently and for a great cause. I hope this blog will go some way to demonstrate that.
Follow my progress on Instagram (@SwimAlong_GuineaThon) and my Fundraising on JustGiving. If you want to see the spreadsheet of my swimming sessions, please see here.
Where on earth is Guinea?
It’s not Papua New Guinea, Guinea-Bissau or Equatorial Guinea… Guinea sits on the West coast of Africa, nuzzled around Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. It borders six different countries and has a population of just over 12 million people. It gained its independence from France in 1958, and the main language is French.
Guinea is a low-income country. The Human Development Index (HDI) ranks 189 countries, and takes into account life expectancy, education and gross national income. In 2017, Guinea was 175th down the list. Life expectancy at birth is 60 years and the mean education is 2.6 years. Norway is top of the HDI, with the US 13th and UK 14th. For comparison, other countries I have visited in the past couple of years: Botswana 101st, Namibia 129th, Zambia 144th, Tanzania 154th, Zimbabwe 156th, Madagascar 161st, Malawi 171st. So Guinea is in the bottom 8% of countries in the world for human development.
Guinea is 98% Muslim, and all religions live alongside each other generally in peace. In the past there has been considerable political instability with riots and demonstrations during the last field service in Guinea in 2012. Things have settled down since then.
As for the language, it is slow work trying to learn them! There are three main languages (Susu, Pulah and Malinke) with many, many more around the country. Conakry falls within the predominant Susu area. As for customs, I have learned that you should not sniff your food in public, and crossing your legs sends the message that you are the boss!
The future
In June 2019, the ship will be packed down, all items secured, including all of the vehicles being craned and roped onto the top deck, and she will sail to Las Palmas where she spends two months of every year in dry dock for essential maintenance. The ongoing and new crew will board and commence the month-long sail to the next destination. The ship will be in Dakar in Senegal for another ten months and start the cycle all over again.
A white coat on red soil 