Meet Caren Chu - Mission Partner for May

Hi all, I am now approximately halfway through my time serving with Mercy Ships as a part of the medical capacity building team. My role involves travelling around Senegal and Gambia with a small team and doing teaching with their surgical teams on safety in the surgical environment and implementing the WHO checklist. 

My first impression of Mercy Ships when I first arrived was just how big the ship was as I made my way up the steep gangway towering above the dock. I quickly realised just how many people were involved in the running of this ship as I settled in on my first week. Mercy Ships is described as a village and it definitely was with its crew from all over the world. 

Our first teaching trip was at a local hospital in Dakar, I was working with another facilitator from the UK, a coordinator and two local translators who were medical students. When we arrived we were told that one of the surgical teams would not join our teaching as they felt that it was not what they were interested in. They also struggled to organise for us to observe in their theatres and to find time and space for our teaching. Fortunately after talking to a neurosurgical professor they were able to find us a room and the participants all enjoyed the teaching. My first teaching experience taught me the importance of relationship building with the local hospitals and the importance of flexibility when our plans didn't work as we expected. 

A week later we embarked on a longer trip to the Gambia where we taught at two different hospitals. This experience was very different with us being warmly welcomed in by their ministry of health and their hospitals. The participants were very enthusiastic and had started implementing changes even before we left. This was a huge encouragement to us all and I look forward to returning for a follow up visit in June. In our free time we were able to see a little of Gambia, going to a monkey park and spotting kingfishers on a bird watching trip. I have also really enjoyed getting to know our local team members and getting to know their culture and country. 

We have now returned on the ship after Gambia and had a couple of weeks on board whilst our team has changed around with a new facilitator from Australia arriving and one of our translators taking over the co-ordinator role as she had to leave unexpectedly. In the remaining two months we will have trips in-country for teaching at two further hospitals and a few follow-up trips at hospitals where we have done the teaching before. 

Today at our team devotional I was reminded that this work is in God's hands. I'm thankful for the support of our team as we experience both the successes and the obstacles in our work. Going ahead please pray that we would reflect God in all we do and that our teaching would be fruitful in the long term and lead to improvements in surgical safety for the local population. 

Caren Chu