SEQUIM — Angela Nesse, 24, recently quit her pediatric nursing job to return to a short-term post that pays nothing but joy.
In mid-August, she’ll fly to West Africa to board the Africa Mercy, the largest civilian floating hospital in the world.
Nesse knows what she’s getting into: She spent almost three months on the ship docked in the Port of Cotonou in Benin last spring.
This time, she’ll be part of the hospital’s nursing team from August until December, caring for hundreds of patients from around the continent.
Career abroad
A 2003 graduate of Sequim High School, Nesse earned her degree at the Intercollegiate College of Nursing in Spokane and wanted to start her professional career abroad, working with the poor.
So when she learned about the Mercy Ships, a Christian charitable organization whose flagship vessel is the Africa Mercy, she set her sights there.
Sensing that she needed hospital experience first, Nesse went to work at Portland’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, joining a staff of 1,300.
In early 2009, she was granted a leave of absence and flew to Africa for a 2 ½-month stint on the Africa Mercy.
Volunteer medical crew
Nesse, like the other nurses, doctors, physical therapists and dentists on the ship, is a volunteer. She covers her own travel expenses and pays $600 per month to live on the vessel — where the conditions aren’t what one might expect.
The Africa Mercy, at nearly 500 feet long, accommodates some 480 crew including single people, couples and families. It has 126 cabins, a day care center, a school for all ages up to the last year of high school, a small supermarket, a library and a Starbucks.
The hospital floor has six operating theaters, an intensive care unit, laboratories, an X-ray center and beds for 78 patients.
But while the facilities are ultramodern and the lodging ultra-comfortable — with air conditioning and all meals prepared for the staff — nursing in Africa called on all of Nesse’s resources.
Children with cleft palates and other deformities, women with fistulas and tumors and many others with disfiguring ailments come to the Mercy, not just from Benin, but also from Ghana, Nigeria, Toga and other nations.
In many cases, the patients couldn’t afford care in their own communities.
And the Mercy can’t hold everyone who comes.
On one screening day, Nesse saw more than 1,000 people turned away because of lack of space in the hospital.
She also struggled with the language barriers.
Though there are interpreters who work with the medical staff, Nesse found it wasn’t easy to build relationships with her patients the way she had in the United States.
Experience equals joy
Yet when she describes her experience in Africa, Nesse returns to a word that sums it up best: joy.
She’s cared for a lot of children in her life, but the little boys she met in Benin, Nesse said, “have the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen.”
And the women, many of whom have been ostracized and even abandoned because of their ailments, moved her deeply.
Nesse cared for them as they recovered from surgery, watched over them and witnessed ceremonies in their honor.
“They went from being like lepers,” Nesse said, “to dancing with joy.”
In addition to being a new level of education for the young nurse, Benin was a heart-expanding adventure.
On her days off, Nesse went ashore to visit villages — where as soon as people found out she was from the United States, they beamed and shouted out, “Obama!”
And among the places Nesse explored: Benin’s Obama Beach, a stretch of sand renamed for the American president.
Though she was able to take a temporary leave from her Doernbecher Children’s Hospital position last spring, Nesse had to give up the job this time to go back to the Mercy for six months.
“Coming back to work at Doernbecher has made me realize how much my heart is still wanting to be in Africa,” she said.
Resigning “was a tough decision, as I feel so blessed to have an amazing job at a state-of-the-art facility in Portland. But I know that the knowledge and skills that I have learned here will be incredibly useful overseas.”
Nesse added that this feels like the right time in her life: She’s single and has abundant wanderlust. Living on the ship was a cosmopolitan experience, since she had eight roommates from all over the world.
“I just have to trust,” she said, “that there will be something when I come back . . . whenever that may be.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
