Are You The Mercy Ship?

Wherever we go here in Monrovia, and to a lesser degree when we were in Ghana, people shout “Mercy Ship!” or ask us “are you the Mercy Ship?” (yes, as a matter of fact, I am the Mercy Ship, the whole thing, I’m a large white boat). Even though there are other white folk around here, apparently most of them don’t regularly go walking in the heat and squalor to explore the markets and sample random foods on the side of the road (strange). Often people are just being friendly and welcoming us, but there are also a LOT of people who need medical care, and want to describe their problem to us in the hopes that we can help them (despite the fact that there are only about five or six actual doctors aboard out of 300 crewmembers). On any given day, we’ll have three or four people describe to us their malady on the sidewalk; one man pulled up his pant leg to show us a bullet lodged in his shin, a woman needed glasses, someone else wanted medication for their sick mother. Almost every crewmember has one or two interesting stories, many of them involving public disrobing to reveal the affected body part, whatever that might be.

Sadly, there is nothing we can do for most of these people because of the limited range of surgeries that we offer and because there are just so many people in need. It’s the most difficult thing in the world to tell someone who is clearly suffering that all we can give them is our prayers, and I thank God for my own health every time I encounter such a case. However, when it’s a problem that we can solve, like a tumour or cataracts or a sore tooth, then we’ll tell them to listen to the radio for the time and place that we will be doing a major screening in early May (the surgery schedule has been booked in advance until then), or give them information about the land-based dental and eye clinics. And when it is the case that yes, there might be something we can do for them – even if it’s a small ‘might’ – then their eyes light up with hope, and the elated Mercy Ships (that’s us) sail home on the clouds :)

Afterthought: Last night we met the head of security from the hotel we ate dinner at, and he was thrilled to learn that we were from Mercy Ships because he has eye problems that he desperately needs fixed (cataracts, I think). He neglected to acknowledge the irony of the fact that he was in fact driving us home in the dark at the time of this conversation...