I've officially passed the 1 year mark since I embarked the AFM in Las Palmas.
It's a little crazy to think back at everything that has happened.
I spent the first few months at the Reception desk, and then the Purser's office, managing the comings & goings of crew, the emergency team assignments, and assembling immigration records for sailing.
I lived out of a hotel for a few solid months of 2021, both before arriving to the ship and after - during drydock!
I went back to my happy place, the AFM hospital, and tackled a mountain of work trying to turn what had basically been overflow cargo storage for 2 years back into functioning wards and an ICU. I had a great team that started incredibly small, but grew and grew into a group of amazing, dependable, hard-working nurses. That group has evolved over the year, as it always does here, but I consider myself so blessed to have had such great colleagues with such a heart to serve.
I reconnected with old friends, built deeper relationships with old acquaintances, and found new, lifelong friends. No...scratch that. New family. I walked with this family through joy, through storms, through outbreaks, through boredom, and through pain. We created beautiful things together, we laughed, and we cried. I nearly lost one of them. It was wonderful and it was hard. And it was so very worth every moment of it.
We sailed back into Senegal - such a joyous day - and got to pick up the work we left off. Bringing back patients who were waiting patiently for surgery for 2 years through the pandemic. We got to see our sister ship, the GLM, visit the continent for the first time. We saw diplomats, presidents and ministers of health commit to tangible goals for improving surgical care across Africa. We saw hundreds of healthcare professionals from all sectors receiving training to help achieve those goals. We saw so much potential, hope, and joy for the future.
We faced challenges. And boy, were there a lot of them. We faced destructive weather, electrical fires, COVID, COVID, and even more COVID. We faced the unique problems of finding safe ways to continue working on a ship in the middle of an outbreak, and trying to remember how things worked even in the before, "normal" times...2 years prior. Every department on the ship has pulled together to get us successfully through the field service thus far.
We can and we have "done hard things" (this was the Academy's motto for the year, one that became the brunt of a few jokes as things just seemed to get harder and harder)! We have journeyed towards healing alongside hundreds of surgical patients this year.
We welcomed many with masses or gaps on their face, so many wearing their disease where the whole world cannot help but notice. So many, who have felt monstrous for many years, leaving feeling beautiful and whole.
We welcomed scarred, burned, devastatingly injured patients whose healing drew their joints inward, locking out their mobility. We forge deep relationships with these reconstructive plastic surgery patients, as some of them take months for their grafts to fully heal. But their joy is all the more deeply felt as we journey through the pain and healing together with them.
It has been...a journey. That's for sure.
- - -
Right now I'm on a journey back home, for the first time in over a year. It is a strange feeling, more like leaving one home to return to another. Like my heart is in a few different places, and sometimes I need to leave one piece behind to retrieve another.
I thank you all again for walking with me through this ongoing journey.
It's a team effort.
Niofar (we're in this together).
À la prochaine,
- Danita
