Script and Service: Field notes from a travelling pharmacist on global aid, work, and adventures

As I start my 3-month volunteer placement as a pharmacist in Madagascar, I wanted to share some background on this incredible country and why Mercy Ships is needed.  The island and its people Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island - 2.4 times as big as the UK - located in the Indian ocean due east of Mozambique. The people of Madagascar are known as the Malagasy and the official languages are Malagasy and French following independence from France in 1960. The country is home to approx. 32 million.  The country is probably best known for its unique biodiversity and its amazing flora and fauna, 90% of which is found nowhere else on Earth. There are 100 species of lemurs alone, alongside lesser known endemic species like the fossa and the tomato frog.    The fossa: Madagascar's top predator The ring-tailed lemur Economy and daily life  The majority of Malagasy people earn their income through subsistence farming, supported by mineral mining, fishing and fo...

It is almost 3 months to the day since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal killing more than 9000 people, injuring 22000 and leaving 2.8 million displaced. There have been 350 aftershocks since then, 16 within the first 3 hours and the latest one at 10.14pm last night. The room shook more violently than in any of the aftershocks I've experienced and there was a sound like a deep rumble. Or maybe it was completely silent and the noise came from inside my head, I can't remember. The roads were empty of traffic and quiet except for the sudden barking of stray dogs and within 7 seconds it was over. Some of us had grabbed our passports and emergency kit bags, some had gone outside looking for the relative safety of open space. For me it was a reminder that I am in Nepal and less than three months ago an earthquake with 63000 times more energy than the one I felt last night wiped out whole villages, entire families. Seven weeks ago I arrived in Kathmandu to be part of...

The biggest tragedy of all is that surviving Ebola is only the start of a long, troubled journey. An indiscriminate disease that respects no social, educational or economic boundaries and is spread through the most natural of human tendencies - touch - can wipe out entire families and does so without compassion. Those you love most, those you hold and kiss, those you care for when they are dying - they are the ones who make you sick, as you then cause your own husband, wife, children and neighbours to run the Ebola gauntlet. To endure weeks in an Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) cared for by people with faces you can't see; watching people die around you. To survive the humiliating, incessant diarrhoea, the weeks of rehydration therapy, the days of waiting and waiting for that negative Ebola test, to be finally discharged and find out that your children didn't make it; that your parents are both dead; that you are the sole responsible survivor left to care for your brothers and ...

I wake up before dawn to the calls of the fishermen on the shore 50 metres away as they arrive home with their catch. Men from the nearby village come and help pull in the nets whilst the woman sit back with their colourful buckets, watching patiently until the fish are flapping on the sand. At that moment they descend in a wild mêlée to get their share of the best fish to sell or feed their families. I can hear the buzz and excitement even over the air-conditioning unit in my room - on this deployment to Sierra Leone with Save the Children we have been very fortunate to stay in a standard of accommodation above that normally expected on a humanitarian mission. For the last 4 months I have lived in a beautiful location on the beach, in a hotel with a swimming pool, where I don't have to cook, clean or do any of my own washing. Not what I expected when I applied to work in one of the poorest countries in the world and certainly in stark contrast to the village located  outside the...

*A fictitious account of a journey that over 400 patients have taken through the ETC  Two months ago I went to the funeral of a man in our village who had died of Ebola. Back then there were more cases of families hiding away their loved ones who were sick. They were scared that if they admitted the illness they would be taken away, sometimes to an unknown place, and that they would never be seen again. So people were dying at home. In our culture we help cleanse the body at funerals and touch and share tears with the bereaved to show sympathy and support. A week later I started to develop aches and pains, and two days later, fever and diarrhoea. I called 117 and an ambulance arrived and took me to the Save the Children Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC), near to my home. When I arrived at the ETC I had to wait in the locked ambulance whilst the doctors and nurses dressed in their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Then they took me into the Red Zone whilst a team of hygien...

As humanitarians would say, I 'deployed' three weeks ago with a suitcase full of alcohol gel from dad, a 6-pack of Handy Andies from mum and a guitar, a last minute purchase from Amazon. In hindsight, I'm not sure that teaching myself how to play the guitar in the middle of an epidemic was the best idea I've had, but it certainly wasn't the worst. Connecting in Casablanca, my initial thoughts were that the plane to Sierra Leone would be empty as who in their right mind would be heading that way? I was wrong - the airport was full of young, white, European NGO workers all congregating in eager huddles talking about life post-Ebola. So here I am in Africa again. West Africa this time, with a humanitarian NGO not a development one and during the 18th known outbreak of the viral haemorrhagic disease, Ebola. In truth I see very little of the real Sierra Leone. For an hour each day on the drive to and from the Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) I see the country that...