KRB Update #2194 – Impfondo & DRC
Keith R. Brinkman                                                       07 December 2013

Greetings from the nation of the Republic of Congo.  I wish to give you a short update on our historical event with our patient selection/surgical screening in the capital of this country on 06 November.  After countless hours of preparatory work on the part of many, we had a successful patient selection – we had allocated 300 surgical slots for those from the Brazzaville, Plateaux and Pool areas.  We provided 294 people with their screening cards for the appointment for final approval from our surgeons.  I served as the Site Commander for this screening and had the great support of amazing screening and security teams and great cooperation with all the local officials – see below photo.

Photo:  on the right – outside when I went to     the crowds to search for additional patients

Just this week, our team has done screening in two interior cities – Oyo and Ouesso.  They are en route back to the capital by land and I will join them on Sunday.  We will fly with Mission Aviation Fellowship to Impfondo, town in the north eastern section of the Republic of Congo with a population of around 20,000 people lying on the Oubangui River.  It is the administrative capital of the district and region.  Our venue is the Pioneer Christian Hospital (Hospital Evangelique le Pionnier) – a 60 bed general mission hospital and the referral center for a greater population base of 300,000 people.  You can be a part of this event with your prayer:
* Patients from in and around Impfondo come for the screening on Tuesday (10 December) – nothing would hinder those God has purposes for with us at this time.
* Security and safety for all involved – peace and order * Good weather with clouds and no rain
* All the logistics of air travel, accommodations, ground transportation, meals, etc.  * Our partners in the government, local Christian hospital, local churches and local organizations.

DRC Assessment: With permission from the managing director on board, I joined for two weeks in November the Assessment Team in the Democratic Republic of Congo – which is the much larger and better known Congo here.  Three of us traveled from the ship, two from the US and two from Switzerland as we came together as a team. 
Mercy Ships already has a protocol agreement with the government.  A recent detailed port assessment of Matadi (up the Congo River) had already been accomplished.  Our team was to work on relationship building, with the hospital assessments and logistical arrangements.  It was challenging and fulfilling.  The people are friendly and loved when I used my limited Lingala (one of their major languages).  They need us and want us in their nation and so I believe that sometime in the future we will have a Mercy Ship there.
Serving Together,   
Keith

Photo on the left:  Port of Matadi on the Congo River and next with the Mayor of Matadi

KRB Update #2194 – Brazzaville
Keith R. Brinkman                                                       02 November 2013

The Africa Mercy is preparing for a historical event with our patient selection/surgical screening in the capitol and largest city of the Republic of Congo – Brazzaville without the ship’s presence nearby.  Typically, our largest screening takes place in the port city and that is normally the capitol or less than one hour from the capitol as in Ghana and Benin.  For those events, like 28 August here in Pointe-Noire, we have over 300 crew members involved along with another 100 local workers/day crew.  For Brazzaville, we are working closely with the President’s Office, our host, to make this a success.  Due to concern of the thousands of people who may come and how we are limited how many from the ship who can participate, we changed our strategy slightly.  Pre-screening/selection process took place this week at 11 hospitals and health centers in and around the greater Brazzaville area.  All of the participating doctors from those locations were briefed what we can assist with and what we cannot assist with.  The majority of the pre-selection registration forms have been reviewed by Mercy Ships’ Patient Flow Manager.  Only those who have a pre-registration form will be seen by Mercy Ships on Wednesday, 06 November at the site provided.  We are flying personnel from the Africa Mercy in Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville for this event – hospital staff and translators (day crew) along with the communications team, executive and security.  I hope to open the main gate at 06:00 on Wednesday morning.  For this event, I was asked to be Site Commander and I agreed to take on the challenge.  You can be a part of this event with your prayer.
Our prayer requests are:
* Pre-registered patients to come for the screening – nothing would hinder them
* Security and safety for all involved – peace and order
* Good weather with clouds and no rain
* All the logistics of air travel, accommodations, ground transportation, meals, etc.
* Our partners in the government, local church and local organizations

One short story from one of our patients from our first screening here in Pointe-Noire (I gave them their ticket at the main gate where I served): Vernel came with his papa as he had a cleft lip that needed to be repaired.  Through our Befriend-a-Patient I spent time with them in the hospital wards.  Amazing to see the change in this boy – see the other photo after his recovery – this was taken at his home in his village.  Life changed !!!  We pray for more to come from our upcoming screenings.

Thank you all for your partnership with me as I serve here.

Serving Together,   Keith
Email:  [email protected]
www.KeithBrinkman.com (web site new and improved with great thanks from my friend Paul in Guatemala)

04 October 2013

Greetings from Congo on the Africa Mercy. Mercy Ministries provides off ship ministry opportunities for crew working alongside existing national organizations, demonstrating the ‘face of love in action’. We wish to demonstrate God’s love, care and concern for those we have come to serve, through prayer, listening, counseling, teaching, building relationships, play and interaction. I am involved at various sites myself and provide oversight to the Mercy Ministries Coordinator, who is doing a great job. I am most thankful for our crew who volunteer to be site team leaders, our translators, and all the crew who sign up every week.

Here are our partners for Congo 2013-2014:
Espace Orphanage – up to 40 children, primarily those from the streets – Bible stories, games and sports.  I heading to this orphanage on Saturday.
Centre d’Accueil Boys Orphanage – 15 boys, age 5 to 18 years old – evening program with sports, arts and mentoring.
Amour de Dieu Orphanage – up to 20 children – in the process of moving, so some practical assistance for the new facility and time with the children and teens.
Mvou Mvou Creche Baby Center – home for abandoned and orphaned babies – time of play, nurturing – visits twice a week – our Infant Feeding Program is involved with some of their babies also.
Senior Community Center – a time senior citizens gather from the community – share story or drama, dance, exercise and encouragement.
Handicapped Tailors – up to 24 adults learning to be tailors – time of Bible study and mentoring with crafts.

Photo: With the seniors under a tree – Thomas is to my right and he was real helpful with my French and understanding.

Sewing Sisters – working with young women who have been chased from their homes and poor schooling, many have babies – time of Bible study, mentoring and teaching crafts.
Hospital Pediatric Ward Visitation – evening event to a local hospital to visit the children and caregivers there – basic crafts and loving on children.
HOPE Center – place where our interior patients stay after discharge from the wards but need to return for outpatient care – time of Bible stories, songs and crafts.
Men & Women’s Prisons – takes place on Saturday mornings – a time of worship and Bible teaching and study.
School for the Deaf – opens later this month – weekly visits and program with art with rotating classes.

Photo: With the children – showing my ID badge with a photo of the ship and showed where my cabin is and demonstrating my ‘snoring’ – they love it.

Pre-Operative Center – similar to the HOPE Center, but the place where the interior patients and caregivers come before coming into the hospital wards here on board.
Jesus Film – sharing the film in French and local languages in partnership with an association here in Pointe-Noire and local church leaders.

More about the Republic of Congo – Life Expectancy at birth: 55 years, Under Five years old Mortality Rate 128 per 1,000 live births, Median age: 17 years old, 0 – 14 years old 45% of the population, Literacy 83% (can read and write), School Life Expectancy 10 years and 62% of the population live in urban areas of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire where the port is located. Refugee population in the Republic of Congo primarily from their neighbor Democratic Republic of Congo – though primarily in the northern sectors of the country and the capital of Brazzaville.

Please pray *Our mercy ministries partners, the relationships and all the activities with them *Our hospital staff as they care for our patients *All of our patients, their surgeries and their recovery time period *For the continued efforts with screening and patient selection in the capitol city of Brazzaville on Wednesday 06 November.

Serving Together, Keith
Email: [email protected]  www.KeithBrinkman.com

PS: Following our field service here in early June 2014 we will sail for the Canary Islands for a drydock period in Gran Canaria. Announcement on the next country for 2014-2015 will come soon.

KRB Update #2191 – Patient Selection Keith R. Brinkman 02 September 2013
Greetings from the hospital ship, Africa Mercy. I sincerely thank you all who prayed for our surgical screening/patient selection on the 28th of August at a local high school here in Pointe-Noire. As in previous years, I served at the main gate and had the wonderful opportunity to hand out tickets and to greet almost every potential patient/caregiver coming into the compound (see photo). I practiced my limited French with ‘Bon jour’ et ‘Bienvenue’ and a few phrases in Kituba, the primary local language in the southern parts of Congo. For example, ‘Mboté’, ‘Wa fa So’, and then if they responded with ‘Ka Bien’ I knew they understood me. For the toddlers, I would knell down to greet them and see if they would shake my hand, for some of the small ones they may never have interacted with a mundelli ‘white person’ before. For the adults, I tried to look them in the eyes one at a time. I got excited when I saw cleft lip children and others with visible maxillofacial tumors. I look forward to welcoming many onto the ship when they come for their surgeries. Plus through befriend-a-patient, I will have the great opportunity of starting and building relationships with the Congolese patients.

Statistics: estimated over 7,300 came for the screening, some left the line outside as they had a problem we are not able to assist with and then 4,236 potential patients plus another 2,118 caregivers came inside the compound. Almost 1,000 were potential eye patients and the others for our surgical specialties. After the nurse pre-screening, 1,326 potential patients continued through the process. Hundreds were scheduled for surgery and hundreds of others were scheduled for a surgeon screening (when the surgeons for that specialty arrive in country) and for overflow screening as we ran out of day light and time on Wednesday. Later on, I will have more exact numbers as one of my responsibilities is tracking our statistics for our activities – each number representing an individual. Our managing director shared that this was one of our finest moments in Mercy Ships screening and that “We made history on Wednesday. We broke all of our Selection Day records – it was a remarkable day for Mercy Ships and for Congo-Brazzaville. It could not have happened without the continued support of our donors, volunteers and local partners like FELBO.” This day is one our highlights of the entire field service with over 340 crew members involved, over 100 local workers, government officials and local partners. Praise to our Great God!!!

More about the Republic of Congo – Healthcare Structure – CHU – top hospital located in the capitol and then four general hospitals, two are here in Pointe-Noire – Adolphe Sice and Loandjili. We are working with both for patient referral and our healthcare education mentoring and courses and then Base Hospitals and then the lowest level is Integrated Health Centers which you see throughout the nation. During our screening in the interior, we will work with the government base hospitals in Oyo and Ouesso. They have various medical specialties in Congo – oncology, cardiology, pediatrics, OB/GYN and general, but for maxillofacial, trauma, orthopaedics, eyes, fistulas and plastics reconstructive their surgeons go overseas for training. Regretfully in Congo, infant mortality has increased in the last twenty years to over 80 per 1,000 births. Maternal mortality also increased to almost 600 per 100,000 live births.

Please pray *Our hospital staff as they care for our patients *All of our patients with appointments come and receive their healing *For the continued efforts with screening and patient selection in the interior including the capitol city of Brazzaville. *My better understanding of their culture and language
Serving Together,
Keith

Email: [email protected]  www.KeithBrinkman.com
Mercy Ships Mission Statement: Mercy Ships follows the 2000-year-old model of Jesus, bringing hope and healing to the world’s forgotten poor.

Greetings from the nation of the Republic of Congo – port of Pointe-Noire – Mercy Ships and my first time in this nation and this region of Africa. Our sail went well from the Canary Islands (about 3,600 miles/5,800 kilometers), though it was long time for this crew to be at sea. I did ok, no seasickness but often had headaches by the end of the day as my office is located in the bow (front of the ship and so it moves a lot – imagine your monitor and surroundings moving as we roll from side to side). There was much I was still working on with the team in country and for this field service. Besides a great Arrival Ceremony provided by the host government, a great highlight was having Don & Deyon Stephens on the dock for our arrival. This is the first time in Africa they have been able to see the Africa Mercy come into the harbor and dock.

The history of the Republic of the Congo has been marked by French colonization, a transition to independence, Marxist-Leninism, and a transition to a market-oriented economy in the 1990s. On 30 April 1891, the French named their Congolese territory “Colony of French Congo.” During Nazi occupation of France during WWII, Congo became the capital of Free France from 1940-1943. In 1944, France hosted the Conference of Brazzaville in which many French colonial policies were reformed. Brazzaville gained autonomy on 28 November 1958 and officially became the Republic of Congo. After many turbulent years bolstered by Marxist/Leninist ideas and the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s, the Republic of Congo transitioned to a multi-party democracy and a market oriented economy. In 1997, Congo’s march towards economic development and democracy was halted as Congo sank into a civil war. After the signing of a cease fire in October 1997 and a peace agreement in December 1999, His Excellency Sassou Nguesso was able to lead the country to a new chapter of its history. Democratic presidential elections were held in 2002 and 2009 in which Nguesso won a majority and was re-elected by the Congolese people. He is the president that Donovan, Pierre and I met with in early 2012 in the start of the process to being invited to come to his nation. Don & Deyon Stephens, Donovan and Pierre met with the president this week in Brazzaville and were warmly welcomed to Congo.

Please pray *Our upcoming surgical screening in Pointe-Noire for Wednesday 28 August – we expect to obtain 1,000 patients for the various surgical specialties – I have confirmed my similar role from the past as the one at the main gate to greet (in French & Kituba) and hand out tickets to the potential patients. We visited the venue site at a large school compound and I pictured myself at the gate and people coming in. I will share more in the next update on this initial surgical screening and others in the interior will follow later on. Please pray that those God has purposes for with us to come and those God doesn’t have purposes for with us that they would not come.



Map from one of my fellow crew members who does amazing graphic works.



14 May 2013

Greetings from the nation of Guinea, West Africa. One of the very unique and powerful aspects to life serving in world missions with Mercy Ships is our community. Our community is both trans-generational (from newborn babies to those in their retirement years) and trans-cultural (crew coming from up to 40 different nations and so many different cultures). Some other traits of our community are: people chose to belong to the community, community is constantly changing (up to 100 new crew arrive monthly on field service – and as you can imagine not really possible to know everyone by name, we have the added assistance as you are required at all times to wear your identification badge), a group of people with common goals, there is a sense of belonging and being a safe place, a place where everyone has his or her place, working side by side, a place where we can be real, agree to disagree, participate in things you’d rather not do for the good of the whole, and a place of supportive growth and learning. Our community’s foundation is Jesus, faith in God, God as our focal point, a place where spiritual growth takes place, a group of people expressing who Jesus is, focusing on the Kingdom culture versus the individual cultures, we need to each be all that God created us to be so we can help one another to become all God intended, coming together as one body of Christ. We have our regular times of prayer, praise and worship and hearing from God’s word. At Easter and Christmas, we celebrate these two holidays in amazing and special ways on board – they are the only two holidays recognized on board officially. We celebrate birthdays and we also cry with friends during times of loss. Please note that most but not all of our crew are followers of Jesus. I also do not want to forget our amazing day crew (local workers who serve with us in many aspects on board).

Celebrating Josie’s birthday – I have known her since she was 18 months old.

As a community, we have a Crew Handbook which details many different aspects about life in this community. These range from maritime matters and law as we all are crew members to our chaplaincy department who also look out for our community. You might be surprised to know that we have a curfew for safety and security reasons – usually around 10:30pm everyone has to be on board the ship unless you have special permission from the captain. Our Code of Conduct includes details related to alcohol, dancing, smoking and the favorite of many our dress code.

There are various areas on the ship for our community – common areas/lounges, dining room, and Starbuck’s Café (area sponsored by Starbuck’s and yes there is Starbuck’s coffee available , though since I don’t drink coffee doesn’t excite me much except for my friends). There are services available from our library, hair salon, laundry room (which is open 24 hours a day – but you only are allowed one load per week due to water restrictions), ship shop, academy (for the children of our long term families – with 50 + in attendance), crew bank, and post office.

Hopefully you have a bit more of an idea of the community here. I have been living in community since I joined Mercy Ships in 1989, on the ships: m/v Good Samaritan, m/v Anastasis, m/v Caribbean Mercy and now the m/v Africa Mercy and at our office locations in Texas and England. I am very thankful for this community.

Please pray * All of our patients heal and are ok for discharge from the hospital

Serving Together, Keith

06 April 2013
Greetings from the nation of Guinea, West Africa. I wish to focus in this update on some of our education/training type projects. Many of you already know of our direct medical services provided to the people of the host country – with no regard to nationality, gender, religion, age – as we bring hope and healing.

So many times when I have traveled ahead of the ship and our team has met with the Minister of Health and the President, one of their main requests is for training for their people. Mercy Ships has provided education in many different aspects for years both here in Africa and earlier including my time on the Caribbean Mercy. Our education (mentoring and courses) projects include: Mentoring: specialized surgeons, ward and operating room nurses, anesthesia providers, mental health professionals, laboratory technicians, and sterilize processing technicians

Courses: Ponseti casting, palliative care, agriculture and nutrition, leadership conferences, radiology, disease control, mental health, primary trauma care, etc. Our ability to be able to provide the mentoring and courses rest in large part on the availability of highly skills professionals coming from over 30 different nations. There is also much work done in order to coordinate these opportunities, some of which take place on the Africa Mercy and others happen ashore and in local hospitals. The amount of time invested in the participants depends on each project and needs. The outcomes vary but involve the increase in knowledge, improvement in skills and in Jesus-like attitude.

Dr. Michelle at one of the workshops

Most recently, I assisted with our Anaesthesia Conference held here in Conakry with 49 anesthesia providers and 11 midwives. The focus of the conference was on maternal health, trauma, World Health Organization Safer Surgery checklists and Lifebox (pulse oximeters). My role was coordination and logistics; it was a lot of work and began back in October. We believe that the participants learned through the lectures, workshops and interaction with the 12 facilitators who came from Europe and some of our own hospital professionals. The hope is that lives will be saved during their times in surgery from what they have learned.

Please pray * for all those involved in our education projects here in Guinea – may they take what they have learned and share with others and may the training aid in their care for the people

Serving Together, Keith

KRB Update #2185 – Noma

Keith R. Brinkman 02 March 2013

Greetings from the nation of Guinea, West Africa. Noma – as you read the header subject line, you think what is Noma and why is Keith writing about it. Noma is a disease of poverty – here is the link to Wikipedia with more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noma_(disease). Noma (cancrum oris) is an acute and ravaging gangrenous infection affecting the face. The victims of Noma are mainly children under the age of 6, caught in a vicious circle of extreme poverty and chronic malnutrition. We see them come to our screenings with the effects of Noma.

Koto and his uncle – while at the HOPE Center – prior to his 1st surgery





Alpha Oumar at the HOPE Center – prior to his 1st surgery

Serving Together, Keith