Mercy Mission Deborah's Ship Of A Lifetime

How she got on board with a caring cause.

- Julie Jacobson

Eighteen months into her nursing training, Deborah Adesanya was struggling. She’d had to resit several papers and was finding her studies tough going.

About to throw it all in, the Nigerian-born student was on her way home from church on a grey Auckland day when she spotted a sign that would change the course of her life. It read, “Mercy Ships” and had a picture of a boat on it.

Intrigued, Deborah, 26, googled it as soon as she got home and discovered it was a charity bringing healthcare to the Third World aboard the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, Africa Mercy. She soon became hooked on the idea of becoming a volunteer crew member.

“I can’t believe I had even considered dropping out,” she grins now. “It was just pure chance the Mercy Ships head office was in the same complex as a church I used to go to.”

Deborah threw herself back into her studies, obtained her nursing degree and by September 2014, was working as a paediatric nurse in the intensive care ward at Auckland’s Starship children’s hospital, saving her money for what would become a special kind of pilgrimage.

That New Year’s Eve – almost two decades after her family immigrated to New Zealand – Deborah returned to West Africa to help nurse some of the region’s poorest people.