Mercy Ships Africa Blog

After 56 years with a cleft lip, it took just a two-hour surgery to change Samba’s life and unleash his God-given potential.   Samba, a widower with four children, worked as a cattle farmer in rural Senegal, where he faced discrimination due to his lifelong condition.  He had grown used to his cleft lip drawing unwanted attention. Physical attacks were so commonplace that Samba couldn’t guess how many times they had happened. 

The last time Catherine Conteh saw the deeply familiar smile in front of her in Freetown, it was under dramatically different circumstances.  Fresh off the plane from Australia on Sunday, Catherine arrived on the dock beside the Global Mercy™ where she was greeted by Aly Hogarth-Hall – a face she had not seen in person for 30 years. Without Aly, the last 30 years – as well as the life of her daughter and her grandson – might not have even been possible. 

As a young boy, Dr. Abraham Camara was puzzled when relatives, friends, and neighbors came to seek medical help from his father, a high school teacher. “He was the only person who had gone to university, and he worked for the government,” explained Dr. Camara. Thus, “they thought he would know a lot about healthcare.” His father embraced the responsibility. He recommended hospitals, raised funds for medical bills, made appointments with doctors, and took neighbors to treatments when he could. Watching his father in action planted seeds of empathy in Dr. Camara’s heart. A dream to go into medicine was born. Dr. Camara grew up to make that dream a reality. For the past 12 years, he has been training to become a specialized surgeon. This dream is rooted in the desire to become the ultimate champion of his patients: “I want to be in the best possible position to help.”