Family move to Sierra Leone to volunteer on hospital ship
Mr Lawrence said: "I've spent 15 years at sea and became a ship's captain and then came ashore to work as a marine pilot. I met my wife on board a cruise ship so we're very much a maritime family. "So when we heard that Mercy Ships were looking for qualified mariners to volunteer on board their ships we signed up."The family have their own little cabin on the ship, and the two children attend the ship's academy, which teaches children from the age of four to 18. The Global Mercy is thought to be the world's largest purpose-built non-governmental hospital ship.
At 174m (571ft) long and a gross tonnage of 37,000, the ship features six operating rooms, a hospital deck with 200 beds, a laboratory and various clinics including general outpatient, eye, and dental.The charity said the Global Mercy also had first-class training facilities for local medical professionals and is home to up to 600 volunteers who serve on board.In the past year the medical team on the ship have undertaken more than 1,600 surgeries for 1,500 different patients. Mr Lawrence said: "In Sierra Leone there is a lot of facial tumours, cleft palates, bowed legs and also things such as burns, where the skin has contracted and caused the lack of mobility in someone's limbs."
It is almost time to come home but has been an experience he and his family will never forget. "Sierra Leone is a wonderful country," he said. "The people are incredibly warm-hearted and welcoming.""Everywhere we've gone, we've been met with with smiles with greetings and welcomes."It's been an intense year, one where we've had highs and lows, but we really feel like we've lived and we have contributed, we've made a real difference to their part of the world and a population that really needed it."So it will be a year that will live with us for the rest of our lives, I'm sure."
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Telegraph
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The country lies at a grim crossroads of deep poverty, protracted conflict and climate change, which brings both severe droughts and floods. Large parts of Somalia remain under the control or influence of Al Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group that has waged an insurgency for nearly two decades. In areas under their rule, there is no access to healthcare or education, and farmers are burdened by crippling taxation. This year, the conflict has intensified – deaths from fighting are soaring as the militants advance on multiple fronts. Foreign troops are poised to withdraw, or face an uncertain future, amid a refusal by Washington to guarantee financial support. There are growing fears among observers that Mogadishu could fall to Al Shabab, leaving the fate of one the world's oldest state-building projects hanging in the balance. A key town fell to the rebels this week. Meanwhile, local forces, backed by US and UAE airpower, have been waging an all-out war against ISIS in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in the north. The day before The Telegraph visited Baidoa, clashes erupted following an Al Shabaab suicide car bomb, with 15 were reportedly killed in the fighting. Repeated famines have ravaged the country, driving millions into overcrowded displacement camps where poor sanitation means disease is rife. Nearly a fifth of the population are internally displaced. Baidoa is scattered with hundreds of camps that house more than 800,000 people – clusters of patchwork tents, cobbled together from scavenged and donated material. They are cramped and dangerous, and subject to tribal law. Amina and Shariif live in a camp after fleeing Al Shabaab rule. She has no income and is dependent on humanitarian assistance like cash, food and healthcare. That support has now all but dried up. Moazzam Malik, CEO of Save the Children – the largest NGO provider of health and nutrition services to children in Somalia – told The Telegraph that it was the abrupt and unpredictable nature of the cuts that hurt the most. USAID previously funded about 65 per cent of Somalia's humanitarian aid, and StC now has a funding shortfall of around 20 per cent. 'Children and vulnerable mothers are dying as a result of the aid cuts,' he said. 'We have documented that in South Sudan and we strongly suspect the same is happening here in Somalia.' A rise in deaths is difficult to quantify. Clinics closing or scaling back means fewer people receive care or have their deaths recorded. Ongoing conflict makes much of the country inaccessible to foreign organisations. Yet when US-funded feeding centres shut their doors, babies wasted away in their mothers' arms while older siblings roamed markets begging for work. 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Outreach programmes to combat forced marriage and female genital mutilation have stalled. 'When people were getting assistance like cash and food, they would listen. But it is dangerous for our workers to visit these desperate communities now,' said gender-based violence case worker Samira Abdullahi Ali. 'These were not just projects. We are saving lives.' 'If you walk around the local markets,' one women's rights activist said, 'you hear women saying: 'Donald Trump caused these problems'.' When Trump slashed foreign aid, he declared that America should stop spending on causes 'that are not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President.' His retreat is part of a broader global pull-back. France, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland have all trimmed aid budgets in recent years. Germany has cut nearly €1 billion from humanitarian spending. The UK, once the world's third-largest donor, plans to shrink its aid budget from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of national income by 2027, representing a cut of about £6 billion a year. Even before Trump's sweeping reductions, the number of people the World Food Programme was able to reach a month in Somalia had been slashed by more than half. Behind the figures lies a powerful political undercurrent – soaring inflation, ballooning debt and the cost of conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine have squeezed government coffers. Nationalist politics has fuelled scepticism about pouring money overseas. Yet it is in stark contrast to attitudes of the past. In the 1990s, the US launched a military intervention, Operation Restore Hope, sending thousands of troops to protect food convoys when Somalia suffered an intense famine after the collapse of its government. Images of skeletal children and bodies lining Baidoa's streets shocked the world. 'Back then, there was a sense of moral responsibility,' said Omar Mohammed, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. 'Somalia was a test of America's role after the Cold War.' The mission, however, ended in bloody disaster when eighteen US soldiers were killed in Mogadishu's Black Hawk Down battle. The scar still shapes American foreign policy today. Now MAGA-era politics have turbocharged isolationism and hardened resistance to foreign aid, and to conflicts perceived as 'forever wars.' 'There's this narrative now that aid is wasteful or even harmful, and Somalia's caught up in that,' Mohammed said. 'People wonder why billions went into state-building with so little to show.' Countries like Somalia have now fallen off the agenda, and Washington no longer sees Al Shabaab as an immediate threat to the homeland. 'It's become a niche interest,' said Mohammed. Yet Dr Ali Said Fiqi, the acting President of the Baidoa region, warned that the shift could undermine US soft power and push disillusioned youth into crime or into the arms of extremist groups like Al Shabaab. It could also drive more people to risk dangerous journeys abroad. 'Without humanitarian aid, people will be forced to go searching for a better life,' he said. 'These cuts will lead to more people trying to get to Europe. There's no future left for them.' That comes with its own risks. Leila, 39, who was seeking help for her malnourished child in Baidoa, lost her husband six years ago after he attempted the migrant route to Europe. 'He couldn't find enough work here to feed us properly,' she said. 'I didn't hear anything for four months. Then we heard his boat had crashed and he had died,' she said. She was left alone with four daughters. It is the abruptness of Trump's sweeping aid cuts that threatens devastating consequences, with no one stepping in so far to fill the void. Yet many argue that simply plugging funding gaps will not be enough. The entire aid system may need rethinking if fragile states like Somalia are to break free from chronic dependence. The recent UN Development Conference in Seville ended without any solid commitments, with vulnerable women and children paying the price. Malik, head of Save the Children, believes the traditional model of aid is broken. The old donor-recipient approach, rooted in charity and voluntary pledges, no longer suits a world grappling with shared threats like conflict, pandemics and climate change. Tens of billions of dollars have poured into Somalia since Operation Restore Hope, yet it remains a fragile state, with life expectancy under fifty and GDP per capita below five hundred dollars. It is still one of the most dangerous and famine-prone places in the world, and the second most corrupt country in Africa, according to Transparency International. Malik proposes a UN convention on international development to replace today's voluntary system with countries agreeing to mutual obligations and shared responsibility. It is about seeing aid as a global investment in security, prosperity and resilience. 'Negotiating that would be hard. It will take time,' he said. 'But this is the space we need to move into – where we live together on this planet and progress together.' Such investment could also reduce migration pressures – a crucial political issue in an increasingly inward-looking world. Instead of Fortress Britain, Malik argues, we need to see that we are all connected and that investing in international cooperation is how we secure our future. 'This isn't just about money,' Malik said. 'This is a battle of ideas, it's about the shape of the world we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in.'
Sky News
a day ago
- Sky News
Are Trump's tariffs destroying lives and livelihoods in Lesotho?
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈 "Nobody's heard of it." That's Donald Trump's dismissive claim about Lesotho - a small country in southern Africa where lives are being devastated by the US president's decision. But what are the real-world consequences of Mr Trump's trade war? Mr Trump's cuts to US foreign aid means people can't get access to HIV medication, and costly tariffs are causing havoc to the economy - both of which are costing lives. Sky News' Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir has been to Lesotho to find out how decisions in Washington DC are hitting a country thousands of miles away.
