Durangoan Daniel Bergman worked on a hospital ship in Africa in January. Last year, he provided lifeskills training to prostitutes in Guatemala and volunteered in a field hospital in Iraq.
“I need to go somewhere every year to recenter as a human being, understand what a blessing it is to live where I live,” Bergman said.
The operating room nurse said he has been traveling internationally to serve people in poverty since he was 16. He estimates he has been on about 20 service trips.
“My faith definitely is the core and the center of why I do it,” said Bergman, a Christian.
From 2011 to 2013, Bergman lived on the world’s largest, private hospital ship, the Africa Mercy, with his wife, Tiffany, and their two daughters. While working in the pediatric intensive care unit, he helped to restore some normalcy to the lives of deeply impoverished children. He recently returned in January to work on the ship in Cameroon for a few weeks.
The Africa Mercy is operated by international faith-based organization Mercy Ships, which provides curative surgeries for free to residents in the poorest nations in the world and also offers training to health care workers in those areas.
Bergman helped patients with a variety of ailments, including cleft lips, warped bones from rickets and benign tumors that became disfiguring and life-threatening.
In the United States, a dentist can easily remove these tumors from a patient’s jaw in a short procedure, but that care is not available in some developing countries. Just seeing photos of the conditions can make some people uncomfortable.
“I think it’s a good thing to be squeamish and understand that for somebody else, that’s their reality. It’s a good thing to be a little bit heartbroken,” Bergman said.
He believes his daughters, Kylie, 17, and Savannah, 14, learned joy and resiliency by living aboard the ship and visiting African nations.
“You can go and learn from those people and learn to be satisfied with what you have; you don’t have to have more and more things,” he said.
While Bergman was aboard the Africa Mercy, it would screen thousands of people needing health care wherever it docked.
The ship has hundreds of staff members from many different countries, and it is equipped with 70 patient beds and five operating rooms.
“It’s such a rich environment because you are learning from everybody,” he said.
The international medical workers pay to participate in the mission. Bergman’s family was supported by their friends, family and church while they were on board, he said. His daughters attended an international school while on board the ship.
The whole crew is required to speak English, but it can still be challenging to work with medical people trained in other countries, people who may have different skill levels and may not share the same medical terms, Bergman said.
During his extended stay, he helped develop charts to give nurses standard forms for tracking patient progress and medication to improve the consistency of care, he said.
He also formed memorable connections with some patients, including a boy named Yaya.
When Bergman saw Yaya under a bridge in Guinea in 2012, the little boy’s legs looked like a pile of noodles. Immediately, Bergman thought he would be a good candidate for the ship’s services.
The boy with brittle bones had been living on the street, and crew members could not find his parents, so they went to the government to get permission to operate on him and restore his ability to walk. A government official, who had given the boy food and money previously, helped the ship’s crew locate his grandmother and get permission to operate.
While trying to help Yaya, a man who had been taking donations Yaya received from passers-by accused Bergman of kidnapping the boy. The man took his accusations to the same government official, the assistant to the prime minister who helped Bergman, but he was turned away.
“It was pretty crazy,” Bergman said.
He has helped pay for Yaya’s high school education since then.
Bergman has never regretted investing money in other people. He is guided by a saying promoted by the Mercy Ship’s chief medical officer: “For hope to be credible in the future, it has to be tangible in the present.”
Last year, Bergman spent a month near Mosul, Iraq, in a field hospital set up by Samaritan’s Purse to help treat victims injured in battles against ISIS.
“We can do something now; we don’t have to wait for refugees to come here. I can go to them,” he said.
He also spent 10 days with his family in Guatemala teaching first aid and English for Tamar’s Hope, a group dedicated to working with prostitutes.
Unemployment is high in Guatemala, and some women there prostitute themselves to support their children, he said. Bergman was joined by members of the Durango Vineyard, a Durango church he helped start.
Though poverty is ubiquitous, Bergman chooses not to be overwhelmed by it.
“You don’t have to tackle poverty as a whole. If you make a difference in one person’s life, it was worth it,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
