Making lemonade

Santa Cruz, CA. I’m almost ready to leave on my volunteer nursing adventure in the South Pacific with Project HOPE and the US Navy. The bad economy is handing out lemons to recent graduate nurses - meaning it's almost impossible to get a job without considerable nursing experience. So I’m unemployed, but making lemonade from those lemons by doing volunteer nursing. I truly enjoy volunteering at the RotaCare free community clinics in Santa Cruz and Monterey - wonderful volunteer staff and patients. When I decided to become a nurse I knew I also wanted to do international volunteer work, especially in tropical countries where Fred and I like to vacation. But why Project HOPE? At the Fungus Fair I met a retired physician who told me about his good experiences on 2 international volunteer missions with Project HOPE (thanks, Denis!), so I decided to look into their volunteer opportunities. Fred and I have twice sailed in the beautiful kingdom of Tonga, so when I saw that Project HOPE would be going to Tonga with Pacific Partnership 2011, I knew I must apply for a position. I assumed my international volunteering would be after I had worked for awhile. But why not now?

So on Wed 13 April I meet the Project HOPE team on the amphibious transport dock USS Cleveland  in Vava’u, Tonga, location of the start of the 3-month humanitarian civic mission referred to as Pacific Partnership 2011. The Navy describes the mission thusly: "Pacific Partnership is Pacific Fleet's annual mission to improve interoperability for crisis situations, humanitarian and civic assistance, and disaster relief. The main body of the U.S. assistance is arriving on the amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland (LPD 7). Pacific Partnership is a team effort between partner nations and host nations, which invite the multinational force to provide medical, veterinary, dental, and engineering subject matter expert exchanges. Pacific Partnership 2011 is the sixth iteration of this mission." Partner nations include Australia, New Zealand, France, and Japan. Additional host nation locations will be in Vanuatu (28 April-10 May), Papua New Guinea (19 May-1 June), Timor Leste (14-25 June), and Micronesia (3-15 July). There will be shipboard transit time between countries, and liberty stops in New Caledonia (11-14 May) and Darwin, Australia (8-12 June). I’ll be a Community Health Nurse with Project HOPE, so my experience with the RotaCare clinics will serve me and my new patients well. Sweet lemonade!

You can read more about the mission at the following Project HOPE sites:
Blog                 http://www.projecthope.org/news-blogs/In-the-Field-blog/
Facebook         http://www.facebook.com/ProjectHOPEorg
Twitter             http://twitter.com/projecthopeorg
Flickr               http://www.flickr.com/photos/projecthopeorg

and the US Navy site:
http://www.cpf.navy.mil/pp11/

I plan to update this blog at least once in each country as internet access allows. Hopefully I can upload some photos or put them on a Flicker site (more on that later). So until Tonga ...

Cheers,
Bridget