Pat Nickson listening to local community members(Photo source: Pat Nickson)Expanding horizons
Health professionals considering mission
service often express a concern as to whether it might limit their
future career choices. Pat Nickson is an example of how long-term
mission service can actually increase a professional's knowledge and
skills. She was a young nurse/midwife who matured to become a
first-class surgeon and world expert in community health.
Her
call to mission began with 'a few whims when I was a child, at Sunday
school'. Her family was not a churchgoing one but she started going to
church 'because it was the one way I could hear music', which she
loved. Then, when she was 10, her father died, and three years later
her mother died. "The vicar of the church I'd been attending took me
into his family. They had been CMS missionaries in Nigeria. I became
interested in, and started to get to know, the missionaries who passed
through that home. As I began to see who missionaries were, what sort
of people they were, and understand the implications of mission
service, I started to see it as something that would suit my
personality. I liked the idea of being in the open and enjoying a bit
of a pioneer life."
She applied to CMS which encouraged her,
since she was quite young, to 'test the water' by acquiring 'a bit of
experience' in Australia. On her return to Britain she was impressed to
find that CMS hadn't forgotten about her. Soon she was enrolled at the
CMS training college, Crowther Hall, doing mission studies. Practical
assignments included work with the Asian community in Birmingham.
Her
missionary journey took her to Central Asia. She would often be seen
riding her horse Foxbury (named after another CMS centre) along
mountain paths to attend births in isolated villages. In the mid-1970s
she was relocated to Bangladesh, where she ran a clinic and developed
medical experience and surgical skills. "I was doing surgery that even
junior doctors wouldn't be doing. One of the first things I had was a
fractured jaw...I had to send out to a driver to get fuse wire and wipe
the oil off it before I could use it in the operation. I did Caesarean
sections. You had to deal with anything that came in." She went to
Thailand for some surgical training.
Civil unrest in Bangladesh
forced a change and CMS eventually posted Pat to eastern Zaire (now the
Democratic Republic of Congo) where her vision for the Pan-African
Institute for Community Health (IPASC) took shape. The institute, which
she directs, now has two bases: the first founded in 1992 in Nyankunde,
Zaire, and a second founded in 1999 in the West African nation of Cote
d'lvoire. Both are linked to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
(LSTM) where Pat holds the post of Senior Lecturer.
Working with
her African students, Pat has created a quick-fire cholera response
unit that can be mobilised rapidly in an emergency. She is much in
demand as an international consultant both with the Medical Commission
of the World Council of Churches and the World Health Organisation.
Mistakes and moments of terror
Pat
readily admits mistakes. She knows how easy it is for the aid worker to
become desensitised. "You see high-powered professionals who adopt a
'war response'. They're used to going around in skinny shorts or pants,
mobile radios in their pockets, using great big vehicles with antennae,
reporting to the UN. Working with these agencies, I've done it myself
so many times. They forget to say 'Good morning' to their driver, or
forget those at the bottom of the pile, or forget what sort of things
to put in the food sack. If people are not of a culture that eats
beans, why put beans in the aid sack? And when you're sweeping people
together in a camp, are you going to put the enemy in right alongside
the neighbour? That approach may be rooted in the very professionalism
that's needed in war but it hits very, very hard those who are already
suffering."
There have been terrifying episodes. "There must
have been three coups in Bangladesh, revolution in Central Asia and I
don't know how many wars in Congo," Pat recalls. "I'm as fearful as
anyone. I see a gun and I'm under the table. If I hear a firework,
everybody knows where I'll be. I'm known for my quick reactions."
During
the war in 1998 there was an awful day when Pat was abducted and she
and nine others were held at gunpoint and came under fire in the
Mission Aviation Fellowship hangar in Nyankunde.
"I had hidden
with a couple of other people so I think I was unknown to the gunmen.
Shooting went on for three hours. It was horrendous, a very dangerous
position to be in physically, just a nightmare. You can't even begin to
explain it. But we all came out alive, with one or two grazes but
alive, and so we could talk about it together."
Even worse was
undergoing interrogation when her humanitarian work came under
suspicion. "My passport was taken from me and I was interrogated by
security for two days. I was more terrified than I have ever been in my
life. I couldn't eat. I couldn't even drink. I couldn't talk to
anybody; I was allowed to but I couldn't. I was absolutely paralysed.
At one point they let me walk around as long as I didn't leave the
place. I took some chocolate out of one of the pilot's fridges and
tried to eat it. I hadn't eaten for two days and I was definitely
hypoglycaemic, and I hadn't drunk anything. I was just paralysed."
Back to the community
Pat
Nickson keeps her feet firmly on the ground. By choice she maintains a
simple lifestyle, even when she's in Liverpool. She appreciates the
support of St Mary's Church, Upton, her home church.
The
remarkable direction in which her career has developed hasn't changed
the way she understands her vocation. "I still see myself very much as
a CMS mission partner," she says.
Her biggest challenge is to keep
remembering those formative lessons derived from her time in northern
Australia and eastern Congo. Local communities may eventually benefit
enormously from advanced medical technology and developments –
'jet-age, cyberspace health care'. "But there's many a widow who's
never even heard of television, let alone cyberspace," Pat declares.
"We talk about 'community participation'. To effect it at community
level is totally inappropriate if you don't burst the sound barrier
retrospectively, back through the modern age to the pre-modern age and
get back to the community."
This article was first published in
Yes magazine in 2000.