Mission to Madagascar: Bluffton couple committed to helping world’s neediest

Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels and Mexican food.

That’s what Mike and Yvonne Broadhurst miss most about the United States — other than their children and grandchildren, of course.

It’s been nearly a year since the Bluffton couple has seen their family or tasted an enchilada.

The Broadhursts are in Madagascar on a medical mission, and they aren’t exactly sure when they’re coming home.

Floating hospital

Based in the port city of Toamasina on the east coast of the impoverished African island nation, the Broadhursts are volunteers with Mercy Ships.

The nonprofit organization operates floating hospitals that provide free health care to locals with a variety of ailments — many of which are heartbreaking to behold.

“You have everything from people with huge goiters and growths to kids who have been badly burned,” Mike said during a FaceTime interview with The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette earlier this month.

“Because there isn’t great basic health care, a small growth in your mouth can turn into a huge mass of tumors,” he said.

The Broadhursts, along with four other Mercy Ships volunteers, run the organization’s Hope Center.

The 242-bed center is an off-ship facility “that serves as a staging place for people before they go on the ship for surgeries” and a resting place for post-surgery recovery, Mike said.

Malagasy people, the native residents of Madagascar, trek hundreds of miles to the Hope Center and, ultimately, the ship.

“A lot of these people come from the bush or the countryside,” Yvonne said. “They have never seen a city; they’ve never seen a car.”

It can take days of travel — often on foot — to reach the ship, but it’s worth the trip.

“We’ve had thousands of people come to the ship (for medical aid) this year … (because) the basic necessities of health care just aren’t available here,” Mike said.

A day in the life

“It’s brutal,” Mike said of the couple’s daily routine.

They wake up at 5:15 a.m. and work until well into the evening at least five days a week.

“The day is supposed to end at 7:30 p.m., but that doesn’t happen very frequently,” Mike says. “There is always stuff that pops up. ... When you are in your 60s like we are, that (schedule) can be pretty grueling.”

During the workday, the Broadhursts are responsible for “making sure that the patients are comfortable and cared for. We’re making sure the facility is run correctly. There are a lot of maintenance issues that we have to take care of,” Mike said.

The couple is also “the lynchpin to organizing and getting people to the ship in time for their appointments,” he said.

‘We just love on them’

While the Broadhursts have no medical training, they provide patients with an essential aspect of Mercy Ships’ mission: love.

“We just love on them,” Yvonne said. “The people are often not used to a lot of that. ... People get so much out of just a hug or a ‘How are you doing, man?’

“It is an extremely poor country. The people are very intelligent and bright, but they are very oppressed and very fearful of the corrupt government here,” she said.

But on the ship and in the Hope Center, “they are cared for and nurtured in a really beautiful way,” Yvonne said.

Mike agreed.

“One of the most important things that we do is making sure our guests are happy, that they are not afraid,” he said. “We make sure they are comfortable and they know they will be well cared for.”

Mike recalled a young man who came to the ship early in their mission with a “huge tumor on his face that would eventually choke him to death if left alone.”

“He was scared to death,” Mike said. “He actually ran away (from the Hope Center), he was so scared.”

Eventually the man was found and convinced to return.

“Once the doctors removed this tumor on his face — it was amazing — he immediately stopped being scared. He opened up (to other patients), and he became part of the crowd. He started hanging out with other guys.”

Yvonne said it “was a complete transformation,” not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

A matter of faith

The Broadhursts, members of Bluffton’s Church of the Cross, say their faith was the biggest factor leading them to uproot their lives and move to an island halfway across the world.

“We have 100 percent trust and faith that whatever we put our hands to will prosper,” Mike said.

Yvonne said missionaries “have to have a calling to do this kind of thing.”

Mike said he tries “not to be preachy, but our faith teaches us that the greatest things in life aren’t money and possessions. The greatest things in life are people and relationships.”

Unexpected challenges

While the Broadhursts say their mission has been extremely rewarding, being in a foreign land has come with some unexpected challenges.

“We learned in the first couple of months not to get too crazy (experimenting with local cuisines),” Mike said. “We had ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ for about six weeks.”

Yvonne said they “both lost over 15 pounds.”

Mike, already a thin guy, said he dropped to 135 pounds — “I was as skinny as a rail.”

More recently, the Mercy Ships volunteers and patients had quite a scare.

“We just had a cyclone pass over Madagascar, so the ship was on pins and needles for about 10 days,” Mike said.

Mike said he and Yvonne have leaned on each other during the tough times oversees.

“When you’re in a foreign country, there is a lot of stress,” he said, “but we have grown together.”

“We are so stinking happy and fulfilled,” he added. “But to get to this point, there were a lot of challenges.”

Sticking around

When the Mercy Ship leaves Madagascar in June for its next port of call in South Africa, the Broadhursts won’t be on board — they have more work to do.

Their stay on the island “is rather open-ended,” Yvonne said. “We are going to rent an apartment on our own.”

The Broadhursts, both real estate agents by trade, will shift their focus from medical aid to helping Malagasy people learn businesses skills.

In their spare time, the couple has developed a seven-week crash course in small-business entrepreneurship.

“Fifty people have graduated and most of them are ready to start their own businesses,” Mike said. “So we are going to stick around to help them do that.”

The couple hopes their business classes empower locals to start their own enterprises, which can be as simple as raising a couple of dairy cows.

“We came here with no inclination at all of teaching anyone about business,” Mike said. “But as we started to talk to people, we saw that they had these dreams they were afraid to develop because they thought they couldn’t succeed.”

Yvonne agreed.

“When the students come in, they have no idea how to dream,” she said. “They don’t know what (business) vision or goals are.”

The Broadhursts “ constantly mentor them and talk to them about their (business) plans,” Yvonne said. “It’s always an ongoing thing; it just doesn’t stop.”

So, the Broadhursts don’t stop either. So it could be a while before they get a chance to snack on pretzels and tacos again.

This story was originally published May 6, 2016 at 8:02 AM with the headline "Mission to Madagascar: Bluffton couple committed to helping world’s neediest."