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From Nunavut to Africa Community health nurse comes back from volunteer trip with new perspective
Jeanne Gagnon
Northern News Services
Published Monday, April 01, 2013
KUGLUKTUK/COPPERMINE
Jennifer Chaisson has worked as a nurse for a decade in Nunavut, but since a recent trip to Africa, she has gained a deeper appreciation for what she has.
Winnie, left, a four-year-old Kenyan child, flashes a smile with Jennifer Chaisson, a nurse working in Nunavut, when Chaisson visited the East African country in February. - photo courtesy of Jennifer Chaisson |
A community health nurse in Kugluktuk, Chaisson has worked in all three regions of the territory, visiting almost every community since she arrived in Nunavut in 2002. She loves the culture and living above the tree line, she said.
"Whenever I come into a community, I feel that warmth from them and they receive that back from me. Basically, a smile. It's a amazing what a smile does," she said.
Chaisson brought that smile to Africa to help those in need in Mikinduri, Kenya. From Feb. 5 to 26, she did volunteer nursing work, seeing the poverty and starvation the residents face but also their happiness.
When she first arrived in Nunavut, she said she encountered people who felt they were poor. Chaisson said Nunavummiut are rich compared to the Kenyans she encountered.
"It has impacted me and I appreciate what I have and what I can give information-wise to the Nunavut people," she said. "Well, you know, I said (to patients) 'I met people in Africa that have waited a whole year, a whole year with a broken arm just to see the nurse or the doctor come back from Canada again.' And (some people) complain up here when they have to wait six weeks to see somebody."
The 46-year-old was raised in Stratford, P.E.I. and holds both a diploma and degree in nursing. She said she was doing casual work in northern Manitoba when she began considering life further north.
"I think the work she does is wonderful. She does really work up here," said Mary Ellen MacLean, a colleague of Chaisson's in the health field who works as a mental health consultant in Taloyoak. "I know she's got a home life too, and yet, she was willing to take that part of her life, that amount of time and dedicate it to people who really needed it."
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