For Becky Chaplin, the road from a bag on a roadside in Kenya to a hospital ship in Sierra Leone has come full circle.
Chaplin, 30, was found abandoned in a bag on the side of the road as a newborn in Kenya in 1995. She was so young that her umbilical cord was still attached.
A missionary was out jogging when they spotted the bag and looked inside to find the baby girl. She was taken to an orphanage, and seven weeks later she was adopted by two British missionary workers stationed in Kenya.
Becky said, “Mom said when she picked me up that she felt that God was saying ‘this is your daughter’.”
She was raised in Kenya by her British parents until the age of 10, when the family moved back to East Grinstead, London.
She said, “Living in Kenya, I was exposed to extreme poverty and the opportunities you can have with education.
Chaplin said her early years in Kenya shaped what came next.
“I was fortunate to be adopted into a family that gave me that opportunity.”
She said she had wanted to work with disabled children and adults since she was young.
“I’ve known since I was little that I wanted to help children and adults with disabilities,” said Becky.
She went on to pursue a career in healthcare and became an occupational therapist. After completing her degree, she also pursued a master’s degree focusing on hand therapy, burns and working in low-income countries.
Chaplin then worked in the UK for four-and-a-half years. She specialised in hand therapy and gained experience on the burns unit in East Grinstead.
Later, she heard about Mercy Ships, a hospital charity, and decided to leave her job in the UK to volunteer.
Becky said, “I left my work in the UK to volunteer with Mercy Ships because I’ve always had a heart to come back to an African country.
“I wanted to do it once I had the skill or experience to be able to help.”
She joined the Global Mercy in Sierra Leone as a rehabilitation team leader. In that role, she worked with burns patients recovering from free surgery on the hospital ship.
Her work then shifted when the Global Mercy moved to the port of Freetown in Sierra Leone.
In 2018, Sierra Leone established its first university-level physiotherapist course at the Tonkolili District College of Health Sciences.
Chaplin said that before the degree programme began, people who wanted to train as physiotherapists had to leave the country.
She said, “Before the degree programme was started, anyone wishing to become a physiotherapist would have to fly to Ghana, Cuba, Kenya, or further afield for training.”
With an estimated population of around nine million people, Sierra Leone had six fully trained physiotherapists, according to the source text.
That began to change in 2023, when 15 new graduates emerged from the bachelor’s programme and another 15 from the diploma programme. Chaplin said she had the privilege of working alongside them.
Over time, she said, the mentorship programme grew. She now works in a local hospital close to where the Global Mercy is docked in Freetown, assisting with mentoring and upskilling physiotherapists around burn patients.
Her focus is on helping local staff build their methods of treating patients, especially young children.
Becky said, “The high proportion of burn patients are under five years old.
“You see many accidents from boiling water or soup spilling onto small children.
“I work alongside the physios to build their methods of treating patients.
“As Sierra Leone develops their resources, we hope we’ll begin to see less contractures come to the ship when we next visit Sierra Leone.”
Mercy Ships is an international health charity that deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries, delivering free healthcare.
Chaplin now serves as a mentor to trainee physiotherapists in Sierra Leone, after first volunteering there as rehabilitation team leader on board the Global Mercy.
