Three soldiers from Vermont spent two weeks last month working in three hospitals in southern Senegal. It is the kind of story most Vermonters never hear about their National Guard.

by Compass Vermont

Near the end of a two-week medical mission in Ziguinchor, Senegal, U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Tim Farrow learned that a man working at the gas station near his team’s hotel had been living with severe pain. The man could not afford dental treatment.

Farrow, a flight paramedic with the Vermont Army National Guard, picked up the phone.

By the time the exercise ended on May 8, he had coordinated treatment between the patient, the Senegalese military hospital, and an Austrian dental team that had flown in for the same exercise. The Austrians treated the man pro bono.

“Those are the things that we hope will go back to the citizens in the neighborhoods of Ziguinchor and greater Senegal and bolster the rapport that our nations will be maintaining in years to come,” Farrow said in an account released Saturday by the National Guard Bureau.

The mission was called MEDREX — a multinational medical readiness exercise conducted from April 25 to May 8 as part of African Lion 2026, U.S. Africa Command’s largest annual joint exercise. AL26 ran from April 20 to May 8 across Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia, involving more than 5,600 personnel from over 40 nations.

Vermont’s role grew out of the Department of Defense State Partnership Program, which has paired the Vermont National Guard with Senegal since 2008. The partnership also includes a sister-city relationship between Burlington and Thiès, Senegal. The MEDREX brought military medical personnel from the United States, Senegal, Austria, and Italy together across three hospitals in southern Senegal: Ziguinchor Regional Hospital, Hospital De La Paix, and the Military Hospital of Ziguinchor.

Three Vermonters were named in the National Guard Bureau’s release: Farrow, Capt. Nicholas LeBeau, and Capt. Lance Jandreau. Over two weeks, the multinational team logged 350 patient encounters.

So why does Vermont send trained medical personnel to West Africa for two weeks?

Three reasons.

1. Readiness.

On May 6, at Hospital De La Paix, Capt. LeBeau — a nurse with the Vermont Army National Guard — scrubbed in to assist Senegalese providers performing an emergency cesarean section.

“By working in these more austere environments, we learn what to do without,” LeBeau said.

That is the readiness argument in one sentence. A Vermont nurse who can perform surgical assistance with limited supplies, in a hospital he has never worked in before, with colleagues who do not speak his first language, is a more capable nurse when he comes home — and a more capable nurse if he is ever called to deploy somewhere harder.

In the same operating room, Italian Army Capt. Simone Campani supervised a Senegalese anesthesiologist placing an epidural. Campani had spent the previous days training with the same anesthesiologist on epidural and emergency anesthesia techniques. Skills moved in both directions.

Elsewhere across the three hospitals, multinational teams exchanged Tactical Combat Casualty Care techniques, repaired medical equipment, and treated dental patients alongside Senegalese clinicians.

2. Relationships.

Vermont’s State Partnership with Senegal is now in its 18th year. Vermont also has SPP relationships with North Macedonia (since 1993) and Austria (since 2022) — which is why Austrian medical personnel, including the dental team that treated the gas station worker, were embedded in the exercise.

Campani, the Italian physician, put the relationship case directly.

“When you want to build cooperation and trust,” Campani said, “one way that is always better is to work on health care.”

This is the part of military operations that does not generate headlines. There is no combat, no contested territory, no politicized debate. There is a Vermont nurse, an Italian physician, an Austrian dentist, and a Senegalese anesthesiologist standing in the same operating room. They will remember each other. They will pick up the phone for each other later. That is the asset being built.

3. Helping people who need it.

Capt. Jandreau, a behavioral health officer with the Vermont National Guard, conducted counseling sessions at Hospital De La Paix with hospital workers and patients facing a range of serious mental health challenges.

“The problem isn’t them,” Jandreau said. “The problem is a challenge they are facing, but they have an equal amount of power and ability to overcome it and change it for themselves.”

A small team of interpreters supported providers throughout the exercise.

And then there was the man at the gas station — not a planned patient, not part of the formal exercise schedule, just someone Farrow heard about and decided to help.

U.S. Army Col. Christopher Gookin, commander of the Vermont National Guard Medical Readiness Detachment, summarized the mission this way:

“Over the past two weeks, our team worked side by side with our Senegalese partners, completing 350 patient encounters. That’s the greatest strength of these Medical Readiness Exercise missions — not just what is provided, but what is gained through partnership.”

Vermont news comes from all directions. Sometimes it comes from a hospital in Ziguinchor.

This story is aggregated from a release by Sgt. 1st Class Christy Sherman of the National Guard Bureau, published May 9, 2026, with additional detail from a closing-ceremony release by Capt. Katherine Sibilla, May 7, 2026. All quotes are from those releases. African Lion 2026 was co-led by U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa.