The low resourced countries of the world such as Cameroon in Africa are vastly different to the wealthy first world nations of Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Yet this is the context of this mentorship relationship that has lasted a decade between two male nurses who can find so many similarities despite their different world views.

This intercontinental mentorship relationship is challenged by distance, culture, language, resources, technology, and opportunity, yet it works and continues to thrive even though we have only met face to face on a handful of occasions.

We describe our personal journeys and how this mentorship relationship helps us both to meet goals and expectations of ourselves through our mutual investment into one another’s ambitions. Our general focus is to use our nursing skills and jobs to make improvements for our communities and our profession, more specifically our major efforts have been in the field of critical care; however, we both find ourselves reaching out to a much broader community.

Always being available on the end of an email or WhatsApp message and responsive to each other’s questions, queries, concerns, and guidance is what makes this mentorship experience successful for us both. Being persistent when things don’t go as planned for either of us but providing encouragement to persevere has been something that has characterized our mentorship relationship.

The more we give, the more we receive, and we expect this will continue for many years to come.