East Lyme — From the time she graduated college with a nursing degree in 1996, Kelly McNatt has traveled the world with her medical skills and desire to give to others, starting out as a volunteer in Mozambique and Madagascar and spending the last nine years working in Alaskan native health clinics in remote villages and modern cities in the nation’s largest and northernmost state.

In between, the 42-year-old McNatt, who graduated from East Lyme High in 1992, became a midwife and an advanced practice nurse practitioner, helped train midwives in Liberia, worked with the World Health Organization on a clean water project in Kenya and volunteered at a birth center in the Philippines, to name just a few of the posts in the 50 countries she’s visited over the last two decades.

“Traveling the world is just in me,” said McNatt, back home a few days this week to visit with her parents, Merrilyn and Terry McNatt, before heading back to Washington, D.C., to resume training for her next adventure.

On July 5, McNatt will fly with the two children she adopted while living in Alaska to Bahrain, where she will start her assignment as a foreign service medical provider at the U.S. Embassy there.

In the U.S. Department of State post, which requires top secret security clearance, McNatt will be the main primary care provider for about 88 federal government employees working in that Persian Gulf island nation plus their families — about 200 people total, she said.

Worldwide, the State department employs 112 foreign service medical providers, according to a department spokeswoman, at salaries ranging from $75,000 to $98,000 annually.

“I have to be on call 24/7, though I will have nurses and administrative assistant support staff,” said McNatt. “It’s a different culture, so I will have to dress modestly and honor and respect their culture while also representing my country.”

McNatt has had both of her children — siblings Joshua, 6, and Katelyn, 3 — since witnessing and, in Katelyn’s case, assisting in, their births, and they are a main reason she was assigned to Bahrain.

A developed nation with friendly ties to the United States, it has good schools with the speech therapy services her son needs, she said, while other countries she could have been assigned to do not.

The State department will pay for the children's schooling and provides housing for the families of its medical providers, but McNatt, a single parent, said she plans to hire a live-in nanny once she arrives.

They’ll all need to acclimate quickly to life there, because their stay in Bahrain will only last two to three years before they can expect to be transferred to a new post, McNatt said.

“I’ll get to see the world with my children, and have housing,” she said. “My kids are good travelers. I hope to open the world to my kids and make them global citizens.”

Already looking to where her next assignment will take her, McNatt is hoping to get involved in women’s and children’s health projects in developing countries, including providing training to local health-care providers.

“I’ve enjoyed doing volunteer work, but I really like training the people who are there, who know the culture and who will stay there,” she said. “It’s a better investment.”

During one of those volunteer experiences, in South Sudan, McNatt befriended a young man living at an orphanage, Edward Lemi.

Now 20 years old, Lemi is now attending medical school in Uganda, thanks to McNatt’s generosity.

She’s paying his $4,800-a-year-tuition — a bargain investment, she said, considering what he’ll be able to give to his own impoverished country.

“He’ll go back to South Sudan and take care of his people,” she said.

McNatt, the oldest of her parents’ three children, credits the unwavering support of her mother and father, as well as her Christian faith, with giving her the drive and sense of purpose that keeps her seeking out new places to apply her skills.

“My faith is central to it,” McNatt said. “I’ve been blessed a lot, and my parents raised us (she and her brother and sister) to reach out and support others.”

Involvement in the youth group at Niantic Community Church was also a major influence, she said.

A former pastor of the church required teens in the confirmation class to do a project on the developing world, which sparked her interest in Africa.

“After that, I wanted to go to Africa,” McNatt recalled.

The youth group also did many service projects, including a trip she took with her siblings to a poor region in Appalachian Tennessee.

It was there, she said, that she first saw what poverty looks like.

“My mother said we came back different kids after that service project,” McNatt said.

j.benson@theday.com