August 5, 2012
I’ve officially been in site for 1 year! August 1st was my move in date
last year after swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer at the end of July
2011. Time has seemingly flown by, yet I
also feel like I’ve been through a lot this past year. I’ve lived with a Nicaraguan host family for
6 months, then moved out into my own house.
I’ve taught various things in my community from English classes to
building improved ovens. I’ve traveled
as far north as Somoto canyon near the border of Honduras and as far south as
Ometepe Island near the border to Costa Rica.
And I’ve been to both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts. I’ve had various visitors from the States
come to see this beautiful country with me, and I’ve seen different parts of
this beautiful country with various volunteers who live here like me. Now I have one more full year to keep working
and doing what I’ve come here to do: grow and learn and hopefully teach
something of value to those who requested it.
It feels like I haven’t really done much in my community, and now I’m
feeling the pressure of having only a year left to do it.
This past week I spent with a medical brigade that came to
Jinotega to provide their free services to the community. They had contacted a local health
organization stating the need for translators (interpreters, to be correct),
and so they in turn contacted a Peace Corps health volunteer who lives in
Jinotega to see if she could gather some of us for the brigade. So I decided to give it a try. I showed up on the first day with the plan of
only staying for 3 days, but I was learning so much and got so involved that I
ended up staying the entire 8 days of the brigade! The brigade is called IMA Helps (check out
their website http://www.internationalmedicalalliance.org/ ), and was started by a woman who works in the Palm Desert area of
California, so most of the doctors and surgeons who volunteered their time are
from that area or elsewhere in southern California. Over 90 medical volunteers came for this
brigade to Jinotega! It was huge, and
they attended to thousands of locals who came seeking medical help. There were various surgeons, including
plastics, orthopedic, and general. There
were various doctors and nurses seeing patients and giving medication for
things that didn’t require surgery. The
first day I was set up with a doctor in triage, interpreting for the patients
that came to him. It was very
nerve-wracking for me because I was the sole link between what the patient was
saying and what the doctor was prescribing.
It’s a huge responsibility, but after a few days I became more confident
with my medical Spanish and the types of ailments the patients were complaining
about.
The second day I was asked to help organize the line in the
surgical consult area. That was a boring
and sad job, because people had to sit and wait for hours and hours to
sometimes be told what they had couldn’t be operated on, or that the surgery schedule
was already full for the entire brigade and they wouldn’t be seen at all. The surgeons were also doing surgeries all
day and so wouldn’t come out to do consults for hours at a time. I felt really bad being the person to tell
them they just had to wait some more and I’m sorry that they might miss their
bus home if they decided to wait it out.
But hey, it’s free surgery! If
they’re not willing to wait then they won’t get their chance at all to talk to
a surgeon.
Me at the dental extraction clinic |
The third day I helped in the dental area, with the trailer
that was doing tooth extractions. After
the first couple patients I wasn’t sure I could handle watching all the needles
in the gums and the yanking of all the bloody molars, but I quickly got over it
and stayed the whole day. Towards the
end I was leaning over the patients interested in watching what the dentist was
doing. The following days I helped out
between the triage area with the doctors and nurses and the vital signs area
where the brigade initially decided which area to send each patient. It was super interesting, even if it became
somewhat repetitive (almost every person complained of “gastritis”, acid
reflux, headaches, general body aches, knee and back pain, and the occasional
chest pain). Unfortunately sometimes the
only thing the nurses and doctors could do was give them a bag of Ibuprofen or
Tylenol to help with their general body pain and describe how they should lift
with their legs and not their back. On
the other hand, most of the surgeries they do change lives. Many cleft palates and lips were repaired,
many people received prosthetic limbs that allowed them to walk for the first
time in their lives, and others received treatment for medical issues that they
otherwise couldn’t have due to the inability to afford a hospital visit. I did get to scrub in to watch a couple
surgeries. I never would have thought I
could have had the opportunity to see something like that, so I jumped at the
chance. I watched a thyroid the size of an
apricot be removed, and then later a hernia surgery. It was crazy to be allowed to stand so close
and watch the surgery up close and personal.
And I didn’t faint!
Me and Alicia getting ready to go watch a surgery |
The people that worked for this brigade were extremely
generous with their time and money to come to Nicaragua for a third time. They pay their own way to get here and take
vacation time from their jobs to help these communities in need. I felt very welcomed and appreciated during
my time with IMA Helps, and would love to help them again in the future. If anyone is interested and able to donate
money to IMA for future brigades, please do so knowing that the money goes to a
wonderful cause!
This next week I’m headed to the city of Chinandega to teach
the workshop about improved ovens for a group of Health and Environment
volunteers and their community counterparts.
I’ve made an instruction manual to hand out and have presentation to
give before actually building an oven with half of them. The other half is going to learn how to build
a stove with another volunteer that has lots of experience with stoves. I hope it goes well and that people learn
something!
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