The last time I worked with a medical mission I served as a pharmacy assistant; a fun job, but more for the people I was working with than the work I was doing. This time around I was hoping for something a little more hands on. Luckily, this new group had different plans for me: They asked me to translate for the eye doctor and dentist! While I took the job placement as a compliment on my improving Spanish skills, it soon became evident that translating was going to be quite a bit more work than I imagined. Translating itself is a tough job; even after mastering the context specific words (dental floss, cavity, etc.) it is still a task of listening to a phrase in English, saying it in Spanish, then listening to something else in Spanish and saying it in English. It was more than a little tough on the brain. To make matters worse, not only was I doing translation for both the dentist and the eye doctor, but I was doing intake questioning for the dentist and crowd control because I was the only one there who spoke Spanish well enough. Needless to say, at the end of each day I was exhausted. With so much work to do I was nearly constantly busy and the week flew by, but even with the hectic schedule I was able to enjoy some time with my fellow "Estadounidenses" and make some new friends.
I also got to do some teaching!
By the end of the week the exhaustion and emotions started to add up. I found that translating is an strange job. By virtue of being the one communicating with the patients I got to share in all of the happy moments; everything from old ladies baking us cookies to mothers hugging us in thanks for helping their children. However, I was also forced to partake in the bad moments; from "There's nothing we can do for your eyes, you'll probably be blind within months" to "your teeth are far to decayed, we have to remove them all." The emotions of these experiences combined with the exhaustion of so much work began to catch up with me.
My work also put me in contact with a part of Guatemala that I've had very little contact with as I've been living inside a gorgeous monastery; the poor campesinos. The goal of the doctors was to serve people who have no access to other health care, which brought us to some of the outlying villages. Spending so much time with this group of people who are so numerous in Guatemala yet still so "invisible" was an eye opening experience for me, and made me think a lot about what What we were doing here. While I understand and appreciate the idea behind medical missions and other volunteer groups, it always has seemed a little shortsighted to me to give someone vitamins but put no thought into the systemic problems that caused them to be malnourished in the first place.
Throughout the week this problem kept bothering me. Everyday, with every group of people, I saw problems that couldn't be solved simply by giving some pills to a few people. After an especially emotional day in which we saw particularly marginalized people from a very isolated and poor village I had a conversation with one of the doctors who also has a very deep interest in the deeper problems behind this poverty. That particular day I was having trouble communicating all day long. When I spoke to many of the people they would either just stare blankly back or lose interest and walk away mid-sentence. Even when I did get some of them to talk with me, they were not really formulating coherent thoughts. At first this frustrated me a lot, but after talking it over with some doctors who experienced the same thing I realized that this was not them being rude, but could be a result of serious malnourishment. For me this was a tough idea to grasp. I had always thought that people have at least some control over their lives, but for some people, their lives are mostly decided for them before they are born. The poor farmers can't afford adequate nutrition, so pregnant mothers go hungry. Due to malnourishment, the child's brain and body don't develop completely. This problem is compounded by the lack of nutrition during the developing years after birth. Without proper development they are doomed to be poor farmers who will once again not be able to provide proper nutrition for their future children. I realized the depth of the problem when the dentist had to pull out every tooth that a 40 something woman had left because they were so rotted. He asked her if she could afford dentures. She thought for a little while and said "Maybe. If the coffee harvest is good this year."
Seeing this deep cyclical nature of this poverty was troubling, and kept bothering me for the rest of the week. However, there was lots of work to do and I was able to get caught up in it so the week just slipped away. It really felt nice to have actual work and be needed after being here so long without any serious job.
At the end of the week the dentist and eye doctor headed home I began to work with the rest of the doctors who stayed behind. After such a long week we had Sunday off. A couple of the doctors and I took advantage of our day of rest and took a trip to Copán, the Mayan ruins just across the border in Honduras. The ruins were gorgeous and it was a nice segue from one week into the next. Thankfully, the second week of the doctor's stay here was much more relaxed for me. For starters, it was only 3 days long, and I was only working on discharge, a job which basically consists of repeating "take these pills twice a day and drink lots of water" over and over again. On Monday we went to work in one of the villages. It's always nice to get out of the monastery for awhile, and the people there were so nice to work with. It was really a great time.
We worked hard that last week, and the people I was with were great, but the week had a very different feel to it. As their time here neared its end, the doctors began to tire in the work they were doing and get homesick for the places they left behind. I think any project or experience that has a set limit of time begins to feel tedious as it nears the end, and the doctors definitely fell prey to this effect. It's been interesting for me to see the different groups of volunteers or pilgrims all go through the same things. I've even found that as I get closer and closer to my end date I'm finding it harder to do any real work and connect with people. Because of this, the last week had a slower pace and I had more time to hang out with the doctors. Even though the dentist had left, I was still bothered by the poverty we'd witnessed and discussed and I took the free time I had this week to discuss that with the other doctors. Eventually, after talking it over with some of the doctors, I came to the conclusion that the "big picture" problems are there because they are hard to fix. If there was an easy solution, somebody would have already found it. That being said, because it is difficult is no reason not to try to do something. If you look only at the big picture (something I do far to often) it's easy to get discouraged and lose hope, but if you chose one aspect of the problem and work to fix it you can rejoice in the little victories while still working towards bettering the big picture. I suppose that's really what the doctors are doing here, trying to help people in the only way they know how. It might not be changing the world today, but it's working towards a better future.
Very insightful Adam. Like the doctors, you too are working towards a better future. I am proud of you.
ReplyDeleteLike the stethoscope; it's a good look on you Bud. :)