… Jon and Dana, our first-ever investigadores, or summer research interns.  Beginning on Monday, they will spend seven weeks living in the rural community of Caraballo, conducting epidemiological surveys, and pioneering HHI’s plans for engaging in research and evaluation.  With Angi’s support, they have already done fantastic work designing a project and securing funding from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, and I can’t wait for them to arrive on the ground.  Specifically, they will be collecting data on the prevalence of risk factors for hypertension and diabetes in several of the communities we serve.  We will use this information  to base future chronic case management and prevention programs, and to better develop a baseline for treating hypertension and eventually diabetes.  We’ve also arranged some days for them to shadow doctors in the area, visit other health organizations, and get a feel for the history and culture of the region.

Of course, this will leave plenty of time for weekends at the beach.  No se preocupen.

Jon Silver is a rising 2nd year medical student at State University of New York – Downstate College of Medicine.  Jon grew up in Queens, New York, graduated in 2007 from Tufts University with a degree in Biopsychology and Biomedical Engineering, and studied improv comedy in Chicago before starting medical school.  At Downstate, he has taken an active role advocating for healthcare reform as a member of Physicians for National Health Program and is passionate about equitable access to healthcare services.  Thanks to the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and its Student Summer Service Fellowship funding his research, Jon is very excited to spend his first summer with HHI!

Dana Sanderson will be a 2nd year Medical Student at the State University of New York- Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn, NY. She grew up in Buffalo, NY and received her Bachelors Degree in Biology from Boston College where she also focused on Spanish Language and Literature and Sociology. At BC, she also participated in a school-sponsored service/immersion trip to Nicaragua that piqued her interest in global medicine. Dana studied Medical Anthropology and spent time working in mobile health clinics in Cape Town, South Africa. She looks forward to continuing her participation in global health care and aspires to become a Primary Care Physician.

Between getting ready for our summer staff, managing our cooperadores’ internship and planning for their graduation next week, working on logistics for the upcoming year’s medical trips, and preparing for the big transition to the new IPDs (more to come on that!), I feel like we are winding up in order to wind down Angi’s and my time as IPDs.  It’s exciting to think about how much growth we have ahead of us — we’re on the brink of a turning point.

Looking forward to a great summer,

Laura

Mercedes, our cooperadora de salud from Arroyo de Leche treats my site visits to her community like they are day-long play dates.  It’s great.  I take the 40-minute motorcycle ride up a mountain, past the patches where the road is so bad that I have to get off and walk on foot, over 4 bridges, and arrive on schedule ready to meet with HHI’s hypertension patients.  Mercedes is super relaxed, washing her hair, preparing lunch, or stacking the wood planks for the new room in the house.  She tells me we will have the meeting with the patients “ahorita,” in “a little while,” which means anything from 2 minutes to 4 hours, depending.

The last time I was in Arroyo de Leche, “ahorita” was in such a long while, that I was not actually able to meet with our patients (the sole purpose of my visit) before having to speed away on a motorcycle to escape the afternoon downpour that would have left me stranded, the roads too muddy to return home.  I left the task for Mercedes to do independently.

Luckily, I did not escape an enormous and scrumptious home-cooked Dominican lunch and after-meal coffee so super-saturated with sugar that there was a sweet sludge slicked onto the side of my tin mug.  “Just take a taste and let me know if you need a little more,” Mercedes tells me.  I take a sip and immediately develop a cavity.

Mercedes making fried plantains

When I tell her it is never necessary for her to go so far out of her way for me, she puts her knife down, looks at me with sincerity, and says “!Oye!  Angi, esto no es nada.”  “Come on!  Angi, this is nothing.”  Even though I know it is something.  I know that it costs at least 70 pesos in gas just to get down into town to buy groceries, that her husband no longer has a job, that she put the beans on the stove at 6:30 in the morning, and that she is using a better cut of meat.  I know.

Mercedes, Franklyn, Marielly during a site visit

Since Laura has been in the United States, blazing HHI trails stateside and taking a short “vacation,” I have somehow managed to become the pity of my landlord, my neighbors, and in this case, our cooperadores.  “You’ll waste away living alone like that!  Come over tomorrow at noon for lunch.”

It’s hard to say no to fried plantains, rice and beans, salad, and chicken criolla, but it’s also sometimes hard to correctly interpret a person’s situation and intention, the multiple layers of my inter-personal relationships, my responsibilities to my organization as a young professional working in the field, and my desires and curiosities as a young American woman living in a new culture.

When Laura and I would share meals with families in Villa Ascensión, we always bought all of the groceries plus more, ate little, and refused seconds.  There, the situation was such that feeding two extra mouths for even one meal was almost impossible.  The last time we ate at Arroyo de Leche, however, I bought a sack full of groceries for Mercedes, and she was so embarrassed and surprised, that I realized right away that I had offended her.

I could go on about all of the miscommunications, misinterpretations, and sometimes unfortunate and always hilarious (in retrospect) mishaps that I have endured during these past nine months.  I live in a bit of a paradox: working in partnership with underserved communities while acting as the supervisor of our cooperadores; befriending and relating to other young foreigners volunteering in the field while spending my working hours relating to local male doctors, public health officials and administrators, cooperadores, patients; and working to do what I consider the right thing while learning everyday that all things “right” are extremely complicated.  I’m determined to figure it out (ahorita, okay?)  For now, fried plantains, miscommunications, misinterpretations, and mishaps galore call my name.

-Angi