Last Wednesday a group of students from a boarding school in Colorado came down to Honduras as part of a senior trip for a class on globalization and anthropology. That morning I took four of them and their teacher with me to monitor infants in the Colonias. We went to each house in Pastor Obence’s partition in Policarpo, checking each infant’s current weight against a growth chart, along with recording data on birth weight, status of vaccinations, history of diarrhea and other common childhood illnesses. Along the way, we referred several kids to Peggy’s clinic, some with asthma and severe coughs, some with scabies, and a few suffering from malnutrition. It was revitalizing to see the children’s happy faces and our own to mirror theirs, in light of a backdrop of sand-dirt beds and tin roofs. Everyone was welcoming, friendly, inviting, although I’m sure our procession of six gringos and one pastor must have been intimidating. On Thursday, the students returned to the Colonias to teach hygiene to the elementary school. They brought soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste for each of the kids and played Simon Says and a local chicken game. It was a rewarding experience for the kids as well as the students, offering each other a taste of their respective cultures.
Since my arrival on the island, I hadn’t really noticed a big disparity in between Roatán culture and American culture. At first I thought they were fairly similar; most people on the island believe in Christianity of some sort, and there was no apparent native religion or set of unified cultural beliefs present. I’ve slowly begun to recognize the large differences in life here, differences that were so painstakingly obvious but were covered by a thin veneer of Western influence. Marriage and sexuality, for example, is very third-world. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about this topic and he told me he lost his virginity at eight years at a fifteen year-old. “Second grade!” I exclaimed. Sexuality had been made so evident, even to the prepubescent. He was telling me that it was extremely rare for a man to abstain or have few sexual encounters (his brother being one, and ridiculed often because of it), as the opportunities were endless—older women, younger girls, married women, gringos, even (the other night he had an encounter with a married thirty-one year-old gringo; he is only seventeen). He said that he practiced safe sex as much as he could, but mostly when it was visual—when he could see the pubic lice. Often he wouldn’t have access to condoms, and who knows how prevalent STDs are on the island. Most peculiarly, when I asked him about his religious beliefs, he said that he was Christian, like most islanders, and he did believe that premarital sex was a sin. However, he explained, he would be forgiven no matter how many times he committed the sin, so it was fine for him to keep on doing what he was doing.
I blame American media. I hadn’t know how much of an influence it was until coming here; our movies, our TV shows, our music videos are broadcasted all over the world, and what they see is what they think is standard American practice. They see the clearly-explicit sexual innuendos of our media and obey it. I was talking to a Russian friend earlier this morning and he said that the Russians think that all Americans are fat because of McDonalds advertising. Kenfor, who is only nine and is one of the kindest kids of his age that I’ve ever met, wishes to be a professional fighter (he loves WWE). My aforementioned friend says that he plans on getting a 6mm gun, and although he says that he doesn’t want to kill people, he has no qualms about doing it. After all, our violence-filled media substantiates gun possession as an essential tool, does it not?
On a mild tangent, I believe that third-world medical practice is different from American medicine. In America, doctors have a disincentive to treat due to the threat malpractice suits. Here, the islanders are grateful for whatever treatment we can give, whatever advice we have, and even in instances of death the family members are thankful for our service. Going from house to house, monitoring blood pressure and sugar, I realize that we are not treating Americans; we are treating the third-world, people who are in great need and always thirsty for guidance, for assistance in what little ways we can give. I don’t think we should deny them of that even in our incomplete medical knowledge. It is true that I am not a doctor, but neither was Peggy when she first treated her patients, nor everyone’s favorite doctor, Paul Farmer, when he treated the Haitians. I’m not saying we should go around treating people without the experience or chancing the communication of fallible information, but I don’t think our student status should stop us from taking an active interest in each community member’s lives, in doing more than our job description requires, and in taking calculated risks for the betterment of the people here. It is not only required of us as future doctors, but as future leaders as well. We are here for the patients, most importantly, and not to impress heads of state or influential people. I think this is an important reminder, especially in a place where it is easy to forget the baseness of the human condition and fall into the magnanimity of failures which cloud creativity for possible solutions.
