My first week at the clinic went surprisingly smoothly, given the regression of my communication skills to about age two. My Spanish is slowly returning – forgotten words pop up at random times and, if I am lucky, I am able to correctly match a pronoun and tense with the proper verb conjugation. I’ve discovered that the secret is to simultaneously focus and relax and to remember by not trying to remember. That and if I speak slowly, other people respond more slowly – I always think that by speaking fast, I will convince people that I am fluent in Spanish. Of course, I end up being in trouble if I actually succeed in that, because then people speak to me as if I am fluent in Spanish, which I’m not. Thus, I often end up nodding my head and smiling, and occasionally laughing for good measure without understanding a word that I heard.
The clinic is great – witnessing what public health care is like in Honduras, interacting with patients, learning about what the most common ailments are on Roatan, and having 4 enthusiastic teachers eager to share their knowledge (Dr. Charles, Dr. Jamie, Dr. Gross, and Dr. Kristen). A month is a very short time in the world of public health, so it is nice to have some projects to plug in to: tomorrow and Saturday I am helping with the Flowers Bay Health Volunteer Diabetes project. Next week, I am helping the midwife, Bernadette, with a family planning/birth control activity. In addition, I hope to help Jenn in La Colonia with some of her research – I look forward to seeing that area and meeting some if its residents. Peggy Stranges, a nurse from Ohio who has incredible energy, vision, and follow-through, continues to provide me with a wonderful education about the difficulties facing island health care and the politics that, unfortunately, permeate it.
I decided to participate in this internship primarily because I wanted to experience working/volunteering in another country (specifically in a developing nation). I have spent time in other developing countries as a student and as one of those gringos toting around a huge backpack, and I have always said (somewhat naively) that, as a doctor, I hope to work in international health. This internship gives me a chance to shed a bit of that naiveté and test such a theory out. And. . .so far so good! Becoming involved in something beyond the tourist’s eye has, already proven worlds more rewarding than studying or traveling. More than that, I have greater confidence when talking to locals and I feel more established in the community (and how quickly that happened – in less than two days the local baleada seller knew me by name and a few days after that, her daughter had me in the kitchen learning how to make baleadas). I love not living on the tourists’ path - I spend the beginning and end of my day saying good morning and good night to the same people. Rather than always feeling like an outsider observing others, my daily life occurs in conjunction with the daily lives of my neighbors, taxi drivers, patients, and store venders. So this is a good way to be in another country – I think it will be difficult to ever travel another way.
Today is Thursday May 4th, which means that I have been in Roatan for thirteen days. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here that long and it’s hard to believe that I’ve only been here for thirteen days. Time seems to absorb itself down here. The sun rises at the same time every morning, the wind blows in the same direction every afternoon, and the dogs bark at the same things every night. Things you can count on down here: there are always people awake later than you and up earlier than you; nothing happens when you think it is going to happen; if you say hello to someone on the street, they will say hello back to you; if you are a woman, the second question your taxi driver will ask is “Are you married?”; the internet will be down at least once during the day; freshly-made tortillas taste absolutely amazing. Life on this island is great.
