The Volunteer Forum

My medical mission to Guatemala was everything I hoped for and more, however before going to Guatemala, I looked at booking with a volunteer trip with an organization named Cross Cultural Solutions.

Cross Cultural Solutions is an organization affiliated with the United Nations and provides people an opportunity to volunteer from 1 – 12 weeks in selected developing countries. I did my research by reading unbiased blogs and communicating directly with people who have used them for volunteer missions and they seem to be a legitimate and reputable organization. My initial plan was to visit Ayacucho Peru from 2/14/2009 – 2/21/2009 in the insight abroad program (1 week) and I began booking the trip in December of 2008. There is a fee of $1765 which includes the registration fees and the room and board expenses at the home base.

I was excited and eager to participate in this mission, however forgot to take some important steps before registering.

• I did not check the US Department of State’s travel advisory for Peru. It turns out that there was restricted travel to the region of Ayacucho Peru which is where the volunteer mission would take place. Most countries that have volunteer missions will have some types of warnings, but the restricted travel warning would prove to be a show stopper.

• I didn’t know who I would be traveling with. I made the mistake of not contacting people should would be traveling to the same destination as me. Cross Cultural Solutions provides an online community called “CCS Community” and I recommend that you register and interact with other travelers BEFORE booking your trip especially if you’re traveling alone. For example when traveling to Peru, some popular airports with direct flights are, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Houston. You’ll have a chance to book some of the same departing and returning to the USA. I was told that I would be working with 10 other volunteers during that week, and three would be arriving the same day as me 2/14 and that the staff would provide me with their contact information

• Cross Cultural Solutions has a no refund policy so be absolutely certain before paying any money to book your trip. Initially paid the deposit but ended up cancelling the trip because of the warnings from the US State Department. I was however to get a refund via my credit card company so I recommend that you pay with a credit card just incase you have any issues.

Again I canceled my trip due to the US State Department’s warnings, but do plan to use Cross Cultural Solutions for one of my future missions. Please check their web site if you’re interested in a mission. You can join the CCS Community and chat with others who have used them for volunteer missions.  Its a big investment in your time, money and a risk so know exactly what to expect before booking your mission.  You can also get more details and speak with someone regarding a mission.  Again most of the staff are volunteers themselves, have participated in missions and will be very helpful in answering your questions

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I leaned some valuable lessons from the DoCare International medical mission in Guatemala that will last me for a life time. It was a humbling, yet rewarding to provide help to the locals, and to feel appreciation for the work we did.

Clean Energy

After seeing and breathing the brown haze of smog that sits over Mexico City and Guatemala City, I’m convinced more than ever that the United States and other developed countries need to lead the push for green energy technologies. People in developing countries such as Mexico, and Guatemala use old and poorly maintained cars and buses that were once used in the USA and other developed countries. The developing countries either have no emissions standards, or are not enforced if they exist and the air quality suffers as a result. For example “school buses” are a popular mode of public transportation in Guatemala City. Most of these buses were once used in the USA and after reaching a certain age are sold to Guatemala. Many of these buses are poorly maintained emit thick black exhaust polluting the air and making it difficult to breath. Imagine thousands of these buses emitting thick black smoke and you can see how the air quality suffers.

I personally am in good shape and had a hard time with the air quality for the first few days in Guatemala. It was torture driving behind busses, cars, or motorcycles emitting nauseating exhaust fumes and was alarming that it appeared to not bother the locals. It appears that they have adapted to having these pollutants in the air. I’m almost certain that it lead to a lot of the complaints about burning eyes and respiratory issues that were diagnosed at the medical clinics.

If the USA and other developed countries produce clean cars and other products, they will eventually reach the developed countries within ten or more years later and help to improve their air quality. We take clean air for granted in most parts of the USA and need to be socially responsible by protecting our air quality, and producing items that will help improve the air quality for others. As stated before, these products will eventually make it to the developing countries.

Supplies for the Next Mission

Working in the pharmacy, it was troubling to me each time we ran our of supplies. I plan to return next year if the mission directors allow it, and will be donating money for supplies that I saw were in demand.

Sunglasses

Doctors prescribed sunglasses to some of the patients however did not have many pair available to the give away. They are relatively in expensive in bulk, and can help protect eyes from the sun.

Sun Block (SPF 15 and Above)

As stated in other posts we saw numerous cases of people with sunburn and sun block was in short supply in the pharmacy. A lot of people work outside for extended periods of time in the sun daily and their skin was severely damaged by the sun.

Lotion

Numerous cases of dry skin came through the clinic and it was troubling to only be able to give patients a trial sized bottle of lotion.

Soap

Again a lot of the skin issues we saw were due to the people hot having the resources needed to care for their skin and soap is an essential item. Without soap the people are not able to was their hands, body and hair. Improving their ability to maintain their hygiene will reduce the threat of various disorders.

Tooth paste & Tooth Brushes

The people do not have appropriate dental care products and their teeth often rot as a result. It’s a goal of mine to help supply the people with these products.

Pictures

With the approval of the mission director, I’d like to set up a mini photo station with a portable photo printer for my next mission trip. The people value their families highly however often do not have the resources for simple items like family pictures. Next year I’d like to take a camera with a portable photo printer in order to snap photos of families and make prints on the spot.

There are other things I would like to do, however can only do so much with limited resources. It will be my goal to at least $1,000 to help purchase supplies for the next DoCare mission to Antigua.

Views on Immigration

This experience has allowed me to see first hand the living conditions of people in developing countries and I now completely understand why some go to great lengths to immigrate to the USA, Canada and other developed countries. They are deprived of simple things that we take for granted such as clean air to breathe, plumbing, heaters & air conditioning, traffic lights etc….

Many of the poor will remain poor because its often difficult if not impossible to build wealth given the economic state of the country.

The benefits of making a move to a developed country legally or illegally drastically out weigh the consequences of staying in their current country. Even with an unskilled job, they would be able to provide for their family and have better living conditions than their home country.

The People

I was amazed with the kindness of the people I met in Guatemala. Just about every person I met, from the hotel workers, to the street vendors to the people we served at the clinics were nice with high spirits. Most of the people have a strong catholic faith and was displayed from the children’s school uniforms to their church services. I also see that they value their family ties dearly and is very important to them in the absence of material items. I had become somewhat materialistic, but seeing this has allowed me to re evaluate my priorities and reinstated what is really important.

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Today was the beginning of the sixth week of your ESL class and the topic for today was personal pronouns. The lesson went well for the most part until we reached the words “they’re” and “their.” We first tried to explain the difference to the students using English, after only receiving blank stares, we translated the words to Spanish and the students were able to realize the difference.

As stated before, I ordered 15 “Spanish – English” dictionaries for the students in hopes that they will use them to increase their vocabularies. I passed them out and the students seemed to be satisfied with the new dictionaries. They have been having problems with the homework writing assignments and believe the dictionaries will help them find the appropriate words.

We also tried a group discussion with the class today in an effort to get them to practice speaking English in everyday terms. The topic of the day was to have the students say something about their family in order to spark a discussion. This worked well, however the student’s natural instinct was to speak in Spanish. We also have a few students are shy and seem afraid to participate. I plan to hold the discussion again for next week with the topic of “What’s your favorite day of the year and why” and will give candy to those that speak in order to encourage participation.

Also if you’re an ESL teacher and looking for an effective an inexpensive book for your students, please see the “Webster’s Spanish-English Dictionary for Students” link in the amazon.com link section on the side. The books were $2.99 and have a buy three get one free special going on. Amazon.com also has free shipping and I only paid approximately $34 for all 15 dictionaries including shipping.

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I missed Week 4 as I participated in a volunteer mission in Guatemala. The agenda for week for was to have the students review the lessons from the first three weeks. We started class by having the students read their homework assignments, however only one person completed it. He copied the words from some type of graphic design ad and we read it to the class. This was a good exercise, because this small paragraph introduced approximately five to seven new words for the students. After translating the paragraph, I passed out the vocabulary review with the words written in English and the Spanish translation. The students like having the translations and I’ve been creating them every week.

After reviewing the vocabulary words we had the students complete a few assignments in their workbook. The workbook is somewhat effective, because its written 100% in English and the students have a hard time with it. We then played a game of Pictionary which brings out the competitive spirit and livens up the class. We followed that with reading a story in the book and answering the corresponding questions.

For next Week 6, I plan to buy each student a pocket dictionary (15 in total) to help with translations between English and Spanish.

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Today we went to a small town about a 1 hour drive away from Antigua. It was another beautiful day with crystal clear skies for what would turn out to be the busiest day of the week. We had a great location today as it was a fairly large building with enough room for all of our stations and supplies.

We saw a mix of patients with the same issues that were prevalent in the other sites, skin issues, stomach parasites, and burning eyes. As mentioned before this was the busiest day of the week and I believe we had between 270 – 300 patients visit the pharmacy for medication. I also had a chance to distribute the skin care soap and lotion that I purchased from the previous day. I distributed the soap and lotion to people with the most severe skin problems.

Something else that troubled me was an elderly woman who came to the clinic with no shoes. I noticed this while walking her to the eye glass station and she told me that she didn’t nave enough money for shoes. Her feet were heavily callused from not having shoes and it again was a humbling site. In hind site I wish I would have went into the market and purchased her a pair of shoes but it didn’t think of it at the time.

The DoCare International team performed excellently this week and did an outstanding job in representing their practices, organizations, schools and the United States of America. I was honored to be allowed to participate in this mission and will be honored if allowed to participate again next year.

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Today we visited a small town named “San Jose Poaquil in Departamento de Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Upon arrival we were greeted with fire crackers which startled some of us. We entered the building and had a line of about 50 people waiting for us to begin. An announcement was then made on a loud speaker notifying the town of our arrival and our goal in their town. We were several people short today as some of our group members became sick with the stomach flu. Major symptoms were diarrhea and vomiting, and I myself had a slight fever but was able to continue working some Advil.

It was a perfect day, with perfect weather and clear blue skies for what would turn out to be my best, and most rewarding day of the mission.

We held the clinic in a small building with several rooms which were sufficient to house each station and the supplies. The pharmacy was in a small room with just enough space for the supplies and we did our counseling with each patient one on one in the waiting area. This was different from our first setup but proved to be better in allowing us to communicate with the patients as most of the time we sat down right next to them without a desk separating us. This was also the slowest day of the week as we only saw about 150 – 200 patients, however this allowed us to spend more time counseling, play soccer with the kids, and hold conversations.

We saw numerous patients with skin problems in this town. Again we saw numerous cases of scabies, a severe case of eczema, sunburn, warts, rashes and dry skin. I also saw a baby with a severe case of a diaper rash, and a extreme case of facial eczema which was infected and both were just heart breaking. I believe many of these skin issues were caused by the people not having the necessary products to keep their skin clean and moisturized. We were also in short supply of skin care products in the pharmacy. I counseled a few patients with severe skin issues and it troubled me to only be able to give them a hotel sized bottle of lotion and a small bar of soap to treat their issues. Upon returning to out base in Antigua, I purchased enough bars of soap, and lotions to fill my entire back to stock the pharmacy and give them out to the most severe cases.

There were also quite a few people with stomach parasites and urinary tract infections (UTIs) at this location. We passed out medication to treat the issues; however it again was troubling to know that they would only have enough medicine for a few days or weeks before their issues returned.

During some downtime in between patients I had a chance to talk to some of the patients and realized how important family was to them. I got the impression that most families were headed by an elder woman, as mostly women came to the clinics. In speaking with some of the people, the subject of pictures came up and I ended up taking pictures of a baby, and two families, an promised to mail them. I had them write down their addresses for the pictures. Family is valued, however many don’t have the means to take pictures. Once I returned to the USA, I had the pictures printed and laminated to preserve them as the climate is tropical. I mailed to the given addresses along with extra quetzales (Guatemalan Money) they I had and hope they got them. I have no way of knowing since the post office does not provide delivery confirmation to Guatemala. As before, the people of San Poaquil were grateful for everything we did for them and made us feel welcome in their town.

Here are pictures of this event

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We began our clinic work on 2/16 and 2/17 in a down called San Juan Comalapa. When we got there we were greeted with approximately 300 people waiting in line to be seen by doctors. The location was spacious and the facility managers did a great job at supplying us with the tables and chairs needed to set up our stations. The process flow for the clinic was:

1) Sign in at the front desk

2) Have vitals measured (weight, blood pressure, heart, etc..)

3) See a doctor for evaluation (med students shadowed doctors)

4) Go to referral doctor if necessary (dermatologist, optometrist, etc)

5) Go to pharmacy for prescribed medicine

6) Pick up eye glasses if needed

I ended up working in the pharmacy both days as a councilor for teaching the patients on how to used the medication that was prescribed by the pharmacy. Knowing Spanish was extremely helpful in counseling the patients on their medication. For most of our patients, the pharmacy was the last stop wand was extremely rewarding to get to converse with them. EVERY single patient was thankful for any and everything we gave them whether it was Tylenol tablets, a tooth brush, or a variety of medicines to treat their issues. In the first hour, I had a patent tell me that she had dreamed of the day she would get medicine to treat her stomach parasites and that today we made her dream come true. Its humbling to hear and see people be so greatful for items that we take for granted such as a simple table of abendazole which is used to cure stomach parasites. Each and every person that game through the line was wonderful to be around and made us feel at home and appreciated. The saying “Mi casa, su casa” (My house is your house) was prevalent and at no time did I feel like an outsider. To show their appreciation, some of the women made us an herb tea that was really good.

Eye Glasses

The eye glass station was an interesting station to observe.  Patients who needed classes would basically go to a table with glasses and try on each pair until they found that magic pair that allowed them to see better.  It was amazing to see their faces light up once they found the right pair.  Each person that found a pair of classes that improved their vision was extremely grateful as were all of the people.  The glasses were donated by various individuals and eye glass clinics so if you have an old pair of glasses, please donate them as they will help improve someone else’s vision whether in the USA or another country.

Sanitation is poor in Guatemala and as a result noticed that many of our patients complained of stomach problems and we gave a lot of medicine to combat urinary tract infections, stomach parasites, worms and gastritis. We also gave medicine to treat many cases of skin problems such as sunburn, rashes, scabies, ringworms and other skin related diseases. The people have to perform a lot of manual labor throughout the day and we gave medicine to treat joint pains such as Tylenol, Advil and Asprin. We also gave medicine to treat issues that I believe are caused by the bad air quality such as dry eyes and respiratory problems like asthma.

We ended up closing the clinic at about 3pm both days and it was hard to see people turned away. If it was up to me, I would have worked until everyone in the town had been seen, but the reality is that we had limited resources. All of our supplies and medicine was donated and had to be rationed out for each day. I felt really good about the work that was done on both days and am extremely prod of the DoCare team for the work that was done.

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Today we went on an adventurous hike to the most active volcano in Guatemala, “Vulcan Pacaya.” It was approximately a t hour ride by bus and we were escorted by the police as a precaution as a group was robbed at gun point last year. Along the route this was the first time I saw how people in Guatemala live. A lot of people live in poverty in one bedroom 8 x 10ft shacks for 4 or more people. The most dwellings I saw along this route were constructed of wood with straw, or rusted sheet metal roofs. The houses have no heat, A/C or running water and the people burn wood for cooking and heating. Along with the poverty, the people are also deprived of clean air as it’s polluted with the smoke from burning wood, and from vehicles with excessive emissions.

I also saw that there’s a large gap between the rich and poor because in one section a nice sub division of upscale condominiums was directly across the highway from a poor community. It was a humbling experience to see the extreme poverty in Guatemala for the first time and now I completely understand why people in “developing” countries want to immigrate to developed countries like the United States, Canada and European Countries.

The hike up Vulcan Pacaya was extremely physically demanding and dangerous in some areas. It was foggy on our trip so we didn’t get clear views for pictures. The hike to the summit of Vulcan Pacaya was approximately 1.5 miles directly up hill along a dirt trail. The total adventure took approximately 4 hours.. About 1 hour to the top then a 30 minute lunch break. That was followed by a slide down the side of the volcano which was the best part of the trip and then a hike to the lava field (about 1 mile). It was almost like skiing down the side of the mountain. (see the video below) That was then followed by a 1.5 mile hike back to the base.

If you’re reading this and plan to hike to the top of the summit of Vulcan Pacaya, make sure that you’re physically able to do so, take plenty of water (at least 5 bottles), bring a lunch, wear pants, long sleeves and hiking boots or shoes. The volcanic rocks are extremely sharp in the lava fields and you’ll need pants and long sleeves to provide some protection for your skin incase you fall. The hike is also through a wooded area and you’ll want to protect yourself from insects. It was the dry season during this hike and we didn’t have to worry about mosquitoes but the potential exists. Mosquito repellant is also recommended.

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I left DFW airport this morning with my travel partner at 7am and flew on Mexicana Airlines. Mexicana Airlines provided god professional service and served food on the flight. The first flight was from Dallas to Mexico City with a 3 hour layover.

View of Mexico City from my Seat

Mexico City looked large from the plane buy one thing that stood out was the brown haze of smog that hung ominously over the city. I believe the smog comes from either not having, or not enforcing emission standards on vehicles and factories.

We arrived in Antigua at about 3:45pm and again the staff on Mexicana Airlines was professional, extremely helpful and also served nice dinner. Upon arriving in Guatemala we got our Passports stamped and were met right away by a man with a “DoCare” sine at the airport named “Luis.” This transportation was pre-arranged by my travel partner which was a great help. By the time we left the airport It was about 4:30pm which put is in the hear of the rush hour period in Guatemala. Seeing the traffic was a shock to me because the drivers do not observe the traffic rules and there are also many people on motorcycles that drive up the middle lane dangerously close to other cars. Our driver was able to navigate the rush hour traffic I gave him a tip of 200 quetzales upon the safe arrival.

After checking into the hotel, I met with other members of the medical group and shared a few drinks on an outdoor patio.  While waiting I was greeted by a young girl who tried to sell me various souviners for approximately 10 minutes non stop.  I finally broke down an bought a few of the, then asked permission to take a picture of her and her family.  Below is the picture of this beautiful family.  From left to right, their names are: Fabiola (middle daughter), Marsanela (mother), and Ingrid (baby).

Guatemala City also has a brown haze of smog that sits over the city. Again the emission standards are either non existent or not enforced. A popular form of transportation used in Guatemala is old school busses from the USA. These busses are often poorly maintained and many of them emit thick black smoke polluting the air. Seeing this first hand strengthens my belief that the “first world countries” need to develop clean energy technology. Fuel efficient, low emission vehicles will help people in developed countries, and will also help keep the air clean in developing countries once the vehicles have been passed along.

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Today was week three of the ESL class any my second time teaching at VMLC. We began the class by collecting and reviewing the homework assignment from the previous week which was for the students to write a few sentences about their weekends. This assignment went fairly well and a good number of the students were able to complete it. We were also able to get a few of the students to read the assignment (in English) out loud to the class.

Next we reviewed the vocabulary from the previous week. We used the workbooks to review a few exercises and went over the new vocabulary. Before class began I made a sheet that translated words from English to Spanish and a verb chart that shows how verbs are conjugated. The workbooks the students currently have are written 100% in English with no translations and the students are finding it difficult to learn certain aspects of the language. They enjoyed the translations and I’ll continue to create new translation sheets in the future.

Their homework assignment for the week was to read a paragraph from the workbook and answer the corresponding questions.

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