Q. Describe
your team.
A. Our team was composed of the following University
of Florida students and professionals:
11 Pharmacy Doctoral (Pharm.D.) candidates- all students
from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida.
3 Licensed, Pharmacists/Practitioners
1 Physician's Assistant/Pharm.D. dual degree practitioner
1 UF Emergency Room Physician's Assistant
2 UF Emergency Medicine Physicians
Our route of travel took us from Gainesville, Florida to
Orlando, and then to Managua, Nicaragua, and finally by bus another 4 hours up
toward the mountains to Matagalpa, Nicaragua.
Q. What
parts of Nicaragua did you visit?
A. We were based in Matagalpa and each day
went out to a very remote village to hold clinics and serve the people. We went to four different
villages...serving the village of El Chile on two consecutive days. We returned on our bus to Matagalpa
each evening.
Q. Describe
the people that you served.
A. Because these were very remote, rural
villages, there were varying degrees of poverty. Some of the villages were made up of field laborers in the
coffee plantations; yet these people take home a very low wage for their very
hard work. Because of the rural
setting, many had their own gardens and farm animals and sweated out an
existence from the land. There was
in all people a high incidence of intestinal parasites, due to consumption of
contaminated food and water as well as the general poor conditions of
sanitation....shallow pit outdoor toilets sometimes located so close, where
contamination of wells and streams is inevitable. Because our destination villages for holding clinics were decided
upon by the Missionary Ventures Field Coordinator in Matagalpa, (nurse) Brenda
Rose, there was an effort on her part to rotate the visits of teams to the
neediest villages that had gone the longest without medical assistance. When possible, Brenda tries to have
people in these remote areas visited by medical mission teams every 6 to 12
months.....when teams are available.
For many, this is all the medical care they get in a given year.
Q. How do you think a
medical or dental team opened people or a community up to Christ's Word?
A. This is an interesting comment for me
to make: this was a unique team in
that all of the students (team members) were not Christians. For
example, there was one Hindu, one Buddhist, etc. However, many of the team members were strong, dedicated
Christians, and I think the outreach of God's Work (rather than Word...although
indirectly the same thing) may have been as significant to those serving on the
team as to those being served by the team. We are the "hands of God" as we do this work....the heart and
the hand work together, and the outpourings of the heart are a powerful force
within the human spirit. The
people who come to the clinic see the face of God and see the hands of God in
what we do. The smiles (often
nearly toothless due to poor dental health) confirm that they recognize and appreciate
what the team and God are doing for them.
"Gracias" was uttered by nearly all of the adult patients we saw. We truly felt that they sensed the
presence of God in our work and our presence.
Q. What
the most meaningful moment for this team on this trip?
A. Honestly, there were SO
MANY....especially for the Pharm.D. students who had little or no experience in
serving the impoverished people of the world!! I think from a health-care perspective, a very interesting
episode occurred when a mother brought her very young baby girl into the clinic
concerned about a rash on the baby.
It was a hot day and she had the baby completely swaddled in a knit
blanket with a knit cap and booties on her. The staff unwrapped the baby to find her covered in nothing
more complicated than "heat rash".
They spent some time with the mother discussing the need for the baby's
skin "to breathe" and that in the hot daytime temperatures, she needed to be
able to regulate her own body temperature by getting rid of the extra heat and
how the bundling and wrapping was making it more difficult for her little body
to do that. The mother at first
resisted, saying that the "night air" was "very cold" and would make the baby
sick. Culturally, it is expected
that a baby be wrapped and that is seen as a major mode of protection for
them. To convince the mother
otherwise, at least during the heat of the day, was a real challenge. However, when she came to the pharmacy
to get vitamins for the baby, she had her completely unwrapped revealing a cute
yellow outfit with the hat removed (booties still on, however), and was fanning
her with a cloth as she bounced her on her lap in the waiting area. Lesson for the students: Cultural traditions may change slowly....but
successfully with lots of patience, caring, and good reasoning.
Q. Describe the
physical ease or difficulty that was encountered by team members on this trip.
A. It is a long day of travel, from home
in Gainesville, the car trip to Orlando, waiting to go through Customs, flying
to Nicaragua, clearing Immigration there, loading onto the bus, traveling to
Matagalpa. But, once we arrived, our
team was kept quite comfortable....good accommodations in Matagalpa each night,
with hot water, plenty of food, reliable bus transportation, etc. We had long days of hard work in the
heat, but that's what we signed up for!
