Medical Missions

As a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic I can participate in two medical missions during my service, one each year. I wish I had participated in a medical mission the first year of my service, but somehow some kind of work always came up and I could never bring myself to leave my community for that long. In my second year, as work slowed dramatically and my programs became more self-sufficient I had much more time and eagerly awaited participating in a medical mission.

I chose to participate in a medical mission, interpreting for Partners in Rural Health from the University of New England. I am so glad I chose this mission. Following my trip to the US, I went to this mission. As I entered the retreat center in a small campo in the north, three nurses greeted me graciously. I had traveled a long ways and probably stunk of sweat and guagua fumes, but they didn’t bat an eye. For the next few days I was able to help interpret for nurses and doctors and medical students who were providing medication to various campos around the north outside of Santiago. We were able to go to very rural campos where we had to walk about an hour and a half to get there, as cars could not make it that far. This medical mission comes to the DR every 6 months. It was funny hearing about the DR from their perspective. Here I was able to interpret from English to Spanish and visa versa and a little bit from Creole to English and visa versa, which was amazing to practice my newly learned Creole! They seemed kind and hard working which was so refreshing to see. I was also lucky enough to meet an osteopathic physician and physician student with this program that had attended and was attending the University of New England, one of the schools I had applied to. Being able to shadow these professionals was an invaluable experience. I was so inspired especially when the osteopathic student used manipulative medicine, specifically taught in osteopathic schools to help a man with severe swelling. This use of osteopathic medicine with little resources in a rural town was so inspiring to me.

Especially outside of San Juan, where I live and work there are a lot of medical missions. Often people come in on their high horse and brag saying ‘oh yes well we built a school’ or ‘we gave medications to these pour people who didn’t have anything’. When I hear statements like this I just cringe and almost resent these people that spend all of this money to come down here and think they are making a huge difference, but really they are crippling the people I love dearly. Sure maybe a school or a package of ibuprofen will help people in the short term, but this only makes the people reliant on foreign aid, expecting white Americans mostly to come in and give them free things instead of empowering them to work for themselves to improve their community or stops them from utilizing national governmental services that are available to them. Not only is it enabling a sense of helplessness, but it also instills this idea that Americans come in and only give out free things.

When I first arrived in my community they expected me to bring free things, medicines, a road, an aqueduct, but as a Peace Corps volunteer I work at building sustainable empowerment and education in the community, which trust me, is not always perfect, but at least attempted. In all I had an amazing time working and interpreting for this medicinal mission. I was lucky enough to work with incredible professionals and I look forward to having similar experiences in the future. I just want to state that it is important to be wary of “aid” work. Be a conscious volunteer, sometimes volunteer work affects the volunteer more than the “assisted” and that is just fine and can be very valuable, so get out there and do whatever you can do to make someone’s day better, just think about how you are doing it.