Orphanage Outreach

When I was a pre-med sophomore in college, I left the country for the first time and spent the year abroad in Ecuador and South Africa. While abroad, I explored and met new people and traveled and had an amazing time. I also saw some different worlds than I was used to and cried and hurt and fell down a whole lot. But after each fall, I learned a little bit more about myself. Up until that point in my life, it seemed that everything I had worked so hard for was leading up to pursue my dream of practicing medicine. I wanted to be a doctor. However, after my experiences abroad, I left with more questions than answers to my future, and felt myself, for the first time, floating and searching for something unknown to me and seemingly intangible. For so long I had wanted and planned and worked towards one goal and I didn?t quite know how to deal with anything otherwise. I had also been so driven and focused on an endpoint that it had ended up defining me in some way. I felt like a failure for no longer wanting that something I had wanted for so long. I was devastated.

During November of my junior year, amidst this struggle, I was asked to join a trip with a pre-health professionals club down to the Dominican Republic with Outreach360. In my spiraling and grasping, I found myself spontaneously signing up for the trip as a life line. I hoped that returning to Latin America would give me the direction and affirmation I was searching so ardently for. Instantaneously upon stepping off that plane into the hot Dominican sun, I was transported back to the smells and sounds and sights that had offered me excitement, comfort and challenge the year previous. It transported me back to a time when indecisive was adventurous. But I could not go back and truly let myself go.

Midway through our week, we arrived in a banana plantation to set up our second health clinic. Hundreds of people were soon standing in line to see the few doctors that were with our group. Children ran about the field screaming and laughing, wrestling and attempting to break the line to run into the makeshift clinic. In the chaos, I was pulled into a small room to help assist a physician with exams. As we saw patient after patient with chronic parasites, the doctor turned to me and voiced the same frustration I was feeling. Where was this going? Even if treated today, what would prevent this seventeen year old mother of two from feeding her children worm-infested food tomorrow? After an hour, I was asked to step over to the next room.

That was where I met Dr. Daniel. Daniel was a physician that had been participating in medical clinics for over a decade after retiring from public health medicine. He sat there on a rickety stool with such ease and spoke confidently in broken Spanish and Creole to the individuals who walked in the door. He offered his hand in welcome and consistently made contact with people. He sat there and patiently listened to people?s stories. He offered home remedies and basic, realistic advice. He told me he was working on community health programs to help prevent local people from contracting preventable diseases in the first place and that education meant sustainability. But he also said that was not the purpose for him that day. He told me that he was there that day to be what the people needed him to be, which was comfort and reassurance.

With a new attitude and a mind racing, I transitioned from my shift outside to assist in the lines. Children were still running around wildly and adults were obviously losing patience. So with a deep breath, I decided to offer what was needed for that moment, offer something I could share right then. Be what I needed to be. And so, as long time camp counselor and admittedly poor Spanish speaker, I started singing repeat-after-me songs with a few children. Two minutes later we had tripled our numbers. Within twenty minutes, there were hundreds of children and adults enthusiastically jumping around to the ?Banana Song?.

I eventually went back home and I did change my direction. I am currently in my second year of my Masters of International Public Health and feel that I have truly found something I can be passionate about for a lifetime. I am going back to work in Nicaragua with Outreach360 this summer. And after visiting this December, I am happy to report that my favorite camp tune, ?The Banana Song?, is still going strong. Sustainability.