Helping Abroad
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Four Marshall women, who recently traveled to remote Mayan villages in the Toledo District of Belize, said the trip was a life-changing experience.
Participating in Project Belize's 20th annual trip to provide medical and dental care for rain forest residents were Kelly Cason, Lisa Kilpatrick, Rene Verhalen and Jessica Wright, nursing students at Panola College.
"We have to be in good academic standing in school, express the desire to go and be physically fit," said Ms. Wright.
Plus, Ms. Verhalen said, students must be selected by Dr. Barbara Cordell, director of nursing at the college.
Ms. Wright said she was impressed by the trust the villagers placed in the medical team.
"They let you into their homes. They allow you to hold their children and leave them with you," she said.
She related the story of going into the home of a woman to treat her for a dog bite. The woman handed her infant to Ms. Wright while other members of the team dressed her wound.
"The baby was wrapped up in a sheet in the traditional way a papoose," Ms. Wright said. Infants are carried on their mothers' backs in a horizontal position in the wrappings, with a portion of the white cloth strung across the mother's forehead.
When the mother is not wearing the papoose, it and the baby are hung from a nail on the wall, Ms. Wright explained.
"They trust you to do anything that is necessary for them to get well," she said, adding she hopes to return. "I'm very excited about the next trip. I may not go next year because of graduation, but I hope to go the following year."
Each participant is required to raise funds to finance her own trip, a sum which, the women said, was approximately $1,500. The four local participants assembled a goody basket and raffled it off. Some also received donations from local clubs and businesses.
"For me, the thing that made the greatest impression was the poverty level," said Ms. Verhalen. The villagers who live in areas accessible only by way of a 2 -hour drive plus another 2 hours spent hiking practice a lifestyle which has changed little since the fall of the Mayan empire circa 800 A.D.
"They live in one-room, thatched-roof huts with dirt floors," said Ms. Verhalen.
And, Ms. Kilpatrick added: "There are no coverings over the windows, although some had shutters that could be closed."
Ms. Wright noted some dwellings "didn't have doors at all." Hammocks are used for sleeping.
"They prepare their meals over an open fire built in an area of about four square feet in the middle of their huts," Ms. Kilpatrick added. "Those who didn't have wood burned corn cobs."
They walk miles to wash their clothing in the river.
While the women were required to take with them a supply of packaged and dried foods, which served as their morning and midday meals for six days, their hosts provided an evening meal.
"They cooked our dinner," Ms. Kilpatrick said, explaining the meal consisted of "rice, beans and sweet corn bread."
And, she added: "We drank a lot of fresh fruit juice, like watermelon, papaya, lime and there were bananas, oranges and pineapples."
To reach the villagers, the women traveled through "a double canopy rain forest where temperatures reached 104 degrees and humidity averaged 98 percent," Ms. Verhalen added.
A portion of the trip was through areas where slash and burn is practiced, another part of the journey had to be made by canoe and some segments of the trip were made by crawling across felled logs that were the only bridges spanning creeks along the route.
"We held a clinic outside under a tree next to a pig pen in what had been a chicken coop," Ms. Verhalen said.
The people "use a lot of herbal remedies," Ms. Wright explained, "and some villages have a shaman. There is one health care worker who does as much as he can."
But because the rain forest inhabitants seldom receive medical care of the type offered in this country, long lines began to form once the villagers noticed the arrival of the visiting medical team.
"What I saw was way beyond what I could have ever conceived in the way of primitiveness," Ms. Verhalen added. "Yet the people seemed really happy with how they live. They kept their culture: everything is like it used to be. They are tough, strong, stoic people."
She intends to return as soon as it is financially possible.
"It was a completely life-changing experience, phenomenal from beginning to end," Ms. Verhalen said. "It has given me a different perspective on life."
Ms. Kilpatrick said she was most impressed by the fact that "we could do so much with so little. We took with us vitamins, antibiotics, anti-fungal creams and worm pills. A part of our class work, (for which each student will earn an hour's credit toward her degree) was a teaching presentation. We decided to teach the children how to brush their teeth. So in every village we visited, we left toothbrushes."
The group distributed more than 1,500 of them, Ms. Wright added.
In addition, the four prepared booklets on dental hygiene, which they left with teachers in every village school.
They also took, and left, tooth models which Ms. Cason procured from Marshall dentists Mark Neel and Daniel Balderrama.
Of the trip, she said: "I was amazed there are people in this world who still live that way. I guess I never realized it."
Ms. Cason said she was surprised with the kinds of medical treatment the villagers needed.
"A lot of them had lice, scabies, fungal infections, sores from bug bites and intestinal worms from the dirt. Many had cuts on their feet, which they get from going bare-footed.
"Here, these things wouldn't be a problem. We'd just go to the store and get shampoo or a medicated ointment," she said.
"Yet they were happy with the way they lived. They are very creative, always making things.
"Every afternoon when we would come back to our cabin, the kids had set up what we called the shopping mall. They laid out plastic sheets about a half-mile outside our camp and they had bracelets, necklaces, little wooden and stone carvings for sale. They also had embroidery, mostly of toucans and jaguars, and woven baskets."
Ms. Cason also hopes to return when finances allow, but whether she makes the trip is secondary to her desire that area residents donate to Project Belize.
"We were able to take vitamins that will last the people for one month. That's not long enough," she said.
More information on the non-profit organization may be obtained by visiting www.projectbelize.org or by writing to Project Belize, c/o Bruce McNellie, Trip Coordinator, 5922 Princess Lane, Nacogdoches, Texas, 75961.
INSTRUCTOR'S
IMPRESSIONS
Dr. Barbara Cordell, Panola College director of nursing, said she is "incredibly proud" of the work her students performed in Belize.
"They worked hard in very harsh conditions," she said.
"They had no labs for testing. They made their diagnoses in the very basic way by using their eyes and hands." And, she added, much of the medical data had to be collected through translators most of them children.
Some of the people of the Toledo District speak English, but most speak Ketchie or Mopan, two of 13 native Mayan languages.
For Dr. Cordell, this year's trip was her 15th. Panola College nursing students have participated for the past seven years, with the four Marshall women being joined for the 2007 expedition by two of Dr. Cordell's former students.
"They made me proud," Dr. Cordell said of the four. "They were very caring, very compassionate. It was hot, but they never complained. They were troopers and I was terribly impressed."
Contact Sandra Cason at scason@coxmnm.com or 903-927-5969.