Everywhere I've turned, it seems, I have found an opportunity to lend a helping hand … and I wouldn't have wanted my time here to be any other way.
My translator in Jarabacoa benefited from the experience nearly as much as I did from him interpreting my interviews. As a student still learning English and new to the medical environment, other than some experience his mother had, he learned more about medical practice in the weeks we worked together than he had ever before. He learned some medical terminology and how to say them in English - in many cases, the Spanish terms were just as new to him as the English ones.
Shortly after my arrival in Jarabacoa, I helped my aunt and uncle across the street from our house search for deals on flights. With my computer charged and catching the signal for the wifi from my house, we sat around their kitchen table on a Tuesday night exploring every potential airline flying out of Santiago and into JFK. With relatively flexible departure and return dates, I was finally able to find the most affordable option through Delta, second to Spirit, that offered great flight times; that way, my aunt and uncle would arrive at a reasonable hour at night to get picked up by their family in New York and return at a safe hour to get picked up from Santiago, about a 45-minute drive from where we live. A few weeks later I spent an hour on the phone with Delta to make a correction to my uncle's name as had been issued on the ticket so that it matched that exactly of what appeared on his passport so that they wouldn’t run into an issue with customs.
Since my little host brothers spend the majority of their time on summer break watching cartoons throughout the day, I decided to give them some hands-on learning. I brought a slime-making kit and space sand with me. Besides being incredibly fun for them to make and play with, I taught them the properties behind the slime, like a polymer, and how the space sand is super hydrophobic, why it repels the water and never gets wet. To finish, they enjoyed eating some astronaut ice cream and me reading them stories in English so that they could learn from stories they already knew in Spanish.
My other aunt that lives right next door to me is studying one day each week to become an elementary school teacher, as she raises her 3-year-old daughter. She had to prepare a presentation she would give to the class so that she would learn by teaching and her peers learn from her, but she was without a computer, flash drive, and access to search tools to prepare the presentation. I was glad to teach her how to use PowerPoint on my computer and show her how to search for the information she needed on her topic through the internet, and I then lent her my flash drive with her prepared slide-deck to give to the class the next day.
The three puppies that had been born just 3 weeks prior to my arrival in the campo, despite being adorable, were loaded with fleas and ticks. Their poor bellies were pink from the flea bites and their ears plugged with blood-filled ticks. Without tweezers available to me, I carefully removed each and every tick from the puppies' ears and then gently applied Neosporin with Q-tips to heal the bites and prevent infection. After talking with a friend, I learned that vinegar, followed by soap, is a natural way to clean dogs of fleas. So, I purchased some from the colmado so that my family and I could bathe the pups to rid them of the nest of fleas each had. They're looking very happy and healthy now.
Then, a fourth puppy showed up, but this time I was with my family in Jarabacoa. As mentioned in previous blog posts, a 2-week-old puppy, abandoned by its mother, was found on the street. Severely malnourished and with an apparent parasitic infection from the size of his swollen stomach, I worked quickly to bring him back to health. I purchased some baby formula for him and he drank it right away. He lapped it up from a dish, and I only twice had to feed him the milk with a syringe. I brought him to the vet for an exam; fortunately, his seizures were likely just due to malnutrition and the infection he had, and he was given intravenous doses of vitamins and a sequence of anti-parasitic medications. Unfortunately, he ran away from the family that was housing him. I can only hope another loving family found him and gave him a home where he could grow healthy.
My translator in Jarabacoa benefited from the experience nearly as much as I did from him interpreting my interviews. As a student still learning English and new to the medical environment, other than some experience his mother had, he learned more about medical practice in the weeks we worked together than he had ever before. He learned some medical terminology and how to say them in English - in many cases, the Spanish terms were just as new to him as the English ones.
Shortly after my arrival in Jarabacoa, I helped my aunt and uncle across the street from our house search for deals on flights. With my computer charged and catching the signal for the wifi from my house, we sat around their kitchen table on a Tuesday night exploring every potential airline flying out of Santiago and into JFK. With relatively flexible departure and return dates, I was finally able to find the most affordable option through Delta, second to Spirit, that offered great flight times; that way, my aunt and uncle would arrive at a reasonable hour at night to get picked up by their family in New York and return at a safe hour to get picked up from Santiago, about a 45-minute drive from where we live. A few weeks later I spent an hour on the phone with Delta to make a correction to my uncle's name as had been issued on the ticket so that it matched that exactly of what appeared on his passport so that they wouldn’t run into an issue with customs.
Since my little host brothers spend the majority of their time on summer break watching cartoons throughout the day, I decided to give them some hands-on learning. I brought a slime-making kit and space sand with me. Besides being incredibly fun for them to make and play with, I taught them the properties behind the slime, like a polymer, and how the space sand is super hydrophobic, why it repels the water and never gets wet. To finish, they enjoyed eating some astronaut ice cream and me reading them stories in English so that they could learn from stories they already knew in Spanish.
My other aunt that lives right next door to me is studying one day each week to become an elementary school teacher, as she raises her 3-year-old daughter. She had to prepare a presentation she would give to the class so that she would learn by teaching and her peers learn from her, but she was without a computer, flash drive, and access to search tools to prepare the presentation. I was glad to teach her how to use PowerPoint on my computer and show her how to search for the information she needed on her topic through the internet, and I then lent her my flash drive with her prepared slide-deck to give to the class the next day.
The three puppies that had been born just 3 weeks prior to my arrival in the campo, despite being adorable, were loaded with fleas and ticks. Their poor bellies were pink from the flea bites and their ears plugged with blood-filled ticks. Without tweezers available to me, I carefully removed each and every tick from the puppies' ears and then gently applied Neosporin with Q-tips to heal the bites and prevent infection. After talking with a friend, I learned that vinegar, followed by soap, is a natural way to clean dogs of fleas. So, I purchased some from the colmado so that my family and I could bathe the pups to rid them of the nest of fleas each had. They're looking very happy and healthy now.
Then, a fourth puppy showed up, but this time I was with my family in Jarabacoa. As mentioned in previous blog posts, a 2-week-old puppy, abandoned by its mother, was found on the street. Severely malnourished and with an apparent parasitic infection from the size of his swollen stomach, I worked quickly to bring him back to health. I purchased some baby formula for him and he drank it right away. He lapped it up from a dish, and I only twice had to feed him the milk with a syringe. I brought him to the vet for an exam; fortunately, his seizures were likely just due to malnutrition and the infection he had, and he was given intravenous doses of vitamins and a sequence of anti-parasitic medications. Unfortunately, he ran away from the family that was housing him. I can only hope another loving family found him and gave him a home where he could grow healthy.