The 2008 Team Peru campaign has come to an end. The team has gone their separate directions – some for exotic excursion trips to Machu Pichu or the mighty Amazon jungle, and some on their way back to their U.K and North American homes. Everyone, regardless of their destinations, has left this experience profoundly impacted by our work.
Our last week of the outreach campaign was in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa; and had our team working on a variety of projects. Some of our team in the Alto Cayma communities helped with a construction project on a one room home for a single mother and her special needs children. The intrepid laborers helped with mixing concrete, carrying wheelbarrow loads of sand, and hosting piles of bricks. The project enabled a family to have running water, an operational commode and a separate space for hygienic food preparation in their modest home. It was a very fulfilling project that had our team’s members working side by side with our Peruvian partners; and learning first hand about the struggles of desperate poverty.
Our team of three Portland, Oregon based electricians helped to complete the re-wire of the Policlinico Maria Madres de Dios with a new electric infrastructure and new voltage converters. The group, working in collaboration with a Peruvian electrician, added a separate line of 120-volt electricity to run the multitude of donated medical equipment in the clinic. For years, the clinic has had to run their important diagnostic equipment through a converter. The project undertaken by our team allowed for a more seamless use of equipment and a safe guard to prevent overloading valuable equipment.
In yet another community based project, a team of tireless volunteers from our campaign helped to re-paint the exterior of the Mission of Alto Cayma’s child care center and micro-economic center. Scraping layers of old paint and sanding the rough edges on the buildings lava rock walls – kept the work team busy for a number of hours. The camaraderie and commitment to finishing the project – kept the team committed to the long hours for the entire week. Alas, there remains more than enough painting to keep future teams busy for weeks to come.
In the clinic - our team of five North American nurses held a one-day series of workshops for their Peruvian colleagues. The workshops, designed to create professional exchange and open dialogue around clinical care challenges, were a big hit by everyone attending. Subjects ranged from best practice guidelines for diabetes and hypertension, to massage therapy and community nursing. The real beauty of this collegial exchange was the trans-cultural interactions that occurred. Nurses from North and South American had the opportunity to discuss the unique triumphs and challenges of practicing nursing in two very different environments.
Our team dentist was busy. In one clinic outreach to a community school – Dr. Tom Palandech examined over 100 children in a little over 5 hours. He helped to provide follow-up care for the patients screened in the school at the Policlinico and worked side-by-side with his Peruvian colleagues. Dr. Palandech, a career-long Public Health dentist, was well prepared for the differences in practice style that he encountered in Peru (as he has participated in a previous Team Peru outreach and spent his entire career in community dentistry with the U.S. Government’s Indian Health Services) and enjoyed the opportunity to learn, serve and grow. By the end of the trip – Dr. Tom was a committed member of the HBI Team.
Finally, HBI will be starting a community based survey project in the communities of Alto Cayma. Thanks in great part to a team of U.S. and Peruvian medical students (a team of five medical students from all around the U.S. have been placed in Peru through the HBI Health Professions Student Placement Program for the summer moths of 2008) – the survey will look to gain a broad epidemiological profile of the people of Alto Cayma. Our team will administer a multi-faceted survey that hopes to further define access and utilization to medical and dental care – as well as basic information about the barriers to accessing care and simple economic measures. The survey is set to start on Monday, 30 June and will continue through the month of September. More details about this important research project will appear on the HBI Website and through our BlogSpot.
During our last day of the outreach campaign our team met with Father Alex to “wrap-up” our experiences and our projects. During this meeting, Father Alex reinforced the importance of viewing our time in Peru as a great opportunity to learn about service – and not a “mad dashed race” to complete a number of projects or to see hundreds of patients. He told our team that the greatest gift we bring to the communities were we work is ourselves. He spoke of the genuine “connections” that are created when we "serve another person without expectation."
As we ended our final team meeting – the group felt a collective sense of accomplishment from our two-week outreach efforts; not for the projects we completed or the patients we served, but simply for the tremendous lessons we learned.
No campaign is complete without a farewell dinner party. Our party was a gastronomic explosion of Peruvian delights. With over 80 dishes represented on the evening tables – the toughest decision team participants had to make was not “what to eat,” but “when to stop eating.” Never a group to leave a table full of food – the team packed up the left over food and shared the delicacies with family and friends.
So ends another Team Peru Medical, Dental and Social Outreach. We want to extend a very big "Thank You" to everyone who participated in, contributed to, and supported the 2008 Team Peru Outreach Campaign. Your support means so much to us!
Please stay tuned to our website for more information about the on-going work of Health Bridges International and the 2009 Team Peru Health Care Outreach Campaign.
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