June 2013
As Peace Corps Volunteers we are
often presented with opportunities to help other NGOs working in Panamá with
their projects. One of the
opportunities frequently presented to us is to work as translators for groups
of traveling doctors (usually from the US), which travel to underserved
communities to provide free basic health care.
Last year I worked as a translator
for a group of optomolegists that came to Panamá from throughout the United
States through the Lion’s Club, to provide eye exams and free glasses for rural
Panamanians. This past June,
Chelsea, a Peace Corps Volunteer from my group, invited a group of traveling
doctors to come to her community to provide basic dental and health care. I jumped at the opportunity to help
when Chelsea asked me if I’d like to translate for the medical gira (tour). Not only is it a very rewarding experience to be able to
help people receive the health care that they need, but it was also an
opportunity to visit her community Nueva
Paraiso (new paradise). Nueva Paraiso is on the much less
visited and developed east side of the country; her community is situated along
a lake and is only accessible by a one-hour boat ride from the “mainland.” I
had heard that her community was filled with beautiful jungle caves, which made
me even more eager to visit.
We arrived by boat early in the
morning with the doctors (who were mainly from rural Alabama and
Louisiana). Once we arrived and
set up, I was assigned to work with the dentist. The dentist, Denis, and his wife/assistant Carla, were a
very friendly and kind couple in their mid sixties. They told me that this was their 12th “tour” in
Latin America, but it also may be one of their last. The dentist told me that although he knows the work he’s
doing is very important, it is also very difficult for him to provide the care
that needs to be given without the necessary instruments. He explained that the only service he
was able to provide in a place like this was to remove rotten teeth using, equipped
only with local antithetic and what looked to me like fancy pliers. He said that two days ago he was
pulling out an 11 year old boy’s tooth that was so decayed on the inside that
it shattered when he was trying to extract it. For the next 45 minutes he had to pull out the shards of the
tooth that were still attached to the boy’s jaw. The young boy wailed and continually called for his mother
during the whole ordeal. The
dentist told me that he had to take a 20-minute break after that while he wept
and asked God for guidance.
After that motivating story, Denis
told me that I would be his sole translator for the day and that we were going
to try to treat up to 50 patients (ages 12-75). The day started out pretty smoothly, I explained to the
patients what they were in store for, tried to sooth them as he extracted their
teeth, and explain how they should care for themselves in the coming hours and
days. After the first 2 ½ hours we
had our first tough patient, she was a youthful mother of two that had three
rotten teeth. The first two teeth
came out relatively easily but the roots of the third were strongly attached to
her jawbone. For the next 15
minutes the dentist tried to torque the tooth from various angles to pry it
loose. After many winces from the
young lady and lots of sweat from the dentist, he finally managed to pry it
loose. The toughest extraction of
the day came right after lunch (luckily), it was a 10 year old boy named Carlos
whose tooth also shattered as soon as the Denis gripped it with the
pliers. Much like the boy from the
his story, Carlos cried in agony, squeezed his mother’s hand, and pleaded for
Denis to stop for close to an hour. Meanwhile Denis tried his best to minimize
Carlos’s pain and remove the shards of his tooth as quickly as possible. I tried to comfort Denis and Carlos by
slightly adjusting the messages they were giving one another, but I’m pretty
sure that my work was in vain.
After that experience I fully understood what Denis had told me in the
morning, he is providing a vital service, but after watching it in action I
couldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to be the one to keep providing it. At the end of the day Denis had treated
46 patients and removed 67 teeth, all in under 8 hours!
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| Traveling to Nuevo Paraiso |
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| Unloading Medical Supplies |
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| Andrew Explaining to the Doctor the Issues the Woman is Having with Her Legs |
The next day was much less productive, but a lot more
fun. We spent the morning trekking
down a river that wove through beautiful caves and lush tropical forest. They eventually led to a set of
swimming holes and cliff that coulf be jumped from. Along the way we saw tucans, parriots, bats, a range of
small river fishes, fresh water crabs and an Equis (X, for the x like design on its skin) snake (Equis are one
of the most deadly and aggressive snakes to be found in Panamá). Instead of trying to describe this
experience through words, I’ll allow the pictures to speak for themselves.
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| Chelsea's Front Porch |
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| Equis Snake Just Before We Kill It |
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