Category: Universities

Like most people, I know very little about medicine and the intricacies of my physiology. I probably should know a lot more. I’ve certainly been sick or injured enough times during the course of my life, and often dependent on the services of medical professionals. They always tell me what’s wrong with me, the diagnosis, how they intend to fix me, and the treatment. But I hardly listen. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of my own fragility or mortality, but I’d rather just trust that they know what to do – close my eyes, take the medicine, and hope for the best. What’s most important to me is that doctors and medical professionals have a specialized knowledge of what makes me tick, and that they can treat me with unparalleled competence. I can then consider them gods, always able to fix me no matter how ill or broken I might present. Of course, this is a rather naïve way to approach that which is most important to me — my health and well-being.

We are privileged to see a lot of medical professionals who come to this tiny part of the world to practice medicine. I am always impressed by the wealth of knowledge they carry with them. They know all about biology and science, and they know how to perform exact interventions that make sick people well. This is of incredible value, and the people living here on the Frontera, without regular access to such expert knowledge and intervention, are eternally grateful. Perhaps they, like me, would want to think of these visiting, medical professionals as gods. Clearly, they should be honored and respected for their dedication and service, but there is something much more basic about health and well-being than knowledge and expertise. The really good, medical professionals understand these basic principles, shun the temptation to be godlike, and embrace the dynamic relationships that make individuals and communities healthy.

The Brown / Wingate mission to the small community of Guachipilincito has invested in these dynamic relationships over many years of service to realize a system of sustainable health and well-being. They were here again recently at the clinic they built and maintain at Guachipilincito. Dr. Harrison and a well-seasoned, professional team with dentistry, pharmacology, and students provided direct care, offering effective interventions. As impressive and important as this direct care is, the health initiative of Brown / Wingate happens beyond this direct care. At an earlier visit to Guachipilincito, they polled families at home visits, asking them what they thought could be done to make their community healthier. They said they wanted to come together in a social context and learn about how to be healthy. So on this trip, Brown / Wingate offered a health fair at their clinic. People who had never come to the clinic or seen a doctor, mostly men from the community, showed up. The medical staff screened for chronic diseases and found two individuals who were suffering with diabetes and didn’t know it. They are now receiving treatment and training to manage their disease. The community learned about health relative to nutrition, the extremely dangerous amounts of sugar present in soda, candy, and snacks that are unfortunately so readily available and cheap on the Frontera. The teenagers from the community offered a hilarious skit on maternal health and birth. Music, good food, stimulating conversation, and a rich sense of friendship guided the evening. Perhaps the visiting, medical professionals lost some of their god-like character in the evening’s festivities, but sustainable health and well-being within this community was certainly advanced.

Brown / Wingate’s “health fair” is happening in so many ways at Guachipilincito apart from those times when they visit and offer direct care. A feeding and nutritional program is ongoing, supported and run by nurse Lesby who lives in Guachipilincito and regularly buys and distributes fresh healthy food to families in need. Dr. Dan Harris came a week early to Guachipilincito to be invested in the life of the community. Dr. Simon Tanksley has remained in Guachipilincito and will be there for three months. He will treat individuals while he is there, but he will also learn from them. He will discern with them the best means of creating and maintaining health for individuals and the community at large. Meanwhile, Brown / Wingate will consider how they can deepen their commitment and service to this isolated and resource challenged area of our world.
The road to Guachipilincito from the neighboring town of Concepción is easily one of the roughest, most challenging in all of Honduras. It is a distance of less than ten kilometers, but it takes over forty-five minutes to arrive there in a four-wheel vehicle. You can almost arrive there walking quicker than in a vehicle. The people living there are desperately poor. It is a place where it is easy to become a god. Though that temptation is great, being a god is as unfulfilling as it is ineffective. Being a friend is so much more challenging, and ultimately so much more healthy.

Perhaps then, health is not solely about specific, expert interventions from people otherwise unconnected to their patients. Perhaps it’s about listening. Perhaps it’s about investment in committed relationships. Perhaps it’s about partnering with individuals and communities. Perhaps it’s about the recognition of the inherent dignity and sanctity of shared human experience. Perhaps health and well-being is everyone’s responsibility, not just those of the gods who happen upon a moment of crisis, illness, or injury. The Brown / Wingate brigade travels to Guachipilincito across the challenging terrain. Because they are committed to the ongoing journey of reaching the people there, they can claim that they are assisting in the creation of sustainable systems of health and well-being.

Laura and I love living in Honduras; we couldn’t be happier. Still, the differences between us and Hondurans, culturally, linguistically, and even physically, are sometimes highlighted. They are mostly simple things to note and they don’t present challenges, but sometimes they can remind you that you are the odd person out in this society. The sense of time and efficiency in systems often sets me reeling, and sometimes railing, as no one ever meets my standard for punctuality. Similarly, my sense of personal space and privacy is frequently undermined as others barge in on my protected territories. High school and grade school students who we pass everyday huddled in groups of five to ten try out their limited English on us. They always wait until we pass when we’ll hear the brave one among them voice a “Gud Mowning.” We’ll turn and smile and respond, “Good Morning, How are you?” They all giggle and a few others will join in with more comically enunciated good mornings. This will continue back and forth four or five times dispersed with the adolescent giggles. It’s a recognition of our differences under a certain amount of insecurity, but also a transcendence that the differences are not insurmountable. There are so many other things that betray our difference. We dress different, eat different, stand and walk different. The cadence of our speech, the way we act and react, and the way we think all define us as the ones who come from some other world. We change as we live among the differences, sometimes adapting to new ways and sometimes not, but we will always be recognized as outside looking in.

I was observing the medical service team MAHEC (Mountain Area Health Education Center, Asheville, North Carolina) a few weeks ago as they arrived in our little town of Camasca. They came as a twenty-three person team, working hard, visiting distant smaller communities every day, offering health care, delivering workshops in adolescent wellness at the High School, and sharing with the younger children at our bilingual school. Such a strong presence in such a small community like Camasca is hard to miss. Because Laura and I were particularly busy during the time they were here, we didn’t so much involve ourselves with their activities as watched them from a distance. I noticed them perhaps as a Honduran would. I saw them walking down the street from our street-side porch, dressed in their blue scrubs, walking very fast and purposely, presenting a different aura than I was accustomed to seeing on the street. They visited our porch most mornings as they could share our WiFi, check email, and post pictures on Facebook. I chuckled to myself to think of them as a herd of cattle of an unknown species that had wandered into our meadow. Still they were all well welcomed, honored by a sense of gratitude by their hosts. This, however, seemed somehow more than simply the thankfulness for their service. There was something noble about their presence that I could not define. I found myself thinking about this, trying to figure out exactly what it was, while they were here among us.

On one of their days, they were visiting a small community called San Juan de Dios.  The mayor of our town, Julio, had lent a few of his pick-up trucks to the brigade, and on this particular day, he himself had driven them to the clinic site. Laura and I weren’t with them, but it happened we were in the same area visiting families benefiting from our nutrition program, MANI. Driving on the main rock/dirt road, we saw a man in a dress shirt, cell phone to his ear, and shovel in his hand. As we approached him, we recognized him. It was Julio, the mayor. We stopped and talked. He was filling in the ruts on the road, channeled out by the hard driving rains. He was doing this in preparation for the return trip with the brigade members who would ride in the bed of his truck. It was a humble gesture of gratitude, commendable in and of itself, but again I felt there was something more profound in that visage. Again, I felt there was something of great value in these acts, in this interchange. It was elusive, but again the word “noble” came to my mind.

Laura and I were present at MAHEC’s going away celebration. There was cultural music and dance, a festive spirit. There were speeches in gratitude of MAHEC’s generosity and service. Then our mayor, Julio, got up to offer his words. He recalled some of the time he had spent with the MAHEC team while they were visiting the outlining communities and offering medical care. He began to recount a particular house visit and became emotionally choked up. They visited an older couple, very poor and very frail. They were most certainly coming to the end of life’s journey. There was nothing that the team could do for this couple, medically, but they shared their time with them, sat with them in their house by their bedside. It was this that moved Julio to tears, and he noted that next year when MAHEC would return, this old couple would likely not be with them. But for Julio this visit was of exceptional, incalculable, ineffable value.

Listening to Julio, I then knew what it was that I had been struggling to understand and define while MAHEC was visiting Camasca. Indeed, it was their presence that was noble. At first glance, this group of medical missioners from the US presented as so foreign. And so they are. But we can all get beyond that in deference to the reason they had come. In the second instance then, we can give them credit and gratitude, for the great and generous service that they offer. This, perhaps, would be enough. Yet Julio was moved by something else at a moment when no service was even possible. This is a moment when differences are neither noted nor have any meaning. This is a moment in which service —  who is the giver and who is required to be grateful —  is also of no import. This is a moment when all judgment is discarded, and what remains is the value of human caring. This is noble.