Connecting with Guanin

  Hola familia y amigos,

   Today was day two working with the Guanin community. Dr. Been joined us along with Dr. Beenson, a colleague of Dr. Been, who was nice enough to volunteer at La Piedra.

   We started off the morning with a medical lecture by Dr. Been on hypertension and diabetes. These two conditions are extremely prevalent in what we've seen in the Dominican Republic thus far. His lecture allowed us to better understand the patients we've been interacting with throughout our trip and the diagnosis and treatments which we will use as medical professionals in the future. Dr. Been provided us with a thorough connection between the courses we've taken at UConn and what we've witnessed from patients for the first time here.

     Next, we split up into three groups: construction, teaching, and a group which accompanied Dr. Been on home visits. The focus of this experience was to culturally immerse ourselves as future medical professionals where this experience would allow us to better connect with our patients. Five of us went into the homes of three residents for the first time and found the conditions of the homes completely astonishing. The first home we entered was built mostly from scraps of metal and tree bark. The roof contained punctures and there were a swarm of flies surrounding the dishes and food area. There was one bedroom with walls made of bed sheets as well as a small shack outside that was used as a restroom and a hose that was used for bathing. There was a family of eight that shared two full sized beds and one bedroom. Dr. Been helped us conduct our diagnosis by explaining the importance of thoroughly gathering all the information that would be helpful in identifying the residents health status.

   While examining an infant in the home Dr. Been quickly identified an irritation on the child's, mother and grandmothers skin. He wisely made the correlation between their lifestyle and their condition. His ability to make those connections with little information provided was profound and enlightening, he showed us how when making a diagnosis with a patient you have to rely on intuition, past experiences and trust your instincts.

     The second group was the construction group. As we said yesterday the project we are working on is building a guest house for future volunteers. Today they decided to add in a second floor and began the process of cementing the cinder blocks for the floor. Once the made cement was used up and more had to be mixed the workers decided to hold off on the construction for a bit. With that, some of us helped out the kitchen by serving lunch to 26 children and 10 volunteers. A few helped to sift sand for the cement mix while others assisted the third group with teaching.

   The teaching group worked with children ages 4-14 on defining human anatomy in English. They started off with a blank outline of a person drawn  on poster board and hung it up on the blackboard. Students were given sticky notes with different body parts written in English. The assignment was for each student to put their sticky note in the appropriate area on the human outline. This let them learn the English term for various body parts. This group helped teach the 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' song to these kids in English. Lastly they tested out the terminology they learned by playing a rousing game of Simon says or as we would say here 'Simón dice'.

      It was then time for lunch, we reunited and enjoyed a spectacular array of Dominican delicacies made by the Guanin cook. The rest of the afternoon consisted of interacting with the children of the center. We played a short game of volleyball and after we were given a Spanish medical lesson on human anatomy by Dr. Been. He gave us a brief overview of the Spanish terms for the parts of the body which potential patients would commonly use. Finally, we said our farewell to the children for the day and drove back to the city of Santo Domingo to our host families. Our evening was spent exploring more of the community and its shops. Afterwards, we spent a couple hours reflecting, we stated our goals for the remainder of the trip and discussed how we have grown as a group and individuals since day one.

      Only a couple more days left and we just wanted to say thank you to all those who have been keeping up with our blog and sharing this experience with us!

-Dushala and Maria