Day 4: Golden Stream Village

Julia Tao
Today everyone ate breakfast on the bus and drove 2 hours to the Golden Stream clinic (with the patients of Mayan descent). When we arrived, there was a table laid out with lots of leaves. Antonio talked about their different medicinal properties--one of them apparently cured cancer! Afterwards we set up all the tables and because there were so many people waiting in line, I ended up doing Intake rather than Medical Education at first. I saw a lot of families and also learned how to do blood sugar with the AccuCheck; people there called it "sweet blood." Lunch was soup (caldo) with tortilla and rice. During lunch, Mr. Nguyen and Mr. Diep found mangos the size of a person's face and a humongous jackfruit. They shared some of the jackfruit with the group and it was very sweet and delicious. After lunch, I went back in and helped with medical education. I mostly talked about the rainbow diet and food pyramid (the bottom of the pyramid (protein) is big, which means that you should eat lots of it, and the top (carbs) is small, so that means you should only eat a little bit), how to properly lift heavy items in order to prevent back problems, proper posture when sitting at a computer, how to look far away and then back when working on electronics, and some pregnancy information (iron, calcium, and folic acid are important when pregnant). Many of the children in Golden Stream were a little shy and didn't talk very much, but it was worth it to see the joy on their faces when learning about the food pyramid and rainbow diet, and them taking the pamphlet afterwards. Around 3:30 we started packing up, and then we got on the bus and drove to Happy Ranch for dinner. Afterwards, we kept driving in the bus back to Placencia. When we got back, the students changed into their swimsuits and went across the lagoon to the other side with some very pungent bait shrimp to fish with. For a little while there was a power outage, so we went onto the roof to see the stars. It was actually really amazing to see Belize's natural beauty without artificial light; the stars are so much brighter here without all the pollution. When the power came back on, we took the ferry across to the other side's dock. Everyone fished for a while, and I made a couple of traps for minnows with Michael Lee. Kenneth caught and released another jellyfish and Xitlali caught her first fish! It was really large. Afterwards, we went in a rowboat back across to the other side and swam in the pool for a while before going to bed.

Matt Cheng
Today, we went to a Mayan village called golden stream in which I shadowed the pharmacist and counted pills with a spatula and a tray. The people there had unsafe drinking water that came from the river. Also, the village doctor gave a little talk on his herbs and how one of them could cure cancer. When I shadowed my mom, there was a girl who had chicken pox. My mom diagnosed her by seeing the blisters on the papule which is called vesicles. We don’t see this much in America because most people are vaccinated against chickenpox.

Ethan Nguyen
The third clinic was a day that the pharmacy struggled, and where is was working at. By the third day, the entire group was tired of eating beans, rice, and stew chicken but we managed for the rest of the trip. At the beginning, a herbalist showed us all the different types of herbs that can help with diarrhea, headaches, toothaches, stomachaches, and also claim to have a herb that could cure cancer. The day got even hotter than before and before we knew it the day was over. I got to learn more about the types of medications and what they are for. For instance, ibuprofen is for helping reduce the amount of pain, while Aller-tec cleared congestions and allergies.

Jacqueline Duong
As I went on to the next day of clinic at the Kekchi Mayan Village, my group was in charge of patient education, and this was really a huge turning point for me. So many parents said that their kids weren’t eating, or weren’t growing, or just weren’t healthy. For every patient, I saw myself explaining how important diet was like “rainbow of foods”, and “no fried chicken”, but there was only so much I could tell them. No matter how much I wanted them to eat some good beef, they didn’t have beef. If I wanted them to eat strawberries they didn’t even have them. At times I felt frustrated because as much as I wanted to teach them, their circumstances restricted them from truly becoming the healthiest little boy or girl their parents wanted them to be.
About 2 hours into the day I was already exhausted because of how much talking I had to do to so many little kids and their parents. Believe me - I love to talk, but this was really something foreign to me. In a sense, it was like I was in charge of teaching this little boy or girl so that they could grow to be big and strong. But there were some moments, that just made me want to keep talking. For example, this little girl came with her mom and really didn’t want to listen to me. She just stared at me with a lost look in her eyes, not understanding anything. I really just wanted to ignore her confusion and move on, but I looked at her paper and saw that she had issues with her eyes and needed sunglasses. So to get her engaged, I took out my own sunglasses and put them on to show her “how cool I looked with sunglasses on”. She started laughing, most likely because of the fact that I didn’t look very cool, but from that point on, she was smiling and listening to me talk about how she should always go outside and play with her friends but don’t forget her sunglasses because they are just too cool. In addition, in this village, fried chicken was a really common food amongst kids and adults alike. For some of the kids, I remember that my cousin and I would say things like “hey you like fried chicken? Cool well don’t eat it anymore”. The kids would be so confused and their parents would laugh, but then I would “flex my muscles” and show them how if you eat healthy and no fried chicken, they could grow big and strong like me. Every time I got a smile out of someone’s face, it gave me will power to make at least one more person smile. And to me, behind every smile was someone who was willing to listen and learn.

Alex Duong
On the second day, I had a similar experience as I was brought back to intake in the Mayan village we visited due to an overflow of young students who needed checkups, and many of the residents had the same recurring problems such as back pain, stomachaches, and headaches. However, I learned more on this day due to the Mayan medicine that was explained to us. The village medicine man showed us a variety of about twenty leaves used for healing, and explained that there were about eighty or so leaves that had the same effects. By boiling them to make tea, these various types of leaves had effects ranging from curing a cough to resolving cancer. Although these the techniques were not proven by modern methods, I learned the diversity of medicine’s scope and how different healing methods were around the world. Although many would disregard these ways as ancient, outdated, and ineffective, my point of view has helped me to learn to embrace such devices as they work well despite lack of proof.