A follow-up version to 2008's medical mission trip occurred this past week. Saturday February 21, 2009 saw a flight leave Charlotte for Miami, then a flight to Santo Domingo, and finally that long bus ride over to Barahona. A week venturing away from the tropical paradise into the underbelly of Haitian refugee bateyes and poor Dominican villages. Giving quality medical care, seeing the real world, opening one's heart towards another human, and basically giving oneself to a complete stranger who, although he/she has virtually nothing, would give you the very clothes off their back.
Another self-affirming and heart-enriching trip to solidify my soul, settle my mind, and essentially push myself fully forward in the midst of my current relationship befuddlement.
The skinny:
Friday the 20th, fraternity brother Duke (who made the trip down with me this year) and I leave Greensboro for points south: meeting the entire DR crew at a hotel in Charlotte. Our flight leaves e-a-r-l-y Saturday morning at 6:00am, so we all met the night before at an airport hotel. It was great to see so many familiar faces from last year, and uncertain in seeing so many new ones. Would the vibe be the same? Would the atmosphere be different? It would be interesting to see.
Saturday morning's flight goes off without a hitch, well....almost. Our plan is that every member brings two bags: one for personal use, and one maxxed out at 50 pounds with medical supplies or drugs. The drugs were sorted by disease state (a cardiac bag, a G.I. bag, a topical bag, etc.) and within these bags the individual drugs themselves were separated into plastic bags. The glut of plastic bags available to us? Biohazard bags. Lots of 'em.
After checking our luggage in at Charlotte and while waiting for the security lines to open, an airline agent brings to our attention that there are plenty of items flagged as a "concern" in our luggage. Apparently, biohazard bags glow BRILLIANTLY when scanned, and any item (biohazard or not) located within a biohazard bag is considered a biohazard and cannot be in your luggage. Upon pleading our case that any normal brain function human can plainly see that dozens of bottles of Enalapril blood pressure medicine is in fact NOT a biohazard, we are told they cannot go this way. BUT, if we were to just dump the drugs OUT of the bags and pack the empty biohazard bags flat on top of the mish-mash of newly unorganized drugs, the bags can go. So the time-saving work of packing individual drugs in individual bags is thrown out the window and we can go.
In two hours we are in Miami. After a layover, it's another two hours and we touch down in Santo Domingo. We pay for our $10 (American money only, of course) "tourist card" for the privilege of entering the Dominican Republic. Money is exchanged for pesos, $125 netting about DR$4,000. We pass through immigration, collect our bags, and discover we're missing one bag.
Shit.
The missing bag? Duke's: almost all of our acetaminophen and ibuprofen, the only pain relievers we'll use in the batey mobile clinics. Luckily, Duke weighed his bag and it was a tad over, so he transferred some of the 1000-count bottles to his personal bag. So at least we would have SOMETHING in the way of pain relief for the locals. Through customs is virtually a breeze, with only a handful of bags searched and agents asking about the mass quantities of drug bottles and anesthesia equipment. The airlines assure us the missing bag has been found in Miami and will be delivered to our hotel promptly. "Promptly" to an American and "promptly" to a Dominican mean completely different things, so the bets were on as to exactly WHEN our 50 pounds of pain relievers will show up. In the meantime, our bags are loaded onto The Big Red Truck, a vehicle of major sentimental proportions.
Now it's a long bus ride to Barahona: 4 hours with no stops. But we stop. We're hungry, so we stop at a Pollo Victorino for some chicken and our liquid staple for the coming week: Presidente beer. A chicken restaurant at a gas station that offers Presidente beer as a beverage with your "combo". Bellies full, beers consumed, beers purchased to go, we climb back aboard the bus and make our way to Barahona.
We arrive in the night at Playazul, a resort located about 10 minutes further out of town from last year's resort: Hotel Costa Larimar. We arrive to hear the crashing waves of the Caribbean Sea, and to see the most stars in one night sky I have EVER seen. It was a planetarium's domed ceiling. It was diamonds strewn upon black velvet. Absolutely mesmerizing and gorgeous. We move into our rooms, eat dinner at the open-air restaurant, imbibe some Presidente's, then call it a night.
Our group has 32 members. Our mission is to serve the people of Barahona with surgical procedures at the hospital and community doctor visits and pharmacy services in the outlying bateyes and villages. Sunday, the hospital group left to set up the anesthesia machines and get the rooms ready. The batey group sorted and (re)organized the drugs within their appropriate duffel bags. A light day of work. By dinnertime, both groups are done working and a Sunday night of "getting to know one another" occurs over dinner and the invigorating post-dinner conversations and shenanigans that happen.
We're here. We're in paradise. We're ready to go. We're ready to help some people medically.
Let's do this.
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