Hola desde la Republica Dominicana!
It’s hard to believe that I woke up in Manhattan this morning.
My flight left JFK at 9am, and touched down in SDQ (Las Americas International airport) at 12:30pm. I was picked up by the Project HOPE driver, Freddy, and driven to the Dominican Fiesta hotel to join the other two volunteers. It wasn’t a long drive–maybe 40 minutes–and most of it was along the coast. Chatting with Freddy reminded me that my conversational Spanish is really, really rusty. It was actually quite frustrating, because I knew that I had learned the words and phrases I wanted to use, but couldn’t pull them up from wherever they’ve been stored in my brain. Even now, nearly 8 hours later, I’m just remembering the word for “scholarship” (“beca”). Despite my difficulty communicating, I learned that Freddy is from Puerto Plata, has siblings living in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium, and will be driving us around tomorrow to see the old colonial part of Santo Domingo. Or the beach. Or wherever we want to go.
I didn’t know that there were going to be other volunteers, so the fact that there are two nurses volunteering with me next week is comforting. C & B have been volunteering at the clinic for the past two weeks, and are both finishing their coursework in the masters program at FIU to become nurse practitioners. We get along well, which is good because we’re sharing this hotel room in Santo Domingo for the weekend and will all be living in the clinic’s guesthouse when we go to Monte Plata on Monday.
We went to an underwhelming Chinese buffet for a late lunch, checked out the supermarket down the block from the hotel, and took it easy for the evening. C and I made it down to the pool to read for a bit and go for a swim, but eventually the light drizzle turned to pretty intense rain and everyone had to get out. We proceeded to the indoor “Turkish bath” (basically a room-temp tiled Jacuzzi) to continue talking. I learned about the set-up of the Monte Plata clinic, what it’s like day-to-day, and some of the public health issues there that C has noticed and tried to look into over the past couple weeks. Both C and B think that the top priority should be on hand-washing, for patients and clinic staff alike. I don’t yet know what exactly my anticipated work/responsibilities will be for the summer, but from what they’ve related to me today there are plenty of areas for intervention. I know the Country Director would like me to work on developing a mobile health (mHealth) program for the clinic, but otherwise I’m going in sort of blind. I’m excited to see Santo Domingo tomorrow, but also to move on out to the clinic on Monday!
A: Santo Domingo airport
B: Santo Domingo hotel
C: Monte Plata
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